HD-PVR Quality

[camens]

I've got everything installed and working. (Besides the stuttery live TV). Anyways, what is the quality of your HD shows? When I switch between my SageTV with HD-PVR and my Bell ExpressVu PVR the quality difference is quite noticable. The Bell unit is alot sharper and brighter. Is this just the way it is or do I have more tweaking to do?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by camens

stuttery live TV

You shouldn't have stuttery live TV.

You also should get as good of a picture through SageTV and the HD-PVR as you do with your cablePVR box so I'd say somethings not right...
Here's a few questions to start the troubleshooting process:
Do you have any other tuners besides the HD-PVR?
What's your setup for your HTPC (processor, OS, memory, videocard etc)?
What version of SageTV are you using?
Are you viewing and recording all with one PC or is it recording on a serverPC and viewing on a client PC (or extender)? What version of java are you using?

[camens]

I've got another thread open on the live TV stuttering. It goes away if I pause the show I'm watching. I've tried it on completely different boxes, with the only item in common being the STB and the HD-PVR. Strange.

Anyways, here is what I have:

Server:
SageTV 6.4.3.171
Java 1.6.0_06
Vista Ultimate
Intel Quad CPU Q6700 2.66 GHz
2GB RAM
GeForce 8800 Ultra
HD-PVR (no other PVR cards)
Bell ExpressVu
HD-PVR IR working fine

ClientPC:
SageTV Client 6.4.6.171
Java 1.6.0_05
Vista Ultimate
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual 2.2 GHz
1GB RAM
GeForce 7950 GT
no PVR cards
MCE Blaster/Remote

Any ideas?

[camens]

I changed the server to my Windows Server 2003 box. Qaulity is the same (not as good as direct to TV). Any other suggestinos? I'm wondering if the SageTV HD Media Extender might solve this problem?

[JimmyBalboa]

I have the same issue with the Hauppauge HD-PVR not producing nearly as good picture quality as a direct connection to the the Satellite receiver.

I have a Quad Core Machine running Vista Ultimate x64 with a 8800 nVidia card.

Is there any way to tweak the PVR to get better Quality. I already have it set to 5.9 GB per hour.

I noticed that the Total Media Extreme has a variable rate setting that allows the PVR to peak at 22 Mbps. Would this help if STV utilized this same functionality.

Otherwise it appears as though I have wasted 250 .00 by buying a semi-hi def PVR

[davidjade]

I have to say that I too am a bit disappointed with the HD-PVR's quality. I am running the latest Sage with the latest java on a Windows server 2003 box, hooked up to a DirecTV receiver. My server is only a P4 but seems very untaxed as I am doing all viewing on a HD100 media extender. I have the bit-rate at the highest in Sage and I am only recording SD content at the moment. The quality is not as good as the mpeg2 I got from my old ReplayTV, which was running at about 1/2 the bit-rate (but with VBR) of the HD-PVR. Most of the time it is not noticeable but when watching something with high movement, like sports or the Olympic closing ceremonies with the thousands of performers moving around I see severe macro blocking. So much at times that entire areas of detail, like moving faces or hands, have been blurred out completely.

I'm OK with for now it given that my ReplayTV was a dead end, but I hope it improves as Sage/HD-PVR matures.

[stuckless]

I have a bell expressvu 9242 HD PVR hooked up via HDMI and the HD Extender Hooked up via HDMI. My HDPVR is taking Component Video from a Bell 6141 receiver and when I switch between Sage and my Bell HD PVR... the quaility is almost identical. My TV is only a small 42" Panasonic capable of 1080i... so maybe that's why I don't notice the difference??

Actually based on the posting here.... I expected to have a lesser quality, so I was quite happy when I noticed the quality to be pretty much the same.

[Chriscic]

I believe the HD-PVR is recording the signal nearly perfectly, but the PC decoders are just not as good as what's in today's dedicated hardware. I say this because when I compared HD-PVR recordings with firewire (direct copy of digital bitstream) recordings from my Comcast DVR, they were nearly identical.

The picture from the HD100 is pretty good (audio sync is another story)... maybe a tad bit softer than my cable box though.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

I believe the HD-PVR is recording the signal nearly perfectly, but the PC decoders are just not as good as what's in today's dedicated hardware. I say this because when I compared HD-PVR recordings with firewire (direct copy of digital bitstream) recordings from my Comcast DVR, they were nearly identical.

The picture from the HD100 is pretty good (audio sync is anotehr story)... maybe a tad bit softer than my cable box though.

