PVR 150 Capture Quality...

[Rezolution]

I was going back and forth between a TiVo and a Hometheater PC for months and I finally decided to go the SageTV route. I am really starting to wonder if that was the right decision...

So far, I have spent $200 on the HD Turner bundle that sage TV sells with the a180 card, the license for sagetv and the streamzap remote.

After recieving the bundle, i noticed that the HD reciever is not "downwards compatible" to get analog signals off of cable and I am so far away from the HD signals that i cant pick them up. Also, it doesn't pick up the HD through my cable signal like my mitsubishi tuner does...so there is like (at least $90 down the drain).

Then I had to pick a card for analog channels. After reading about 6 pages of posts on this forum, i finally decided to go with the PVR150 from HopHog. From what i read, it seemed like the 150 came out AFTER the 250 and 350. Most people gave a good review of it so I figured for ANOTHER $100, why not give it a shot. From what I understand, people who have Tivo cannot tell the difference between the original broadcast and recorded Tivo. If you look at the quality of "regular tv" and the pq of my PVR 150 tuner card, they are DRASTICALLY different. The picture quality of the PVR 150 is very pixelated and jagged.

I see that there are "hidden registry settings" you can dick around with, will the PQ get better if i mess with the "sharpness setting"? I also have the sagetv software set to "standard DVD" quality which is like 3 gigs an hour. I had a 100 gig free on my PC but that wasn't enough and my drive is already filled so i actaully dropped another $90 on a refurbed 300gig serial ATA drive.

So far I have spent $400 for (from what Ive been told by people that have a tivo) a substandard TiVo...

Does anyone else that has seen a Tivo and a HopHog pvr 150 have a comment they would like to make about the difference in PQ and if there is anything you can do to get rid of the pixelation and jaggedness of the image. I would blame it on MPG2, but DVDs look great, so I'm not blaming it on the format... I really don't knwo what to think. I can't imagine that hophog would make the settings that crappy right out of the box and then have you have to adjust hidden registry settings to get it to work right (that wouldnt make any sense). Could it be the codec im using or something?

I have an older capture card with software compress that looks a million times better (hophog wintv fm). I really don't know what's up with the PQ but I'm not happy !?

[Fluffdaddy]

Hope you get some help with your PQ ???.

I have the 250 and is very happy with my SD PQ.
I have a lot more then 400 bucks in my home sage system Ram, good vid cards and 3rd party encoders. If cash is short Tivo or your local cable dvr is the way to go..imo

[SHS]

pixelation is usly cause by low of bit but is some case it can be cause by the Source it self all ready having the pixelation but pettey every hardware card some make more Visible.
jaggedness of the image can because by a number, What your system spec as in list hardware in your system Video card and what MPEG decoder are you using.

[cslatt]

I have a 150 also and if I leave the default recording quality set to the default, I see graininess as well. I bumped my default recording quality up to DVD Long Play and now it looks great to me. YMMV. Remember you won't see a difference in shows that were recorded at the default quality, only newly recorded show after you made the change will look better.

[tbonessc]

I had a similar problem with both of my pvr-150's. They were unwatchable out of the box with the latest drivers on Hauppauge's webite.
I now have my default recording quality @ the 3.2 GB/hr
In the Dynamic Niose Reduction I turned the Median Filter off, and set the Spatial to 1 and Temporal to 4. Those setting looked pretty comperable to my TiVo @ Best quality. The picture is a bit softer, different but not worse.
I used the drivers from SHS's site (2.0.24.2305).
I may try some newer ones, when I get a chance because every now and the I see a little flicker. I assume it's the encoding because DVD's look great with no issues.
This is on a Nvidia 6150 w/ PureVideo on regular cable (no box).

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by tbonessc

I had a similar problem with both of my pvr-150's. They were unwatchable out of the box with the latest drivers on Hauppauge's webite.
I now have my default recording quality @ the 3.2 GB/hr
In the Dynamic Niose Reduction I turned the Median Filter off, and set the Spatial to 1 and Temporal to 4. Those setting looked pretty comperable to my TiVo @ Best quality. The picture is a bit softer, different but not worse.
I used the drivers from SHS's site (2.0.24.2305).
I may try some newer ones, when I get a chance because every now and the I see a little flicker. I assume it's the encoding because DVD's look great with no issues.
This is on a Nvidia 6150 w/ PureVideo on regular cable (no box).

I also have the quality set to 3.2GB/hr. I am running the latest drivers from Hauppauge. Wow, I had no idea there were "dynamic noise ruduction settings and the like". Where do you go to change that? In the SageTV menu or The WinTV2000 Menu?? Also, has anyone messed with that sharpness setting in the registry on a 150? When you say you used drivers from SHS's website, what is SHS and do you mean they are replacement drivers for the Hauppauge 150 card?

My system is a Prescott Pentium 4, 3GHZ with 1 gig of Corsair Ram, 200 Gig Seagate Serial ATA, soon to be adding 300 Gig Maxtor Serial ATA, 16x NEC DVD DL Burner, Windows XP Professional, Nvidia G-Force 6600 with 256MB video ram, with an ECS motherboard and a 450Watt Power Supply.

I am not sure what encoder I am using, whatever the SageTV defaulted to... Is there one that i specifically should be using or is it just preference? I was under the impression that SageTV installed the one I was supposed to use. Also, once you set the one for encoding, does it set that same one for playback, or is that set somewhere else? It is even blurry, jagged, and pixelated if I play the mpg file back on another PC in Windows Media Player...

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by Rezolution

I really don't know what's up with the PQ but I'm not happy !?

Does your graphic card have any flicker reduction setting active ? It made a hell of a difference on my PVR 150 when I turned it down (windows desktop now flickers a little on the TV, but video is much sharper).


Dirk

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Does your graphic card have any flicker reduction setting active ? It made a hell of a difference on my PVR 150 when I turned it down (windows desktop now flickers a little on the TV, but video is much sharper).


Dirk

See, it's not just my graphics card on playback of recorded files. It looks bad on any pc we play it back on. That would be, my pc in the basement, my pc in the bedroom and both my and my wifes laptop. There is something wrong with either the encoder or the capture card settings somwhere. If I have time, I will take a screen grab of any station that has it's logo up. If you look at the logo (as an example) it looks bad and is totally jaggy.

[Alfiegerner]

I've just posted about this in another thread. After a bit of a struggle I'm now happy with my 150 mainly due to using a third party tweak tool.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...63&postcount=3

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

I've just posted about this in another thread. After a bit of a struggle I'm now happy with my 150 mainly due to using a third party tweak tool.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...63&postcount=3

That's really sad that we have to use third party tweak tools. Why would a company release a tuner card that has the pictures softened to hell as defaults with no way for the end user to adust them in their own software?

I will try it and see if it causes my pickyness to go away...

[Rezolution]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Does your graphic card have any flicker reduction setting active ? It made a hell of a difference on my PVR 150 when I turned it down (windows desktop now flickers a little on the TV, but video is much sharper).


Dirk

No, I'm going into a 52" DLP via the VGA port. But it don't just look crappy on that TV, it looks crappy any where that I view what I recorded.