Poor video quality

[SundanceTV]

I am having issues with the output quality from SageTV. My display device is a Sony VW40 DLP projector with a 110" screen. the output device is my HTPC via HDMI. The picture is jagged on edges like lips, eyes, sharp detail and lettering, not HD in appearance at all. When I view content from Blu-Ray (played with Power DVD) or BeyondTV it is just fine, sharp with no jaggies at all, almost photo sharp. Can someone give me the basics of setting STV for the optimum HD output or if you have experienced similar problems tell me what you did to correct the issue?


Thanks

[SWKerr]

Please post your setup.

What video Card?
OS?

Source\File Type? h.264\mpeg2 or both (ripped BluRay)

Sage Playback settings? Codecs\EVR\Overlay

[brainbone]

It sounds like you're using the default SageTV decoders, and view interlaced (1080i or 480i) recordings. While the default SageTV Decoders are technically capable of producing better quality than what you see, for some reason, SageTV does not activate that portion of the decoder (called VMR deinterlacing in the SageTV Decoder).

You can improve the quality somewhat by turning on "DXVA" when using the SageTV Video Decoders in Detailed Setup: Video/Audio Settings (see page 184 of the SageTV User Manual). This will enable hardware acceleration, but only blended field deinterlacing (apparently not using hardware acceleration) -- so high motion scenes will appear blurry.

Explaining your configuration (Operating system, CPU, graphics card, etc.) will let others here help you get the most out of your system using 3rd party decoders.

But honestly, there is no excuse for this not working perfectly out-of-the-box on modern hardware/OS in SageTV. I suggest submitting a support request with SagetV -- they need to be made aware how important of an issue this is.

Also, you may want to look over this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45679

[SundanceTV]

OK, thanks, I will check the manual. I did improve the quality by changing a few setting, but it was for the most part shooting in the dark and I just go lucky.

Steve