SageTV and sports

[Watter]

First, before I get into this, let me say just how pleased I am with SageTV so far. Very nice!! I've been working with the trial for all of one day and I'm ready to plunk down the bucks for the full program. Great job!

First a little background. I've had a Tivo for a long, long time. I've been relatively pleased but I'm a tweaker at heart, so when one of my Tivo drives started going bad, rather than establish my serial connection, format new drive and replace the old one, I decided to look in into some of the new PC based PVR solutions. SageTV seem to be the most full featured and mature. I picked up a WinTV PVR 350 and went to town.

I only have a few concerns. I'm watching an NBA playoff game right now and, to be frank, it's downright nasty. Naturally I've been watching the playoffs on my Tivo for weeks and never noticed anything like this.

Everything is very, ummm, soft, and the glare of the bright spots (the floor especially) looks just horrible. There's a distinct lack of clarity. When I pull the sviideo out of my 350 and plug it directly into the TV, it's like night and day. I'm seeing wrinkles in foreheads and fast movement that is completely glossed over in the when viewing through SageTV. I've performed the same test with my Tivo before (moving the video source off the Tivo and directly into the TV) and while yes, there was a difference, it wasn't even close to this dramatic.

Is there anything I can do about this? A setting I can change?

Bythe way, I'm using:
WinTV PVR 350
ATI Radeon 9500 (svideo out to TV)

-Watter

[dkardatzke]

I would recommend using Dscaler and trying all the plugins and options while watching sports. To use Dscaler you have to first download the Elecard MPEG-2 Decoder from www.elecard.com. Install it while SageTV is shut down and then launch SageTV and choose the Elecard Decoder from Detailed Setup > Video. Then the Dscaler options will become available.

You could also try the suggestion on this post (http://www.freytechnologies.com/foru...=&threadid=284) using the Intervideo Decoder that came with your PVR-350. This made a night and day improvement in my setup.

Also, you can adjust the color, saturation, hue, etc. under Detailed Setup > Multimedia > Advanced Settings.

[sshapiro63]

Yeah, I agree with Dan. Using the Elecard decoder with Dscaler gives very good results. I recently started using this combo and am displaying on a 36" tv via a Radeon 9000 Svideo out. I noticed that there is much less noise in my display using Sage compared to my TiVO and ReplayTV units.

I enabled Double Refresh Rate and am currently testing the various options. I read that the Greedy 2 Frame is supposed to be a good overall choice but most recommendations assume you are displaying on a computer monitor. I wish someone would come up with a guide to using Dscaler when outputing to a standard interlaced tv. Just have to test this on my own.

I suggest you start with this combo and see what you think. I did have to upgrade my CPU from an AMD 1.4GHz to get Double Refresh Rate to work without A/V sync problems. I installed an Athlon XP 2200 and it looks great. My system now has 4 PVR 250's installed and is serving multiple SageClients over my home network.

Serving a couple of remote clients while viewing locally with SageTV showed CPU usage of about 50% with Dscaler/Double Refresh Rate enabled.

Steve

[jimbobuk]

I just tried this solution on a spot of cricket that was playing on the tv... i had a lot of problems with writing on billboards around the ground causing blocks to stick around longer than they normally would... a guy running into the camera to bowl had his face all mashed up... I tried a load of options to dscaler.. then tried resorting to the normal solutions of decoding and the problems seemed to stick around.. only after putting Sage to sleep and waking it again did it seem to update and be back to "normal" in the decoding...

dscaler isn't optimised for NTSC or anything is it!? I dont think i'll be using that again as it looked worse

[edmc]

I am not a DScaler expert by any means. My understanding is, however, that the various algorithms in DScaler are meant to detect 3:2 transfers from 24fps film source to 60Hz Interlaced NTSC. I believe 50Hz PAL DeInterlacing is much easier making many of the heuristics in DScaler unnecessary. Besides that, I would imagine your cricket game is actually a video source (presumably 50Hz Interlaced to begin with).

Play around with the other (non Greedy 2) algorithms as I think some of those may work best for PAL.

[Watter]

Pardon my newbness, but it was my understanding that Dscaler was primarily used when you were needing to output to an HDTV or a projector? Is that not the case? Are there advantages to using it on a normal TV?

-Watter

[pawn]

Originally posted by Watter
Pardon my newbness, but it was my understanding that Dscaler was primarily used when you were needing to output to an HDTV or a projector? Is that not the case? Are there advantages to using it on a normal TV?

-Watter

That's the main function, but it also has a lot of filters for removing noise and jitter, etc..

[sshapiro63]

I don't really understand why video looks so much better using using Dscaler to sending output to my tv (sdtv) via a Radeon 9000 Svideo port. Perhaps it is the filters; something is doing the job!

[pawn]

Originally posted by sshapiro63
I don't really understand why video looks so much better using using Dscaler to sending output to my tv (sdtv) via a Radeon 9000 Svideo port. Perhaps it is the filters; something is doing the job!

BTW, you'll never know good picture quality until tou abandon Svideo, etc., and get yourself a transcoder to convert the VGA signal directly from you video card VGA port to component video for your television.

[sshapiro63]

My TV does have component input, but only accepts 480i. I have not yet found a transcoder that will take VGA and ouput interlaced component video. I tried the ATI dongle with a Radeon 8500; it was junk.

[JJarmoc]

If it's an standard def TV, component connections aren't really applicable.

[Mark Lamutt]

Really, only good for dvd output.

[pawn]

Originally posted by Mark Lamutt
Really, only good for dvd output.

Not to argue, and really, I think it depends a lot on how good the line doubler is on your HDTV (if you have one - which I should have mentioned), but I can assure you my PQ is definitely superior using a transcoder, even for regular television on my set.

[Mark Lamutt]

Absolutely, I agree - transcoding VGA to component on a HD set is far superior to 480i in via component and letting the tv double the signal. I thought we were talking about SD sets that have component inputs specifically for DVD players. If the set is only capable of displaying 480i, then any component connections made to that set are really only good for dvd player output. That's what I meant to say.

[pawn]

Originally posted by Mark Lamutt
Absolutely, I agree - transcoding VGA to component on a HD set is far superior to 480i in via component and letting the tv double the signal. I thought we were talking about SD sets that have component inputs specifically for DVD players. If the set is only capable of displaying 480i, then any component connections made to that set are really only good for dvd player output. That's what I meant to say.

Well alright then ;^)