TV Image Quality

[scbundy]

Hi guys, I'm having some issues with the quality of the TV image. I just installed my new PVR150 last night, plugged the coax into it, then used the SVideo out on my Geforce 4200 to go into the TV.

The image looks decent, but the details are fuzzy, smoothed over.

It's not so bad watching a live TV image, but when you go to a news channel where there's a news crawler or any kind of text, the text looks fuzzy.

I have a splitter in which one cable goes to the HTPC and the other goes to the TV. So I can switch to "cable" and watch live TV the old fashioned way. If I put Sage and the the TV on the same channel and then switch back and forth, you definately notice a quality difference, so the issue isn't the splitter. Normal TV is just sharper.

I'm looking for suggestions. My Geforce 6600GT came with a TV out converter that will allow me to use component cables. I'll try them tonight. Hopefully it's just an SVideo thing (although I don't know what I'll do about a DVD player then since that's what currently uses those hook ups, and I can't use the HTPC for a DVD Player b/c it's in a big ugly case hiding behind my TV.)

I use TV Tool to reposition my TV out image since it out not centered. I couldn't find any settings that could help me there with sharpness. And adjusting the sharpness setting on the TV itself does nothing. Other than trying the Component cables, I'm out of ideas. Oh, I'm running at 800x600.

[Wheemer]

Have you turned off the prefiltering done by the default setting of the pvr 150?? I had to adjust the registry setting for my PVR 250s. This made a big difference for me.

I think you can use this utility to do it automatically: http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/pvr_tweak.html

[insomniac]

you will find that your 6600 will give you an awesome picture. If you want a good svid it has to be on a fx5200 or higher..

Originally Posted by scbundy

Hi guys, I'm having some issues with the quality of the TV image. I just installed my new PVR150 last night, plugged the coax into it, then used the SVideo out on my Geforce 4200 to go into the TV.

The image looks decent, but the details are fuzzy, smoothed over.

It's not so bad watching a live TV image, but when you go to a news channel where there's a news crawler or any kind of text, the text looks fuzzy.

I have a splitter in which one cable goes to the HTPC and the other goes to the TV. So I can switch to "cable" and watch live TV the old fashioned way. If I put Sage and the the TV on the same channel and then switch back and forth, you definately notice a quality difference, so the issue isn't the splitter. Normal TV is just sharper.

I'm looking for suggestions. My Geforce 6600GT came with a TV out converter that will allow me to use component cables. I'll try them tonight. Hopefully it's just an SVideo thing (although I don't know what I'll do about a DVD player then since that's what currently uses those hook ups, and I can't use the HTPC for a DVD Player b/c it's in a big ugly case hiding behind my TV.)

I use TV Tool to reposition my TV out image since it out not centered. I couldn't find any settings that could help me there with sharpness. And adjusting the sharpness setting on the TV itself does nothing. Other than trying the Component cables, I'm out of ideas. Oh, I'm running at 800x600.

[scbundy]

I'll try that reg fix tonight. Unfortunately my 6600GT is in my gaming machine, not my HTPC. So I won't be able to try it. Plus it's PCI Express, the HTPC is AGP.

I'm done spending money on it though (as promised to the wife). So whatever fix I try, it's gotta be a free one.

[insomniac]

welp if it doesnt work, you can get a fx5700 for like $50 @ newegg. Youll be baaaack!

[scbundy]

I looked at that program and it says it's for Win2k. I'm running XP.

[scbundy]

Sadly, like I said, it's gotta be free. 50 bucks is is 50 bucks more than I can spend. It might as well be a million bucks.

[Wheemer]

The reference to Wintv2k is for the software that come with the cards from hauppauge... the program works fine with xp.

I've used a GF MX 440, which I believe might be the same tv out as your 4200, and it looks fine. It's definately not as good as the 5XXX series, but should be alright.

Give that program a shot and remove the temporal noise filtering or whatever it's called, it should look better. It's never going to look as good as straight to your tv though, even with the 6600.

[scbundy]

Damn I was worried about that. I'll give the program a shot, but if the quality will never be as good, then I'm afraid my wonderful little HTPC will be disconnected.

[Wheemer]

Although it won't be quite as good, it should still be pretty darn nice. The tickers and text should be perfectly readable.

