HD Capture card advise sought

[blade]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

I'm less concerned with the relative size of the display than Blade because I assume the viewing distance will be greater for a larger screen. You might sit 2 feet from a 19" monitor and 10-12 feet from a 60" HDTV. The noticability of any imperfections will be counterbalanced by the distance between your eye and the screen.

I agree if the distance actually changes. I just know some people will get close to the screen to scrutinize the image or they replace an existing SD tv with a newer HD set and either can't rearrange the furniture to provide the same viewing distance, don't want to, or the wife won't let them.

I know when I replaced the 32" SD in my den with a 57" HD there was no way I could reasonably adjust the viewing distance due to furniture and the layout of the room. So I never take for granted people are comparing from the same distance ratio.

I guess I should say that I don't doubt some people have horrible looking SD on their HD sets, but I don't believe everyone should just chalk it up to the "fact" that SD is just going to be unwatchable. By his posts I take stanger for someone who expects very good quality and he finds it acceptable. After much tweaking I've been very happy with my setup and I know many others find the quality of their setups acceptable as well.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

For those who are disappointed viewing SageTV on their HD sets, how are you connecting the HD TV? if the answer is anything but DVI or HDMI you are not giving the TV a chance.

Don't forget Component, and VGA/RGBHV, those are both perfectly adequate, and high quality connections. Though yes, if you're using S-Video or Composite, you're unnecessarilly handicapping yourself.

The quality on your TV should be as good or better than the quality on your monitor. I'm less concerned with the relative size of the display than Blade because I assume the viewing distance will be greater for a larger screen. You might sit 2 feet from a 19" monitor and 10-12 feet from a 60" HDTV. The noticability of any imperfections will be counterbalanced by the distance between your eye and the screen.

True, those are really the two things that are really the "problem" when somebody first gets an HDTV, not that the TV is doing SD worse, just the larger screen (closer viewing ratio) and increased resolving ability of the HDTV allow us to see defects that were hidden with a smaller, less precise display.

In my experience, Sage does an excellent job of upscaling the picture and, since I am very sensitive to flicker, I love the fact that the picture is flicker free.

Agreed, I have a 36" HD ready that doesn't upconvert SD, it displays it natively at 480i. When I was using it as my primary display, I ran my HTPC at 1280x1024i (1080i timings, but it's a 4:3 tube). I much preferred the HTPC "upconverted" image to the native 480i image.

That said, I also understand where many are coming from, SD often does "look better" on a smaller SD set, than a large HD set.

I think what really needs to be done for most people is twofold:

1) Eliminate any deficiencies that you might have been unaware of, these include the usual: Make sure the cable run is as direct as possible, calibrate capture settings, calibrate display, etc.

2) Get used to what SD really looks like. I think this really is a large part of it. I'd venture that my SD isn't much/any better than most here, but I don't expect a lot out of it.

For my own setup....

For mine, now that I have my camera back I hope to post to the My setup thread, but for here, and for reference to what I look at:

Display:
IN76 1280x720 FP
Panamorph P752 Anamorphic lens
110x46" Acoustically Transparent ("SMX 720") screen.
HTPC:
Geforce 6800 (passive) DVI-HDMI to the IN76
nVidia decoders

I sit at about 1.4-1.5 (moved the seats so I'm not sure exactly) screen widths, or for a 2.35:1 presentation, slightly better (closer) than the THX recommended 37 degree viewing angle.

I'm perfectly happy with my SD and HD picture quality. SD is quite acceptable, though nothing to write home about. DVDs are great, on par with the bottom end of HD. HD is well, it vaires as with anything. And HD DVD (via my 360 now, but hopefully my HTPC before too long) is just the icing on the cake

[jmiddleton]

I tried the VGA port on 3 televisions last winter when I was shopping. All 3 were good brands - LG, Samsung and Sony. In each case, switching to DVI made a dramatic improvement in picture quality. I haven't tried component - video cards supporting that format are rare - but I suspect that end-to-end digital will always deliver the best picture quality.

I also tried several different technologies before choosing DLP for my monitor. Other technologies may be as good or better for TV but DLP worked the best for normal computer use - the fact that it was the least expensive and immune to screen burn was icing on the cake.

I can move to about 6 feet from the screen with no subjective loss of picture quality. I've been closer if I'm ripping or burning a CD/DVD or copying files to my USB flash drive and the screen is readable, if somewhat overwhelming, at 2 feet. I've never watched TV at that range. I can't imagine that it would be an enjoyable experience even with HD content.

