Video card recommendation for OTA HDTV?

[mitchedo]

I have a server and two HD300's. The server sits next to -- and feeds -- my home theater. The extenders are on a couple of other TV's in the house.

I am using the onboard video in an ATI 785G chipset (Radeon HD 4200). It does a good job, but just doesn't look right for fast moving scenes -- like football games. The game has the "replay" look when the players move fast. ...sorta like a slow motion, or some kinda dream sequence. ...just doesn't look natural.

So, I'm thinking of upgrading to a video card with some more oomph. The Radeon HD 5450 gets pretty good reviews, is affordable, and fanless. However, the Anandtech article on it says it only has enough power to enable de-interlacing, and barely does that at 1900 x 1080. So I was thinking of stepping up to one of the faster cards (probably a 5570). This computer's sole job is to serve up my TV, so I don't care about gaming.

I hooked up one of the HD300's to my main TV, and it does not display this motion artifact. However, text is not nearly as crisp, and colors are muted compared to getting the video straight from the Sage server. I also had to adjust the overscan settings in the HD300 a TON. I didn't have to touch them in the output directly from the server. ...both over HDMI.

I want to be able to pass through the uncompressed audio from my Blu-Ray rips over HDMI to my Onkyo receiver. I was sorely disappointed when I discovered my 785G chipset will not even send DD 5.1 over HDMI.

Who has wisdom to share? Should I just get another HD300? Why is the HD300 blurry compared to direct video from my server? Why did I have to adjust my overscan settings so much in the HD300 (using HDMI), but didn't have to touch the overscan settings on the server with the same TV?

Here's what Anandtech has to say about the "perfect" HTPC card. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3601/t...deon-htpc-card

Thus as far as we can tell, the 5570 is in fact the perfect Radeon HTPC card that we have been looking for. It’s the cheapest, smallest, and coolest running 5000-series card that can offer the full suite of post-processing abilities, and of course it has the 5000-series’s audio bitstreaming capabilities.

[gplasky]

I would still recommend a HD300 and calibrate your TV so those issues you sight either go away or are greatly reduced. And I would relocate your server so where else where the noise and heat would be less intrusive. As quiet as you may think it is or have grown use to it, the HD300 is silent.

Gerry

[Fuzzy]

There's something else going on here, as the 785G chipset is definitely powerful enough to handle OTA HD. I ran that as my main display for years without a problem (decoding much more difficult stuff than 1080i MPEG-2). If you're getting strange display, it's probably a driver/codec issue. Do you have recent drivers installed? What codec is benig used for MPEG-2, and what renderer is chosen?

That said, I don't use my 785G anymore for my primary location, but the only reason I upgraded (to a 5570, actually) was for HD Audio, when I purchased a new receiver.

[mitchedo]

I have a noisy parrot in the TV room and one of those room air purifiers cuz the parrot stinks. Anyone want a free Blue Front Amazon and a $600 cage?

In the summer, I run a window AC unit in the same room. Needless to say, I cannot hear the fans in my SageTV server. They are large fans, and they run slowly. The server also is my only access to Netflix on this TV until such time as I can justify buying another Blu Ray player that has Netflix. I also use it to watch TV shows I might miss at the network sites that don't play well with HULU. ...and I use the HULU desktop launcher from within SageTV.

Here is my ATI driver info:
Driver Packaging Version 8.782-100930m-106233C-ATI
Catalyst™ Version 10.10
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1081
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0784
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10243
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0930.2237.38732


SageTV setting:

MPEG2 decoder: SageTV MPEG Video Decoder
Audio Renderer: Realtek Digital Output
MPEG2 Audio Filter: AC3Filter

[Fuzzy]

Since you're running Windows 7, I'd reocmmend using the Microsot DTV-DVD Video Decoder for all supported formats. it really is quite good. The SageTV MPEG Video Decoder is also decent, but not near as good as MS's.

[mitchedo]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Since you're running Windows 7, I'd reocmmend using the Microsot DTV-DVD Video Decoder for all supported formats. it really is quite good. The SageTV MPEG Video Decoder is also decent, but not near as good as MS's.

I think you solved my problem. I recorded the Cotton Bowl (720p source), and have been using the opening few minutes to test my settings. They have a big US Flag waving on the field during the National Anthem, and as always, the grid lines on the field.