I agree. I do not believe the issue is with the HD-PVR, but the computer using them for playback. My video is flawless. I have watched many preseaon games (thank you NFL Network in HD) with no issues whatsoever on my HD100. Playback is perfect. I have not tried playback via any of my PC's, as most would not have video cards powerful enough (my 780G probably could handle it, but I haven't taken the time to try it), but from my HD100 the video is perfect. Yes it probably is a tad software than if it came directly form my Dish Network VIP211 (the conversion process from digital to analog and then analog back to digital will cause a small amount of difference), but without doing a direct comparison who would know?!?!?!

As I have stated in other threads, I think this comes down to the HD-PVR using a rather odd combination of h.264 and AAC audio (okay it isn't really that odd, but certainly not the tried and true MPEG2 that we all built our machines to do flawlessly). This of course is just my opinion.

[JimmyBalboa]

Not trying to be the Devil's advocate here.

I bought two of these HDPVRs myself based off of discussions I read in this forum about how the quality was nearly the same as HD. After hooking up the first one to a Vista Ultimate x64 O/S with plenty of horse power (that I use to watch ripped blu-ray movies without any problems), the video quality is not even close. I have not worked with it enough to test Sports/High Motion, but after having the PVR hooked up and watching TLC-HD with my wife who is extremely technically challenged and could care less about all this stuff, I ask her if she thought the picture looked like was running in Hi Definition, her quick and simple answer was "No".

Based of information I found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

H264 running 1920x1080 at 30fps (1080i) requires at least 50 Mbit/s and I simply do not see how 13 Mbit/s can be identical. That's why a 2 hour movie could get close to 25 GB per hour, not 6 GB per hour.

Again I am not trying to be negative. I really want this to work, I just don't have much hope of this replacing a DirectTV or Dish DVR at this point. But we shall remain hopeful!!!

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by davidjade

I have to say that I too am a bit disappointed with the HD-PVR's quality. I am running the latest Sage with the latest java on a Windows server 2003 box, hooked up to a DirecTV receiver. My server is only a P4 but seems very untaxed as I am doing all viewing on a HD100 media extender. I have the bit-rate at the highest in Sage and I am only recording SD content at the moment. The quality is not as good as the mpeg2 I got from my old ReplayTV, which was running at about 1/2 the bit-rate (but with VBR) of the HD-PVR. Most of the time it is not noticeable but when watching something with high movement, like sports or the Olympic closing ceremonies with the thousands of performers moving around I see severe macro blocking. So much at times that entire areas of detail, like moving faces or hands, have been blurred out completely.

I'm OK with for now it given that my ReplayTV was a dead end, but I hope it improves as Sage/HD-PVR matures.

Wow, that's not my experience at all! The quality I get on 480i recordings from my STB through component is excellent and I'm at the top 5.9Mb rate. They definitely look better than what I was getting from my PVR150.

Not sure why you'd be seeing such a drop in quality. Do you have your HD-PVR connected with component video?

[rtengvad]

Does compression or up scaling matter here? I don't have a HD-PVR but record the digital stream from my cable provider directly to my hard drive. The movies (h.264 format) I record from my HD channels are no more that 10-13 Gb in total. I know that a lot of the material is not truely HD but up scaled to 1920x1080i.

Rasmus

[mikejaner]

H264 running 1920x1080 at 30fps (1080i) requires at least 50 Mbit/s and I simply do not see how 13 Mbit/s can be identical. That's why a 2 hour movie could get close to 25 GB per hour, not 6 GB per hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
High Profile (HDDVD, BluRay) H.264 Maxes out at 25Mbits or 50Mbits, depending on which one you go with (look at the chart). Also 1080i is 60 FPS and a lower bitrate than 1080P, which is what you are talking about, 30FPS. So the statement of it requiring at least 50Mbits is inaccurate.




With the HDPVR and HD Extender, the HD signal is identical in quality to my Verizon boxes.

[Shield]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Wow, that's not my experience at all! The quality I get on 480i recordings from my STB through component is excellent and I'm at the top 5.9Mb rate. They definitely look better than what I was getting from my PVR150.

Not sure why you'd be seeing such a drop in quality. Do you have your HD-PVR connected with component video?

I'm not sure what your 480i (Standard Definition) has to do with recording 720p/1080i....

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Shield

I'm not sure what your 480i (Standard Definition) has to do with recording 720p/1080i....

Sorry, I thought he had mentioned something about SD recording. My HD recording looks excellent as well. There is macroblocking but I don't think it's distracting. Certainly it's not going to look as good as the original picture since it's taking an already lossily compressed video being converted to analog, converting it back to digital and then recompressing it to another lossy format. The picture quality is NEVER going to look as good as the original. You'd have to be pretty thick headed to think that it could.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
High Profile (HDDVD, BluRay) H.264 Maxes out at 25Mbits or 50Mbits, depending on which one you go with (look at the chart). Also 1080i is 60 FPS and a lower bitrate than 1080P, which is what you are talking about, 30FPS. So the statement of it requiring at least 50Mbits is inaccurate.




