Capture Device and SageTV question

[TechBill]

I use Satellite reciever to record my show from shows and right now I have it connect to a PVR-500 and the picture quality is ok.

But my brother a film director and video editor offer to loan me an analog to digital capture device which will save it to DV25 and I wonder if SageTV can use something like this? He said the picture quality from it is very sharp as it can get coming from analog and think will be better than PVR 500.

He have have driver for windows xp but I wasn't sure if SageTV have a way to use video coming from capture devices that not a tuner card.

Thanks
Bill

[Conejo]

What type of Satellite receiver do you have? Is it a US Dish company or a DVB-T/C?

How do you have it connected to your PVR-500 now (RF, composite, s-video)? The PVR-500 can do s-video to give you a cleaner SD (Standard Definition) recording. But for a really clean source most people want a direct DIGITAL output from the Satellite Box (Firewire, USB with an R5000 mod).

A DV25 output is compressed 5:1 and ideally we want 25:1 (like MPEG-2) or better for storage and playback. That conversion would have to be done in software real-time. Not ideal.

[TechBill]

It a DirecTV D11 SDTV box and right now I have it connect via composite cable to the PVR-500 but when I connect it directly to the TV it does look crispy in color while via PVR-500 the picture is ok but the color look more duller or fading.

So I wanted to try a capture box that my brother will loan me and it have a compoment / s-video / composite with RCA audio jack in to firewire out to PC.


Bill

[TechBill]

Never mind I just refined my search some more chaning keywords and found several post about the capture box I was going to try but learned the limitation of that capture box so I won't be using it.

I'll just try to see about tweaking PVR-500 some more.

Bill

[Conejo]

Originally Posted by TechBill

It a DirecTV D11 SDTV box and right now I have it connect via composite cable to the PVR-500 but when I connect it directly to the TV it does look crispy in color while via PVR-500 the picture is ok but the color look more duller or fading.

Does your D11 have an s-video out that you can connect to the PVR-500? That would give you a better SD signal. You can also do 'Color Calibration' from within SageTV, under SETUP Video Sources, then selecting the device.

Several people on the forum have said that the newer HVR-1600 and HVR-1800 cards do a fantastic job of grabbing s-video and rendering a clean, clear picture.

[ke6guj]

Bill, have you tried to play any DVDs or imported videos? Do you get perfect color then? If you do, then the video card is calibrated, and you need to calibrate the 500, If not, then try to calibrate the video card first.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

Bill, have you tried to play any DVDs or imported videos? Do you get perfect color then? If you do, then the video card is calibrated, and you need to calibrate the 500, If not, then try to calibrate the video card first.

Your right it was the video card having too much gamma washing out the colors.

So now the picture and color looks good. Still could be sharper but I already knew PVR-500 had some weakness in this area before buying it when I research on it.

I will try s-video to see if I can improve it some more next when I get my hand on some s-video cables.

Thanks everyone for all your replies and suggestions!
Bill

[Conejo]

Jack, sometimes it's actually worth it to have you on this forum.

[ke6guj]

Why do I feel slightly insulted by that compliment