The SageTV MPEG2 decoder gives absolutely HORRIBLE jaggies on horizontal lines, no matter what I do in Catalyst. Switch to the M$ decoder, and what an amazing difference!

Now, to the "dream sequence" appearance of football games. It seems the Radeon HD 4200 lacks sufficient processing oomph to do all the deinterlacing I was asking it to do in my attempt to clean up those horrible jaggies. I reckon it was dropping frames or missing some of the motion between the frames. The Catalyst drivers have an "Easy Button" in the Video section called "Enforce smooth video playback". According to Anandtech, that button works amazingly well. It turns off any post-processing that the particular GPU cannot handle at the resolution you're watching. When I tick that button, I don't get any of that weird motion artifact -- at least on the Cotton Bowl 720p recording.

Hopefully there will be a 1080i football game sometime over the weekend so I can test the Easy Button then. If all is well, I saved a few bucks from the 5450 card I was considering. If not, then I'll be buying a new video card -- probably a 5570.

I wish I didn't need the Internet hooked to my TV. I think the WAF would be far greater if I just hooked an HD300 up (though I'm having WOL issues again). ...might go there eventually anyway.

All this video stuff is new to me, but I'll learn it.

Have a beer on me.

[mitchedo]

Yesterday's two football games were on two OTA channels, one 720p; the other 1080i. I recorded both. The 720p game is quite watchable without the motion artifact that's driving me crazy. The 1080i game displays that "surreal" effect no matter what I do with the video card settings. I am using the Windoze decoder.

Neither channel displays any motion artifact with the HD300.

So, it looks like either another HD300 or a new video card is in my future.

[ccsmoke]

Did you try the latest drivers, I see your running an older one.

[mitchedo]

I upgraded my video card to a Radeon 5570, and the 1080i problem seems to have vanished.

With 20-20 hindsight, I probably should have just bought another HD300. The wifey can't work the computer, and the HD300's just plain work with no muss, no fuss. The text on the menus is not nearly as crisp as it is on the PC, but video looks about the same.

Maybe the new video card will give me better Netflix playback. ...haven't had time to watch anything yet.

[Tiki]

I have come to the conclusion that the low-end HD4xxx cards really aren't powerful enough for HD Video playback in all situations. I had been using an HD-4350 for a while and it just couldn't quite cut it.

I'm using the component output to drive an old rear-projection CRT HDTV. The tv is supposedly 1080i, but it has about 15% overscan, so I have to adjust that through the Catalyst Control center to get the whole Windows desktop. (I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, using EVR renderer).

In my experience, the Microsoft codec gave the best picture quality, but MPEG-2 1080i (from HD-Homerun or HVR-2250, QAM) would give the "surreal" effect you are describing for fast-moving complex images (especially football). This made it unusable for me. The ATI codec or the Sage codec did not experience this, but produced an image that was slightly more washed out. They also gave me the spinning circle for 5-10 seconds very frequently when I tried skipping fwd or backward. I tried at least 3 different video card drivers (ranging from 2009 to 2010), but none of them seemed to make a difference.

The Microsoft codec also struggled with h.264 recordings from the HD-PVR. So, I used the Arcsoft decoder.

Now that I upgraded to an HD4670 video card, I can use the Microsoft codec for MPEG-2 and get smooth playback no matter what I throw at it. Plus, I'm not seeing the spinning circles all the time anymore.

One downside I noticed is that with the 4670 and the Microsoft decoder for h.264 content, when the UI pops up on top of the video, the UI elements will flash. I've seen others post about this, but never saw it myself until now. It only happens with Microsoft decoder. If I use the Arcsoft decoder, the issue goes away. I don't see a big difference in picture quality between these two decoders for h.264, so no big loss here.

In my previous setup, I had an AGP motherboard with a HD4650 video card. That system ran WinXP-32 bit, so the Microsoft decoders were not available, nor was EVR. Used ATI decoders and VMR-9 instead of EVR for the renderer. It was able to play everything I through at it.

The issues that I had with the HD4350, may be specific to my circumstances (perhaps if I was connected via HDMI to a newer 720p or 1080p TV, it would be OK - I know it takes more processing power to re-scale and re-interlace), but it is clear that there is something different between the 4350 and the 4650/4670.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by ccsmoke

Did you try the latest drivers, I see your running an older one.

when you install ATI drivers, do you install JUST drivers, or the entire Catalyst package?