With the HDPVR and HD Extender, the HD signal is identical in quality to my Verizon boxes.

Thank you for responding.

I only based my statement on the chart that shows 1080 @ 30fps at 50 Mbit/s for High Profile. My asumption is that at the 1080i is 30fps and P is 60fps. I could be wrong about that, I am no expert .

I will say that I have been watching Hi-Definition TV 1080i & 1080p for years now and my $500.00 investment in to two of these HDPVR's to finally get HD-DVR that works with my PCs is nowhere near the quality that the satellite DVRs record. It's nowhere close the same as the OTA HD tuner I have in the same PC (which works flawlessly).

I don't expect it to be perfect, but it's far from acceptable at this point.

I am eager to understand why there are such major difference in opinion and I am wondering if some people just don't really have the same expectations of high definition quality that I do, or is there just something wrong with my HDPVRs.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

I will say that I have been watching Hi-Definition TV 1080i & 1080p for years now and my $500.00 investment in to two of these HDPVR's to finally get HD-DVR that works with my PCs is nowhere near the quality that the satellite DVRs record. It's nowhere close the same as the OTA HD tuner I have in the same PC (which works flawlessly).

You have to remember that most likely the satellite DVR is simply taking the digital stream that it's receiving and saving it to it's hard drive with absolutely no conversion. Where as with the HD-PVR it is taking an analog component picture and recompressing it.

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

I am eager to understand why there are such major difference in opinion and I am wondering if some people just don't really have the same expectations of high definition quality that I do, or is there just something wrong with my HDPVRs.

Read my previous statement. An HD-PVR recording is NEVER going to look near the original quality simply because it's going through such a process.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

Thank you for responding.

I only based my statement on the chart that shows 1080 @ 30fps at 50 Mbit/s for High Profile. My asumption is that at the 1080i is 30fps and P is 60fps. I could be wrong about that, I am no expert .

I will say that I have been watching Hi-Definition TV 1080i & 1080p for years now and my $500.00 investment in to two of these HDPVR's to finally get HD-DVR that works with my PCs is nowhere near the quality that the satellite DVRs record. It's nowhere close the same as the OTA HD tuner I have in the same PC (which works flawlessly).

I am eager to understand why there are such major difference in opinion and I am wondering if some people just don't really have the same expectations of high definition quality that I do, or is there just something wrong with my HDPVRs.

I understand how it can be confusing with the resolutions etc, because there are a lot to deal with since the industry didn't want to settle on just one. basically you are dealing with three for High Definition. 720P at 60FPS, 1080i at 60Fields(Frames)Per Second, and 1080P at 30FPS. Maybe you can count 480P, but I don't. There is a 1080P spec for 60FPS, but I am not sure if it's a standard, and it's definately not supported in the industry AFAIK.

When I say my HDPVR recordings played back on my HD extenders, are identical in quality to my actual Verizon boxes, I say it with the idea that if you stare at the screen from 10 feet away, you can't see the difference. Now if you go and put your eyeball against the screen and stare at slow motion playback with a split screen comparison, yeah, you can probably see a little more fuzzies in the HDPVR recording.
What is more evident is the lack of quality in the signal coming out of the Verizon boxes, and in most cases, any other cable/sat company. They compress the signal so much in the first place, you can't compensate. Crap in, crap out. Watching the Olympics was a true test of that. The artifacts on the screen during the opening and closing ceremonies, were almost unbearable to me. My wife didn't even notice.

I would suggest a few things, if you haven't checked them already. Make sure the HDPVR is recording at the highest bitrate in the Sage Detailed Settings. Second, make sure your Cable/Sat box is putting out the native resoution of the signal for whatever channel it's on. My verizon boxes put out 720P for some channels, and 1080i for others. My HDPVR never misses a beat and captures the same resoutions the cable box outputs. I have seen a few people complain about 720P video recordings being jittery etc.... but I have not seen that issue.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Read my previous statement. An HD-PVR recording is NEVER going to look near the original quality simply because it's going through such a process.

OK I don't want to argue with you, but let me be more plain. The HDPVR sucks right now. I understand that there is will some difference when transcoding on the fly, but what I see could never be passed off as HD in my home.

What about OTA card, it records to Mpeg2 TS and I can not tell the difference in the recording and the live feed straight to the TV's tuner.

If you are happy with what you see from your HDPVR then I am happy for you, mine sucks. It's not even close to HD that's all I am trying to say. I expect more.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

What about OTA card, it records to Mpeg2 TS and I can not tell the difference in the recording and the live feed straight to the TV's tuner.

This is because the OTA cards just pull the signal out of the air, and write it to the hard drive. The video is already in Mpeg2ts before it hits the tuner.