Yeah, Yeah, Picture Quality Yet Again :-)

[HipsterDufus]

OK Folks:

Can we settle this once and for all? Can the picture coming out of a PVR 250 be adjusted to be indistinguishable from direct live TV?

Here's my setup:

Shuttle SN41G2 (integrated GeForce MX Graphics and Nforce Audio)
PVR 250
Athlon 2400 XP
512 Mb RAM
120 Gig Seagate
Latest update of BTV (I'm at the office here right now and can't check the actual build #)
WinXP
Intervideo for Hauppauge codec

I am sending the signal via S-Video to a Sony 51 inch wide screen projection TV. No monitor is attached.

I am currently using the stock "Best" setting for video output.

I have used NVDVD's codec in the past, but it hasn't been reinstalled since a complete system wipe.

If I watch something from film, such as a movie, the quality is very very close, but not quite as good as the original feed. It's somewhat darker, so the TV brightness has to be boosted.

If I'm watching stuff from live video, or video tape (e.g. golf, football, Survivor, etc), there is a marked difference. The picture is much "softer". I would compare it to the difference we always see between video and film when watching normal TV. The colors are usually off, and are tough to tweak to be consistent from scene to scene or show to show. The motion is not the same either, of course. There's been a lot posted about that, and frankly, I haven't played around a lot with it.

My question is this. Right now I have a pretty stable system. It's quite watchable, but as I say, the picture is better when not watching through BTV. Is there any point in trying for better quality, or will I just be wasting my time? I don't have any problem with it staying as it is (well, not MUCH of a problem), but if I am giving up some quality that I could easily obtain, I'd rather have it :-) I just raise this because I see the odd comment in various threads that the quality is "just as good as live TV". Is this true, or is it just people with less discerning eyes, or different monitor/TV setups, or what?

Any and all comments are welcome.

caz

[Ellerbestyle]

Well I am really picky about the quality of the tv image and have been tweaking it for a long time to try to get it better. I have gotten it looking good except for when ticker tapes go across the tv. I have read every thing on this forum about quality and wish I knew so I could be completely happy and others would be happy also. I used to have the border problem but a new vid card has fixed that, so I am getting close to being happy.

I wish someone could figure it out lol.

[cmasters]

There are several factors why the image will never be as good as what normal TV looks like. The main ones are the fact you are compressing the image to MPEG2 and deinterlacing issues.

This is a big area where what is fine for some users is not acceptable for others. What you have to do is weight the benefits you are getting to what you are loosing.

[MonsterHTPC]

Definitially try a few searches in the help and support forum, there is a ton of good info there on this. You should be able to get just as good if not better image quality than your STB. Here are a few things and threads to get the ball rolling.

ALWAYS check and update the drivers from Hauppauge's home site, along with your vid drivers if possible.

Here is a good thread, read the entire thing about ticker's at the bottom.
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...ht=choppy+live

Here is how to toggle deinterlacing: from above thread.
From this site: http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/htpc.html
__________________________________________________ _
Enable weave deinterlacing of intervideocodec , and/or enable Dxva / Hwmc
useful for watching wintv2k on a tv set, and/or reducing cpu time / improving picture quality, might also be necessary to change the overscan setting of wintv2k, see below)

Note : It might be necessary to use vmr instead of overlay, or just the opposite, since some users report that it only seems to work with one of those.

For decoder version 3

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Custom\Haup pauge\VideoDec]

"BOBWEAVE"=dword:00000002

"Dxva"=dword:00000001

"Hwmc"=dword:00000001

Intervideo_Decoder_3_Weave.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_3_Auto.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_3_Dxva_on.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_3_Hwmc_on.reg

For decoder version 4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IviSDK4Hauppauge\Commo n\VideoDec]

"BOBWEAVE"=dword:00000002

"Dxva"=dword:00000001

"Hwmc"=dword:00000001

Intervideo_Decoder_4_Weave.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_4_Auto.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_4_Dxva_on.reg

Intervideo_Decoder_4_Hwmc_on.reg

Those of you that want to use SageTV or Snapstream with a different intervideo codec (eg the one that comes with windvd5) need to manually change the registry setting. I’m not really sure wich key all the different versions use but here are a couple of locations where you can find them. I never got around to test it since I don’t own windvd5 so just try it yourself.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\InterVideo\DVD5], [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\InterVideo\Common\Video Dec], [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\Vide oDec], [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\DVD5]
__________________________________________________ __

You can also try setting up these custom quality settings. I use them and they work very well. Course I don't have a HD TV yet, and I stress YET but one day soon Also in that post if i recall is how to adjust your sharpness value via the registry, basically its just a search in your registry for sharpnessvalue and the max value is 7.

http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...highlight=sage

Hope this helps.

Try a search for "Choppy Live" in the help forums, there is alot of great info in those threads that might be more specific to your system.

[crush157]

I agree with cmasters on this one. As long as it is software decoding, you get that soft look to the pic. When using a device such as the MediaMVP with a hardware decoder, the same file looks much sharper. But, it still has dependencies on how you choose your encoder settings as well.

Gotta make a decision on if it fits your bill or not. [adaptation of cmasters line of thought.]

[MonsterHTPC]

Don't settle on this at all of course quality is relative to your opinion; however, with that hauppauge card and a decent vid card, which the MX should be sufficient, you should be able to tweak the vid quality to as good as or better than your cable box, or TV's internal tuner. Won't take long, just one evening a few hours and its well worth it.

A few things:
Since you mention watching a movie, I assume you are using your HTPC for DVD movies, and PVR functionality like most of us. Try adjusting your TV's contrast, brightness settings back to default, and using any sync options to see if it helps. Then adjust the contrast, brightness etc within each program, IE BTV and your DVD player. Which DVD player software do you use? DVD wise you should get really good quality as this doesn't have anything to do with the hauppauge card.

If you need a hand tweaking it let me know and I can give you my IM and help you out if I can.

[_Shorty]

go to www.snapstream.com and email tech support saying you'd like them to fix interlaced output, and your tickers, sports, everything, will look exactly as it is supposed to. That is the problem, BTV's playback of interlaced material doesn't work correctly, and playing it back deinterlaced is the cause of other artifacts. As I've stated in other threads, load up NVDVD or WinDVD and playback one of the tv recordings in it with it set for interlaced output and you will see that it looks as you think it should. It's just BTV that's broken.

Originally posted by Ellerbestyle
Well I am really picky about the quality of the tv image and have been tweaking it for a long time to try to get it better. I have gotten it looking good except for when ticker tapes go across the tv. I have read every thing on this forum about quality and wish I knew so I could be completely happy and others would be happy also. I used to have the border problem but a new vid card has fixed that, so I am getting close to being happy.

I wish someone could figure it out lol.

[cmasters]

Can anyone else confirm that they can get the interlaced video to play back properly with an application other than BTV? I have tried PowerDVD, Elecard player, and SageTV and all have the same problems as BTV. Shorty has tried two I don't have access to easily. I may try a trial this weekend to see.

Also, Sage lets me switch between VMR9 and Overlay and I can confirm that simply using Overlay does not help this.

[_Shorty]

download the nvdvd trial http://www.nvidia.com/page/nvdvd_downloadtrial.html
setting deinterlacing to 'film' is how you set it for interlaced output.

edit - and yes, at least two other people come to mind from the other threads that have verified this behaviour with other applications.

[pkdrive]

I am definitely getting same behavior.

Replay is as perfect as I would expect with NVDVD app, windows media, mediamvp.

With Beyond using NVDVD decoder the picture is clearly inferior(trying all interlacing options - selecting hardware interlacing gives me best performance).