Poor Picture Quality with SageTV

[markh]

I am a current BTV user who is looking to move to SageTV, but have run into a couple of issues that I need to clear up before I can make the change. The first of these is quality of the picture, it is noticeably worse than either BeyondTV or WinTV. I have tried making changes to the setup, though none has made any real difference to the picture quality so far. Any suggestions on what may help with this?

My HTPC Config
Asus M3N780-VM Motherboard w/nVidia 8200GPU
AMD Phenom 2.3GHz CPU
4Gb RAM
Win XP Pro w/SP2
2 - Hauppauge HVR-1600 Tuners

[coryking]

Define "lower quality".

Do you mean "looks over compressed with lots of blocks everywhere"?
Do you mean a washed out look or something with the color/brightness?
Do you mean noise?

If it was me, I'd go run that Hauppauge tuner program that you download from their website and see what results that get. My money would be on some SageTV setting for recording quality, or the choice of Video Codec it is using.

Just a guess.

[markh]

I would have to say noise. There are no blocks and the color and brightness look fine. The picture is not as sharp and clear as in WinTV or BTV.

[coryking]

I'll let somebody who knows more about codecs answer, but my first guess would be the video codec. Second guess would be the video decoder--I've found that if you use the wrong one, the video playback can look rather... odd.


Also, I've never played with it before, but I know you can futz with the Color/Brightness of the tuner card from within SageTV.

Actually, the more I think about it, I bet it is something with the video decoder you are using. In the detailed settings, fuss around with the Video/Audio settings, particularly the Video Renderer. Which is the right one, I'll defer to somebody else.

[Brent]

There are many things that could cause this.

Go to Detailed Settings>Video/Audio

• I would set "Video Renderer" to Overlay for now
• What MPEG2 Video Decoder Filter are you using? What other options do you have when you look at that setting?
• What do you have set for your Mpeg4 Playback?

Is this HD or SD or both that don't look as good?
Are you viewing on a monitor or TV?
Is this on a single HTPC computer or on a clientPC (Like BTV Link?)

[markh]

The picture quality is on SD channels, HD looks great. I am also seeing a flickering white line across the top of the screen when the display is letterbox, directly above the window.

Video Renderer is set to Overlay
MPEG2 Video Decoder is InterVideo NonCSS for Hauupauge
MPEG4 Playback is SageTV Player

HTPC is connected directly to HDTV using an HDMI cable, there are no clients at this time.

[markh]

OK, after screwing around with the settings the video quality is now the same as under BeyondTV and WinTV. I just needed to find the combination of settings that worked.

Is there another codec that would provide better picture quality?