Better PQ with HDTV & FX5200?

[mcbain]

I am trying to get my picture quality to an acceptable level, but as of yet I have been unable to do so.

I have a 36" panasonic HDTV, using the svideo output on a nvidia FX5200. I have a 2.2GHz P4 with 1GB of ram. I have 2 pvr-250's (both the new -16's). I am running windows XP. The video card is asus, and although I am running nvidia drivers now, I have tried the asus ones with no noticeable difference. I am running in 800x600, but have tried 1024x768 with no difference. I have updated all the drivers/software from the internet.

I have tried many different mpeg2 decoders, I can't remember them all. The ones that seem to come close to working are the cyberlink and the elecard. When I use the cyberlink the quality of objects that are standing still is very good. However when objects move I notice something that is hard to describe. Maybe "smearing" would be an applicable word. It is very different from the problem I get with elecard w/ dsclaler. With that setup I get "studdering" on moving objects. When I disable dsclaler, the output is closer to the that of the cyberlink. I have tried using the vmr9, but it seems that whenever I do I am getting lower quailty (or sometimes the same, but never better).

I have been using the standard dvd bitrate, although I have tried the maximum mpeg2 bitrate without noticing a difference.

This is a dedicated htpc, so I am not worried about eating up a lot of cpu, but of course low cpu is good if I can get it (since I need to use this box as a server eventually, for multiple sage clients).

I am currently running 2.0.14 of the sage beta software.

I currently have analog cable going into each of the cards (no dtv yet).

Any ideas? I have not been making any progress in a while and getting frustrated.

I would like to hear from someone running the same video card with a HDTV, and find out what exactly was done to get acceptable quality.

[Cayars]

Does your FX-5200 have any other "out" ports besides S-Video?

[GbrNole]

for svideo output your best picture quality comes with setting the resolution to 720x480. the latest drivers should have that as an option under the advanced tab.

the motion blur is something that i have been noticing more recently so. i haven't defragged in a while so that may be to blame.

[GbrNole]

just noticed the hdtv part.

why are you using svideo into an hdtv? if you have a dvi input on your tv then use that or alternatively check out a transcoder to go from rgb to yprpb.

newegg.com is also selling nvdvd 2.0 for 7 bucks and that works pretty nicely with the fx5200.

[mcbain]

I have tried the nvdvd trial, it does not seem any better.

I do have a composite out also, but that does not seem to be any different.

My hdtv does not have a dvi in (neither does my video card, since I know my tv didn't have it, I didn't pay the extra $10 for the output on the card). I do have component input on the TV, so I may later get one of those vga to component converters, but svideo should be able to at least work as good as the svideo coming out of the tivo (which I don't have anymore), or coming out of my time warner dvr box (which does not have good quality as far as resolution goes, but it does not have studdering or smearing).

the drivers I have do not have different resolutions, although I think I found a util that would add them. however I didn't, since I didn't know the exact resolution that the pvr250 was capturing, and I thought it would be the same 4x3 ratio. If I set it to 720x480, isn't that more widescreen? I did forget to mention, my hdtv is a 4x3 tube. I didn't get it so I could watch hdtv programming or widescreen stuff, I just wanted higher resolution on regular programming, which I get because of the built-in line-doubler (or whatever they are calling it these days).

[GbrNole]

the sage higher quality record settings 2gb/hr and up use 720x480 for an input resolution. matching your card's output to this resolution removes the need for the card to rescale the content.

as far as the motion blur goes i'm not entirely too sure why it seems a bit more pronounced right now. some of my captured channels are crystal clear with zero blur but others (that seemed more compressed from directv to begin with) definately exhibit more blur than i had previously been seeing.

at this point i'm going to consider it a hardware problem - maybe a bad connection somewhere along the line or the hard drive just being bogged down since noone else has really had a complaint in this regard.

just to be sure - you do have dxva enabled etc.?

[GbrNole]

ps. as far as the stuttering goes with elecard - try turning off the transparency mode when using overlay and see if that helps. i believe it's the last button on the advanced tab. also disable the 3d acceleration in the same menu.

i've been using all default settings with my sonic codec recently but i may switch back to specifying mpeg mode C and using bob/weave to deinterlace as this gave me good results previously.

[mcbain]

I have tried messing with the dxva settings in sage, but have not noticed a difference. Is there somewhere else I should be looking for settings? I did look at some of the players themselves (that come with some of the codecs) and made some changes, but they do not seem to have had any effect either.

If I can get my resolution to 720x480, will that be optimized for normal tv? It would seem closer to widescreen, which I watch little of (and my tv is not a widescreen either). I will try to get the resolution changed when I get home.

[mcbain]

I tried setting my resolution to 720x480, but then I had borders on the side of my screen when watching tv (although windows and the interface seemed fine).

[LSHorwitz]

I am also quite disappointed with the video quality I am seeing despite the fact that I always record at "Great" 2 GB/hr settings, use either of 2 HDTVs with direct DVI digital input, and carefully select screen resolution and software settings to totally avoid rescaling. I think the Intervideo software MPEG2 decoder I am using is also quite good since it handles DVD video in the exact same frame rate, resolution, etc. very well. The hardware MPEG2 encoder on the Hauppauge PVR-260 may be the limiting factor. Perhaps it just cannot make really excellent MPEG2 video in real time.

[mlbdude]

2 GB per hour looks washed out and blocky at times on my 35" standard def TV. I would not want to watch it on HDTV either .

To enable DXVA for the Intervideo Hauppauge decoder you have to do it in the registry.

[stanger89]

2Gb/hr is about the bare minimum for good PQ, it's fine for stuff I don't really care about, but for important stuff (most of my favorites) I use 3Gb/hr. On the 2 HDTVs I've run on I get either equal to Live PQ or better than Live PQ depending on the TV.

You're really doing yourself a disservice running S-Video to an HDTV.

[stanger89]

It just occured to me. I've seen no reference to any of you tweaking your Capture settings. The defaults are pretty wonkey, they really need to be changed to get a good picture. Of the top of my head, I'd say Brightness/Contrast are way to high out of the box, which leads to overly grainy/blocky/pixelated recordings, not to mention poor black levels and crushed whites.