WINTV PVR 150 MCE bad results

[PhillJones]

Whenever I record something from a channel that I can't get over firewire, the results are really poor.

I have a PVR-150 MCE and it's connected to the cable box with an S-video connection. Every twenty to thirty seconds, I get a strange ghost image overlay.

I've done some investigating and found that it's not sage specific the same thing happens if I play the recording back in zoom player. But if I use media player classic, which has it's own filters and codecs, it doesn't happen.

Weidly, this deosn't happen for recordings made over firewire.

I'm using th nVidia decoders. According to the little icon at the bottom of the screen it's version 04.02-150 and it's the OEM version.

[Wheemer]

try upgrading to the latest purevideo decoder

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

try upgrading to the latest purevideo decoder

Even if it works fine for playing back content recorded over firewire?

I tried upgrading the decoder some time back and everything quit working so I rolled back again.

[dblaine2]

Well I guess you answered most of my questions from the other post

Sounds like you may want to try TVtool.

http://tvtool.info/go.htm?http://tvt...download_e.htm

Also I set my Aspect Ratio to 95% for both horizontal and vertical stretch otherwise my SDTV screen appeared to wrap around itself - giving a overlapped image.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

try upgrading to the latest purevideo decoder

I tried that and it didn't help but the new version at least worked so I'm up to date with the decoder if nothing else.

I also updated the graphics drivers but the issue still persists.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by dblaine2

Well I guess you answered most of my questions from the other post

Sounds like you may want to try TVtool.

http://tvtool.info/go.htm?http://tvt...download_e.htm

Also I set my Aspect Ratio to 95% for both horizontal and vertical stretch otherwise my SDTV screen appeared to wrap around itself - giving a overlapped image.

I'm not sure how this will help.

[mayamaniac]

What about playback in WMP or VLC or any other software DVD players? Does it still show ghosting?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

Whenever I record something from a channel that I can't get over firewire, the results are really poor.

I have a PVR-150 MCE and it's connected to the cable box with an S-video connection.

Try getting yourself a better s-video cable. And it doesn't matter that it worked before with your TV. Get a better cable.

Gerry

[PhillJones]

To answer both questions.

The files looks fine if I play it back in media player classic, so it can't be a problem with the S-video cable.

On the other hand, this is contradictory as it also looks fine if I record the mpg from the firewire stream so it can't be an issue with the playback either.

The s-video cable is shielded and gold plated and cost me $50.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that the PVR card is messing up the encoding in such a way as to confuse the nVIDIA codec, maybe it's screwing up the de-interlacing flags. Perhaps I should update the drivers on the PVR card.

[PhillJones]

I'm not sure which driver to use. I'm using XP MCE but not using MC owing to lacking a few key features.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_mce.html

I think I should download the top one, which says it's for MCE editions of all the cards. I don't know if that means it's got extra software for MCE that I don't want or if the hardware of the MCE version of the cards is slightly different. Oddly, they have no driver update application so I guess I'll have to unistall and reinstall the card?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

I'm not sure which driver to use. I'm using XP MCE but not using MC owing to lacking a few key features.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_mce.html

I think I should download the top one, which says it's for MCE editions of all the cards. I don't know if that means it's got extra software for MCE that I don't want or if the hardware of the MCE version of the cards is slightly different. Oddly, they have no driver update application so I guess I'll have to unistall and reinstall the card?

Make sure to run hwclear to clean out all the settings. The MCE drivers are for the MCE version of the PVR card. It's not referring to the OS. And just because you spent $50 doesn't mean it can't be bad. Have you used it anywhere else lately?

Gerry

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Make sure to run hwclear to clean out all the settings. The MCE drivers are for the MCE version of the PVR card. It's not referring to the OS. And just because you spent $50 doesn't mean it can't be bad. Have you used it anywhere else lately?

Gerry

I connected my laptop to my TV with it a while back. worked fine then.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Make sure to run hwclear to clean out all the settings. The MCE drivers are for the MCE version of the PVR card. It's not referring to the OS. And just because you spent $50 doesn't mean it can't be bad. Have you used it anywhere else lately?

Gerry

What's hwclear?

[Narflex]

If you're getting a VERY different quality in the image in WMP vs. what you see in SageTV then you're using different codecs in each of them. When you're playing the file in WMP, go to File->Properties and see what Audio & Video codec its using. Then setup SageTV to use the same ones. You just have something misconfigured.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by Narflex

If you're getting a VERY different quality in the image in WMP vs. what you see in SageTV then you're using different codecs in each of them. When you're playing the file in WMP, go to File->Properties and see what Audio & Video codec its using. Then setup SageTV to use the same ones. You just have something misconfigured.

Maybe I wrote it down wrong. It looks different between Media player classic and sage. Media Player classic has it's own internal codecs.

I can't use media player classic's codecs because it only works for SD playback. HD content stutters and skips which I imagine is due to my processor not being fast enough. Both sage and WMP use the nVIDIA codec. I know that they are because it's the only codec that'll play back HD, owing to the hardware acceleration I guess.

I set the nVIDIA codec to auto de-interlace rather than smart. I think it may have stopped this from happening. I'll have to watch some TV for a while and and see if it's cured.

[blade]

Originally Posted by PhillJones

I set the nVIDIA codec to auto de-interlace rather than smart. I think it may have stopped this from happening. I'll have to watch some TV for a while and and see if it's cured.

There is a known problem with the Nvidia decoder and the smart setting.

[PhillJones]

Originally Posted by blade

There is a known problem with the Nvidia decoder and the smart setting.

A-Ha!

Maybe that's the problem. Annoying that nVIDIA set the default to smart when there's something wrong with the smart setting.