Quality varies quite a bit dependng on the channel. The movie network (Canada's answer to HBO) is much higher quality than the weather network. Subjectively, my Sage recordings from the movie network look as good as a DVD. They suffer from the 4x3 formatting but the picture itself looks great. Letterbox can be a little frustrating, it wastes so much screen space. I know some of the newer TV's have a zoom or "big picture" feature that can expand letterbox to full screen without distortion (at least that's what the ads say). It would be nice if Sage could add a feature like that.

[blade]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

I haven't tried component - video cards supporting that format are rare

It is not rare. All the Nvidia 6xxx, 7xxx, 8xxx cards support component out and many (maybe all?) newer ati cards do as well.

I know some of the newer TV's have a zoom or "big picture" feature that can expand letterbox to full screen without distortion (at least that's what the ads say). It would be nice if Sage could add a feature like that.

Sage can already do this. It is not automatic, but all you do is setup one of the aspect ratios to zoom the picture to fill the screen while maintaining proper aspect ratio. If you use the aspect ratio switcher you can specifiy which aspect ratio to use for each show so that it automatically zooms letterboxed favorites so they fill the screen.

[jmiddleton]

It is not rare. All the Nvidia 6xxx, 7xxx, 8xxx cards support component out and many (maybe all?) newer ati cards do as well

Hmmmmm... I just looked through the cable kit that came with the Radeon X1600GT I bought with the TV last winter and - lo and behold - they did include a s-video to component adapter. I'm not tempted to try it and do recommend a digital DVI/HDMI connection if your hardware permits .

Sage can already do this. It is not automatic

I've been suffering needlessly all this time! Thanks

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by blade

I've said this many times yet no one ever listens. I'm talking about comparing SD and HD sets of the same or similar size. You're comparing SD on a 27" set to a 60" HD. Of course all the defects in the SD signal are going to be much more obvious on the larger display. Try comparing your 60" HD set to a 60" SD. Or your 27" SD to a 27" HD and you'll get a much more meaningful comparision.

SD has plenty of imperfections and the larger the screen the easier they'll be to spot. If the differences you notice are due to the difference in screen size it doesn't prove your SDTV is handling SD content better than the larger HDTV because you're comparing apples and oranges.

My HD set does nothing for standard digital cable signal. HD upscaling on SD broadcast is pittiful. I'm not talking about defect magnification due to screen size. DVDs however look great on the HD set. HD shines when given an HD signal. That's why its taken so long to catch on since only recently there has been significant HD content.

My particular HD set may be much worse than yours in handling SD signal.

I am using a DVI connection from HTPC to the HDTV. I've tried various resolutions on the HTPC and there are still noticable digital artifacts on the HDTV whereas on my SDTV there are none. I am 12 ft from the HDTV versus 4 ft from the SDTV to compensate for the different screen sizes.

Sadly my primary display IS my 27" set and my 60" set is a giant paperweight! (except for occasional DVD viewing)

[teknubic]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

they did include a s-video to component adapter.

That's almost certainly not s-video. It sortof looks like it but it's not. I use it on my 6600GT and like it just fine.

[blade]

Originally Posted by roxy99

HD upscaling on SD broadcast is pittiful. I'm not talking about defect magnification due to screen size. DVDs however look great on the HD set.

I've heard some HDTVs are bad at scaling. I've never had a problem with my 55" Mitsubishi or 57" Hitachi though. If your HTPC is doing the scaling and you have a decent setup then scaling shouldn't really be a problem. At least the TV's scaling isn't to blame.

I am using a DVI connection from HTPC to the HDTV. I've tried various resolutions on the HTPC and there are still noticable digital artifacts on the HDTV whereas on my SDTV there are none.

The only time I've ever noticed digital artifacts is when my recording quality was turned too low. I assume you're running the HTPC at the HDTV's native resolution?

Sadly my primary display IS my 27" set and my 60" set is a giant paperweight! (except for occasional DVD viewing)

If my primary was a 27" I think I would have to stop watching TV. I grew up on a 27", but have gotten spoiled with larger displays now and can never go back.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by roxy99

I've tried various resolutions on the HTPC and there are still noticable digital artifacts on the HDTV whereas on my SDTV there are none. I am 12 ft from the HDTV versus 4 ft from the SDTV to compensate for the different screen sizes.

