PVR-250 and PQ

[r00st3r]

I have read the forums on this issue and there does not seem to be a consensus on getting better PQ from pvr-250.

I have a P4 2.8 w/512 mb ram. I am using the PVR-250 with a Radeon 9200 (VGA\DVI out) with a Crescendo transcoder (VGA-Component) to a Panasonic 53WX53 HDTV (480p, 1080i) with powerstrip 920x500 @60hz.
I have a D10 direct tv box connected to PVR 250 by RF input (coax) .

In the Setup for sage I have
Video Renderer - VMR9
MPEG2 Decoder - Sonic Cinemaster@ DVS Video Decoder
DXVA - Default (MPEG MODE and Deinterlacing)
DScaler Deinterlacing - Disabled

Under Multimedia I have
Aspect- 16X9
Rec Quality - Great 2GB

The PQ compared to direct input to TV is watchable, but like watching an anolog station that down't come in very good. Not snowey but grainy.

Any suggestion how to get a better PQ from this setup? Any suggestions would help..

Thanx,
R00ST3R

[Opus4]

I'm sure others will have output suggestions, but the first thing I would do is try using a higher quality recording setting -- something around 3GB/hour or more.

- Andy

[salsbst]

RF coax is the worst way to connect to a DTV STB, so you might look at moving to Svid (preferred) or composite.

If you have not calibrated the black and white level of the capture using stanger's guide, then I would recommend you do that, too. http://www.sage-community.org/index....ki/Calibration

[r00st3r]

ok,
I will up the record quality and test out the svid connection.
I didn't think since both the RF and Svid are both analog it would make a difference. I will also read Stangers guide to try to improve the PQ.

[r00st3r]

ok,

I went thru the Karnis custom resolution guide (again) and set up a few of the cutom timings. The one that works the best is 720X480 for the desktop and sage. PQ is better than I had (I also bumped up the rec qual in sage to 3GB\Hr)
I also had 16 bit colors selcted (don't know why I didn't notice it before) and changed it to 32bit.

I have a few other resolutions setup
960x540
1800x540
920x540
the last two are way overscanned. I tried to adjust the front\back porch (locking the scan freq) but I couldn't get it to fit. I wish I could get higher than 720x480 but am having a hard time getting the higher resolutions to fit...

Thanks for the help.
R00ST3R

[edmc]

I've posted on this here and on AVS. I've found the PVR-250 MPEG-2 Encoder to be extremely sensitive to the Saturation settings as well as a weak signal. I've boosted my Cable feed 10db. And I dropped the Saturation setting from the default down to 124. These two made a huge improvement.