But as they say, the shortest path produces the best results. So feeding your cable into the pc, through sage and out to the tv has to degrade it some. Many think it looks better. I strongly believe the pcs not going to improve the picture, unless you have noisy cable to begin with.

best thing to do is give it a shot. I absolutely love the picture I get from my FX 5500, but my MX 440 is noticably less sharp. Your 6600 should look amazing though.

[scbundy]

I realize that with more between the source and TV, degradation will happen. I don't need to image quality to be perfect. I just want a minimal difference between the two, enough so that my wife doesn't keep looking irritated, shaking her head and switching modes.

The 6600 can't be used. That card is in a different PC and is not even compatable with the board in the HTPC (AGP vs PCIe). So it's not an option. I wouldn't use it anyway though. I need it for my gaming machine. Can't play Doom 3 on a Geforce 4.

As the text is, it's readable, but barely. It's fuzzy. When I watch a show fine details are fuzzy. Hair and eyes especially, everything looks smoothed over and washed out.

[CyRex]

I apologize if you already covered this, but what decoders are you using? You could give ffdshow a try, if you aren't already, and do some sharpening / noise reduction.

-Dan

[scbundy]

I'll give that a shot tonight, but my experience using ffdshow a couple weeks ago wasn't very good. The videos would run unstably, sometimes just outright quit. I'm running an Athlon 1700+ with 512M of RAM. Maybe not powerful enough. Would changing codecs help? I installed Nero Showtime and was using it's codecs. Perhaps NVDVD? Or WinDVD?

[scbundy]

I've heard some kind of RBG to S-Video converter will improve quality, as opposed to the SVideo Out (TV Out) on the video card. Anyone know if this will work?

[bones71]

What recording quality are you using?

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by scbundy

I'll give that a shot tonight, but my experience using ffdshow a couple weeks ago wasn't very good. The videos would run unstably, sometimes just outright quit. I'm running an Athlon 1700+ with 512M of RAM. Maybe not powerful enough. Would changing codecs help? I installed Nero Showtime and was using it's codecs. Perhaps NVDVD? Or WinDVD?

I was running Sonic Decoders with ffdshow on an athlon 2200+ without any problems. Do you remember what filters you were using in ffdshow? For me, if I used Gradual Denoise 3D, CPU usage would spike and I would get frame skips and crappy playback, but that could be cured by switching to the regular Denoise setting. Other than that, I used Unsharp Mask, which seemed to work pretty well and didn't use much CPU.

- Dan

[Wakecrash]

You might want to try without the splitter and go straight to the HTPC, any signal loss could perhaps not effect your tv as much as it does the pvr tuner, just a possibility perhaps.
Try the nvidia decoder that comes with Nvdvd and use overlay render and great quality, don't use nvidia audio render.

Although I must say, when I swithched from a 4200 to a 5500 I did experience I nice increase in video quality. I think a good quality RGB to s-video converter is more expensive than a cheep 5200 or higher.

[turak]

I tried using a Geforce 4 Ti4600 for a while, but never reallly got good quality with it when watching TV with sage. It was absolutely horrid when I hooked it up to my 61" Samsung DLP through DVI. My Radeon 9200SE looks good hooked up to a 27" tv. My GeForce 6800GT looks great on my 19" LCD computer monitor and my 6600GT looks great hooked up to my 61" DLP. You could try using sonic decoders or nvdvd decoders. I would definately use overlay instead of VMR9 with that card. Other then that I don't think you will get great picture quality with that card.

[scbundy]

I never realized that VMR9 decreased the image quality. I'll give it a shot b/c I have it enabled.

I always assumed that SAGE recorded live TV in Best quality and setting recording quality was only for programs you recorded and never watched. Now that I think about it, that makes no sense. I had to set to DVD Extra Long Play. I'll give it a shot on Best, which I'm assuming is the best quality or is Great better? Or is it DVD?

I was just using the default settings for ffdshow. I'll tinker with it if all else fails.

Currently I'm using the Intervideo codec with WinDVD6. I never noticed any difference between it and NVDVD and I already own WinDVD.

I've ruled out the SVideo being the problem. I watched a couple of DVD's and high quality mpg's and they looked fantastic. It appears that it's just Live TV being a problem.

[InsertHere]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

Have you turned off the prefiltering done by the default setting of the pvr 150?? I had to adjust the registry setting for my PVR 250s. This made a big difference for me.

What reg setting is that you're talking about? I have 250s (MCEs) and used the tweak tool, but don't see any settings related to prefiltering. Only for the 150/500s.