If I were a betting man, I'd bet you $100 that the artifacts are there on the SDTV, but that due to the way those work, you can't see them.

Again, scaling doesn't introduce noise, blockyness, or anything like that, if you see those artifacts they're in the source. It's just that an HDTV can resolve so much more detail (and is usually a larger size) that they've more easilly viewable.

[roxy99]

Thanks to Stanger and blade, I did some more experimentation.

Blade: "HTPC not outputing to native resolution of the the HDTV"

Go me thinking. My Hitachi does not natively support 720p but it does 480p 1080i.

When I set me resolution on my Nvidia to 1080i, I get weird video synch issues. So I don't know why. All along, I have been using the HTPC with 1280 x 720p, underscanned to 1152 x 648. But my HDTV recognizes the signal as a 1080i signal and must be scaling it.

The only way so far I have been able to get my HDTV to get a native signal is if I use 853 x 480. This way, the HDTV recognizes the signal as a 480p source so my HTPC does all the work.

I haven't done extensive tests to see if that's better or not. It was getting late.

Ideally, I'd like to get 1080i to work properly. Does the DVI out do 1080i or only 1080p? For sure 1080p is not supported by my HDTV.

[blade]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Go me thinking. My Hitachi does not natively support 720p but it does 480p 1080i.

When we talk about native resolution we're talking about the actual resolution of the display. You only have one native resolution. For example my Mitsubishi accepts 480i/p, or 1080i. Any 480i/p signal the TV recieves is scaled up to 1080i. One of the benefits of a HTPC is that they can typically scale to the native resolution better than the TV's built in scaler.

Ideally, I'd like to get 1080i to work properly. Does the DVI out do 1080i or only 1080p? For sure 1080p is not supported by my HDTV.

Yes, 1080i works just fine from DVI.


What model is your TV?

[jmiddleton]

Sounds like your Hitachi is a CRT projection model. DVD's look because the progressive scan player is sending the signal in the natively supported 480p format. Are you sure your video card properly supports 1080i? Remember that the i means interlaced so the card setting will be 1920x1080x30Hz refresh. 60Hz refresh would be 1080p which may explain your sync problems.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by blade

When we talk about native resolution we're talking about the actual resolution of the display. You only have one native resolution. For example my Mitsubishi accepts 480i/p, or 1080i. Any 480i/p signal the TV recieves is scaled up to 1080i. One of the benefits of a HTPC is that they can typically scale to the native resolution better than the TV's built in scaler.



Yes, 1080i works just fine from DVI.


What model is your TV?

Its this one http://reviews.cnet.com/Hitachi_46F5...-21225804.html

Hitachi 46F500 (I thought it was 60 inches, been so ling since I watched it I forgot LOL).

When I experimented last night, 1080i output from my HTPC (Nvidia Ti4200- DVI out) . The TV gets the jitters. I am using 2 monitor setup. A simple 15" CRT is my maintenance teriminal along with my HTPC. All the wires pass through a wall to my home theater.

So in Nvidia twin setup, I set the CRT as a clone of the HDTV. I use 1024x768 for the crt (its maximum supported resolution) and I try to set a different resolution for the HDTV, such as 1080i. Nvidia doesn't seem to let me set a different resolution.

EDIT: Maybe if I just leave the mainenance monitor unpluged and set everything to 1080i. I can always boot XP in VGA mode with the 15" monitor for trouble shooting and maintence issues.

[jmiddleton]

Open control panel, display poperties, settings tab, advanced. Choose the adapter tab and click List all Modes. If your video card is capable of displaying 1080i you will see:

1920 by 1080, True Color (32 bit), 30 Hertz (Interlaced)

Your 15" monitor cannot display this resolution so don't clone the display or you will be limited to the maximum the 15" monitor can support.

If you feed your TV a signal it likes I predict it will reward you with a much higher quality display.

[roxy99]

I'll try that. However my HTPC is in another room from the 46" Hitachi. That's why I need the dual monitor. I need the 15" in clone mode to tweak everything. Then the last thing I will do is set the resolution to 1920x1080, clone mode. The 15" will go all weird at which point I turn it off and unplug it. Reboot only with HDTV in 1920 x1080 in all its glory.

