S-Video Out issues

[karnal]

Hello all! Recently purchased the PVR-500 + Sage + IR bundle from here, and let me tell you, I'm pretty satisfied....

Have had a few glitches along the way, but the one that I'm most concerned with is this...

Playing back a cartoon (SouthPark, Family Guy, American Dad etc) gives me fits of nausea. It appears on the TV as if the SVideo out is just taking the "even" lines and doubling them, instead of displaying all of the lines... When I watch the encoded videos on another PC, it looks fine (other than the interlacing effects.... which I wouldn't get on the TV anyways, since it's interlaced to begin with...)

Basically, things like Cartman's head - near the top and bottom of the circle, it gets pretty jaggy, like it's only putting out 1/2 res. This is regardless of the output setting of the SVideo - 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768.

Does anyone have a recommendation on what to do? I'm not against buying another video card, if there is one out there that will eliminate this issue. I've used a TI4200 (EVGA) and a Diamond Stealth Radeon 7000 (currently in machine; fanless....)

I'm going to test with a 6600GT this evening (in my main gamer box)... we'll see what I find then; but if anyone has suggestions on a good card...

Would Descaler assist in this situation? I'm going to attempt that as well, although I wouldn't think on a TV you'd need to use it...?

[nielm]

it looks fine (other than the interlacing effects.... which I wouldn't get on the TV anyways, since it's interlaced to begin with...)

With most video card's tv-out, you will get interlacing artifacts. This is because the video card does not do any scanline match the video being played with the tv...

So what you get is interlaced video, deinterlaced to display onto the progressive windows desktop, which is then rescaled, smoothed (aka flicker filter: to avoid interlacing flicker when displaying the desktop), and reinterlaced for the tv-out... basically, it sucks!

[karnal]

So... does this mean I'm SOL when using SVideo on a consumer card?

Was thinking of dropping some money on a PVR-350, even though I don't need the encode abillities... if that would assist in resolving the issue. I'm also going to try it on other TVs in the house - but I don't think it's a TV problem, otherwise my DVDs would look like total crap on the tube as well (from a standalone DVD player.)

[nielm]

My main system is using svideo-out of a low-end Nvidia fx5200, so it can be made to look reasonable. Probably never as good as a real dvd player, unless you use dongles to create component out from vga...

what helps is to have good deinterlacing to the desktop (I use my plugin to enable dscaler with the sage mpeg2 decoder), and then tweaking the video out settings of the graphics card (especially to reduce the flicker filter)...

[karnal]

I think I have tweaked the settings to a "good enough" state now. I did the Sage MPEG2 encode/DScaler activation, and that seems to have helped some.

As well, I did some comparison shots - watch the VCR tune for 5 secs, switch over to the Sagebox... damn. The sage box looks 10 times better than the tuner in the Sony VCR we have been using for 3+ years. The Sony is grainy and full of noise...

That PVR500 is a damn fine card, if I do say so myself. Might have to pick up a 150 to put in the box so we can tune with it, and have the 500 just do recordings!!!

Seriously though, even though I had to pay for this software, this application definitely rocks!!!

[snoopy]

I am using the same Hauppauge PVR 500 dual tuner card. I can't get the SVideo cable to output anything at all on the TV. What do I need to do. I am running an antenna in (for testing) and a long 50' Svideo cable out. Video on computer is good but video on TV is not happening at all. What gives?

[nielm]

snoopy: the svideo cable needs to be connected to your graphics card, not the pvr-500, and the svideo out needs to be enabled in the graphics cards control panel applet (desktop poroperties/serttings/advanced)

[snoopy]

oh... LOL old brainless tivo hacker here. sorry. Will try to learn more before asking too many stupid questions. Thanks Neilm for the advice.