Live TV screen quality

[CarolinaGuy]

I'm having problem with the quality of the stream while viewing live TV in BTV 4.5.0(Build 3600). The focus of the picture looks "Soft".

I have an Athlon 1700+ (1.46 GHz) with 512 meg of Memory
A Compaq FS7600 Monitor
A Hauppauge 150 Tuner With Hauppauge Driver 2.0.43.24107 dated 4/13/2006
Radeon 9250 Video card

Using Cable TV

Is there anything I can do that will "Sharpen" the "soft" look of the live tv stream?

CarolinaGuy

[nanook105]

Try different recording qualities

[risen]

You know, I had several problems with Live TV too, but those turned out to not be the fault of BTV at all.

For one you might try doing as the previous poster said, and try different recording qualities. I got better quality by going into the Web Admin, Settings->Advanced Settings->Video Qualities, and setting up a custom one, using 720x480 MPEG-2, Variable bitrate ranging from 4224 to 7224 kbps. This gives me a filesize of about 2 gigabytes per hour, so still small enough to fit 2 hours on a DVD5.

Second, if you are above average technical skill, google a tool called "hauppauge tweak tool". When using BTV or any other PVR for that matter, I had blurring and streaking similar to mouse trails. Turns out, Hauppauge 150 comes with a setting turned on by default, called "Temporal Filter". I went into the Advanced tab there and adjusted it to Static (checked) and Temporal Filter level of 1 (the default is 8 i believe), and this fixed my problems. No more streaking!

Hope this helped.. if I think of anything else I'll let you know.

[Blarney]

Originally Posted by risen

You know, I had several problems with Live TV too, but those turned out to not be the fault of BTV at all.

I tend to think some viewing issues happen due to watching on a computer monitor. Since the monitor supports such a higher resolution than a TV it might look a little blurrier

[CarolinaGuy]

Thanks to each of you for your response. I really appreciate the help. I tried to tweak tool and made a custom setting. Didn't notice any improvement. Will wait and see how it looks on TV.

CarolinaGuy

[ClamsTheCat]

What about your cable quality? Have you tried using a cable box or an aplifier?

[risen]

Originally Posted by CarolinaGuy

Thanks to each of you for your response. I really appreciate the help. I tried to tweak tool and made a custom setting. Didn't notice any improvement. Will wait and see how it looks on TV.

Hmm ok. In that tweak tool, there is an area where you can adjust the "Sharpness". Have you tried fiddling with that?

I'm just stabbing in the dark at this point. Keep us posted ok?

edit: btw, these settings in the tweak tool won't have any effect on stuff you already recorded. and it will be necessary to shut down the btv shell and re-start it after you change settings, before the new settings will be recognized.