If that doesn't work, then I'll get an extension wire for my mouse and keybroard to pass through the hole in my wall and play on the other end with only the HDTV as the sole display.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[jmiddleton]

Consider a Gyration keyboard and mouse. It's more expensive and the gyro ouse takes a little practice but the range is roughly 30 feet and you don't need a flat surface for the mouse. I've had one for a couple of years and love it.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by jmiddleton

Sounds like your Hitachi is a CRT projection model. DVD's look because the progressive scan player is sending the signal in the natively supported 480p format. Are you sure your video card properly supports 1080i? Remember that the i means interlaced so the card setting will be 1920x1080x30Hz refresh. 60Hz refresh would be 1080p which may explain your sync problems.

Maybe I picked the wrong one. Good thing I did'nt damage the RPTV. I'm pretty sure Ti4200 supports 1920x1080i using recent Nvidia drivers.

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by roxy99

Maybe I picked the wrong one. Good thing I did'nt damage the RPTV. I'm pretty sure Ti4200 supports 1920x1080i using recent Nvidia drivers.

First of all, let me appoligize for digressing from the topic of HD Capture card in the thread title (Oh well, I started the thread so I guess I'm allowed).

A couple of experiments tried:

1920x1080i is 60hz on the Nvidia panel. I think the 60hz already takes that into account. It is a HDTV preset for the Nvidia so I assume its valid. That worked out better. Initially, I had tearing and strange lines on the screen. I unplugged the 15" monitor at set the card to 'single monitor'. So it seems that 2 monitors created interference in the signal.

As it turns out, 1080i looks better than before. I'd even venture to say it looks better than direct connection of the SD tuner to the HDTV. It would appear that the HTPC scaling the 640x480i mpeg2 stream up to 1080i is preferable to sending only a 480i signal and forcing the HDTV to virtualize to 1080i (scale up). But you already knew that and I just discovered it for myself.

The problem is that the Ti4200 struggles to not skip frames. As well, the windows desktop is not legible at 1920x1080i. High flicker also makes me think that its bad for the HDTV. I backed the resolution to a standard non-interlaced 1280 x 720p (60hz). No more frame drops and less flicker.

It still doesn't look like HDTV but at least its watchable. Maybe the artifacts are present on the 27" SDTV (CRT) as well but less noticable because of the smaller screen, even accounting for viewing distance.

DVDs at 480p scaled to 1080i still look much better than satilite non HD even with the HTPC doing the scaling. I think satelite tv broadcasters are skimping on bandwidth for the non-HD channels. SDTV 480i has the potential to look a lot better than it does.

I worry about when SDTV is gone and whether we can have Sage TV operate in an unlimited manner on HD. The stupid encryption screws up the plans though

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by roxy99

The problem is that the Ti4200 struggles to not skip frames.

That doesn't surprise me, the Ti4200 has no hardware accelleration at all (I believe). A Geforce 6 or 7 series would be a big improvment over that.

As well, the windows desktop is not legible at 1920x1080i. High flicker also makes me think that its bad for the HDTV.

No, that's normal, most HDTVs can't fully resolve 1080i, and beyond that, the interlacing naturally degrades the picture, especially with single-pixel scale stuff like windows fonts.

I backed the resolution to a standard non-interlaced 1280 x 720p (60hz). No more frame drops and less flicker.

Since 720p pixels are "larger" than 1080i, the interlacing is much less noticeable.

DVDs at 480p scaled to 1080i still look much better than satilite non HD even with the HTPC doing the scaling. I think satelite tv broadcasters are skimping on bandwidth for the non-HD channels.

They are, satellite HD (as well as Digital cable) is usually 480x480i or 544x480i, with bitrates in the 1-3Mbps range. Compare to DVD which is 720x480p and 6-8Mbps usually.

SDTV 480i has the potential to look a lot better than it does.

True.

I worry about when SDTV is gone and whether we can have Sage TV operate in an unlimited manner on HD.

SD isn't going anywhere for LONG time (if ever). There will be SD outputs on cable/sat boxen for the forseable future. Just because broadcasters get to stop broadcasting NTSC, doesn't mean SD will suddenly be gone. There's way too much SD-only content, and way too much SD-only hardware installed base.

[roxy99]

I am pretty sure the Ti4200 is accelerated, at least in direct 3d (thats for sure). Also my PC is 512ram only, which doesn't help.

I will definately upgrade the ram. I'll keep the Ti4200 and continue with 720p. Based on my preliminary tests, and your confirmation of the fact that SD broadcasters are only 1-3Mbps, I can conclude that the bottleneck is low video bitrate. 720p vs 1080i cannot magically make a difference in PQ if the input signal is lower. I am pretty satisfied for now.

Thanks for all the help .