Starting point for settings/configuration for my setup? (6800GT video)

[Brent94Z]

Hello!

I've been reading here off and on in the forums for quite a while and have FINALLY after a great long period of time built my HTPC and have started playing with Sage

I'm working quite a bit now so don't have a lot of free time and am hoping to not have to spend hours trying different things to get the most out of my setup so am coming to you experts for where you think I should start

I have played with things a bit and the quality is not quite as good as my Tivo unit (yeah, I still have that... but only until I get my Sage up and working good. LOL) or viewing cable on my TV. All my stuff I bought a few years ago (ugh) but did buy pretty decent hardware then. I have so far downloaded the new drivers for my Gigabyte 6800 GT 256 PCI card but not for the PVR-250 cards. Need to do that as I'm sure that will help too.

What I have is a P4 3.4GHz with 2 gig ram
Gigabyte 6800 GT 256 PCI card
Three PVR-250 cards
2 SATA 300gig Maxtor hard drives
1 PATA 250gig WD hard drive (all drives formatted with the 64k block size)
Just downloaded SageTV 6.3 and have a few client licenses and media extenders but want to get the main server working good first before I hook up everything else

I have a standard definition 62" TV and no high def. My entertainment center will be setup with the HTPC in the entertainment center. I'll have an LCD monitor in the entertainment center as well but plan to leave it off most of the time. Right now running my 6800 GT card in the "clone" mode with s-video output to my SDTV.

I couldn't get the default overlay mode to work to where it would show the streaming video. On my SDTV if I wasn't in full screen mode I could see everything on the TV (the windows background and icons for example) but the Sage window was black. I switched to VMR9 and had very jerky and freezing video. Downloaded the new 6800 GT drivers and that fixed that but I still think the quality could be a little better.

That's the basic rundown of what I've got. I'm not opposed at all to purchasing better drivers, codecs, renders, decoders, or whatever you call them... just want to get the system setup to be the best it can. (I'm not a HTPC junkie just yet but trying to learn. LOL)

I'm hoping somebody who has a similar setup and is a HTPC junkie can recommend a decoder, renderer (again, sorry if I'm using incorrect terminology or repeating myself... still learning this stuff but am at least now getting my feet wet!) and settings that you have found have worked good for you.

I'm definitely going to play around more with this on my own but if somebody can give me a good starting point for the hardware I have that would be greatly appreciated! (And, if you do have some ideas and it isn't too much trouble, please reply like you were writing one of those "xxx for dummies" type books... reading here the other day it took me about 20 minutes to find out what FSE stood for. LOL)

Thanks much!!!