Windows OS Not Showing In WideScreen

[blade]

Originally Posted by stanger89

There's a free DVD a user on AVS authored for setting brightness and contrast. I think it's in the Calibration Sticky in the HTPC forum.

Thanks, I'll have to give it a try.

[blade]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Also, out of curiousity, do you like to capture 3.2gb/hour or what quality do you use? I would think I should be able to get better quality than my Tivo because my Tivo captures at a resolution of 352x480 with 2600kbps. But, at present, Sage TV does not quite look as good as Tivo.

I use DVD Standard, which I think is 3 or 3.2gb/hr. I used to have a custom setting that was slightly higher, but I did a clean install of Sage awhile back and haven't re-add it to the property file.

The capture settings can make a difference, but most of the difference you're seeing is probably with the playback. Tivos use hardware decoding and it takes a lot of tweaking and a very good video card to match that. It'll just take some time to get everything just right.

[Polypro]

Am I the only one who thinks TiVo's look bad

DVD Std for me, going to MPEG2 Max just used more space. Hauppauge static and dynamic filtering can make a big difference (I use 2 static, and 6 dynamic btw).

For about $20, check AVS for "GetGray Calibration Disk"...worth the money.

www.calibrate.tv


P

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Am I the only one who thinks TiVo's look bad

I had a Tivo for about 48 hours once

[mike1961]

The 2 static and 6 dynamic is that for the spatial and temporal in the tweaker? It appears that that setting applies for all the tuners and I don't need to set that for each individual tuner. Also, I could not find or make the volume work in the tweaker. I'm not quite sure where that is. Finally, I don't understand the difference in the tweaker between the capture settings and encoder settings.

I'll continue to try to get the NVidia decoders to work. Another thing I noticed when the Nvidia decoders work is that they don't seem to do the smooth fast forward/rewind with Nielms add-ons like I can with the Sage decoders.

Thanks again,
Mike

Originally Posted by Polypro

Am I the only one who thinks TiVo's look bad

DVD Std for me, going to MPEG2 Max just used more space. Hauppauge static and dynamic filtering can make a big difference (I use 2 static, and 6 dynamic btw).

For about $20, check AVS for "GetGray Calibration Disk"...worth the money.

www.calibrate.tv


P

[JDizzy]

Yeah,
I have the same problem with a 42" rear projection as far as in order to fill out the screen horizontily I lose some of my picture beyond the border vertically... My windows desktop is off the screen in all directions and I have to scroll to get to things
I have it set at 1928 x ??? (whatever the highest setting is).
I had to do this or nothing filled the screen and I had black bars all the way around

In Sage I had to tweek the aspect setting also to fill out screen...

I am running a Nvidia GeForce 7300GS with DVI out

Basically, I had 2 choices:
1) fill the screen top to bottom and have 2" black bars on left and right borders
2) Fill the entire screen and lose about 1/2" of picture beyond border top and bottom.

I went with number 2

I wish I could get everything centered and on screen but I lost patience..

Anyone have a better solution ie: 'possibly set lower resolution and then try to scale up to fill screen'....dunno

[blade]

Originally Posted by JDizzy

Anyone have a better solution ie: 'possibly set lower resolution and then try to scale up to fill screen'....dunno

You shouldn't have any problems with an Nvidia card. Go into your driver settings and adjust the underscan from there. There are 2 sliders, one for the vertical and the other for horizontal. As you slide them you'll see the image on the screen change sizes. Keep reducing the size until the image fits the screen properly. When you apply the settings it will change your resolution accordingly so that the desktop will fit the screen properly. For 720p I'm running something like 1152*664 or something odd like that. The underscan adjustment will allow for all sorts of oddball resolutions so that the screen is filled properly.

[mike1961]

JDizzy - the moment I used a VGA cable instead of component cables, windows filled my screen regardless of the resolution I used. Also, the clarity is much better. I'm thinking that it's either windows or something with the graphics drivers that interprets the TV as a monitor with VGA cable and something is different with component cables (maybe true for composite and svideo as well, not sure but VGA cables work really well).

Mike

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by mike1961

I'll continue to try to get the NVidia decoders to work.

Mike,
That can be a tricky one, I had some errors when I set up the nvidia decoder as well. There are a couple of places to configure the nvidia decoders in Sage, audio and video, for both DVD and Video's. The audio features can be tricky in that the surround sound options in the nVidia decoder may not work in SageTV only windows media player. Thus I have my decoders set to nVidia Video Decoder for video & AC3 Filter for audio.

Another part of the issue may be that you are using an ATI graphics card. I don't know how well the nvidia decoder works with ATI hardware. There are features of the nvidia video decoder that are written to take advantage of nVidia hardware. Namely the PureVideo deinterlacer. For your set up you would probably want to select the nVidia Post Processor, as it rely's on the CPU instead of the graphics hardware. For my set up the Sage mpeg decoder just doesn't compare to nVidia one, a Huge improvement. But then again I have nVidia hardware.

There are also settings inside of the decoder, when it is running there will be a tray icon that you can then access the properties of. But if you can't get it to run, then I guess that is mute. Also, I don't know what happens if your 15 day trial is expired.

You may also be noticing that SD material just doesn't look good because your new display points out everything you couldn't see on your old set. What used to be fuzzy crud is now really clearly crud. Load up a DVD to see if it is the source file or your graphics settings that are your problem. A good decoder can make a poor SD source look a little better but it can't do magic.

[mike1961]

Where do I access these settings? I have paid for a product that does not work. The Nvidia came bundled with Sage from pcAlchemy and I got the PureVideo upgrade. Every time I select nvidia in Sage I get an exception error. I'm just not sure what the problem is. How can I be sure that my version is properly licensed. You would think this product would tell you and not just "refuse to work." No offense but I'm really starting to see this product as real trash for it is about the most difficult piece of software I have ever had. I would have given up long ago except for so many users here who swear by it (and not at it like me).

Thanks,
Mike

Originally Posted by Humanzee

Mike,
The audio features can be tricky in that the surround sound options in the nVidia decoder may not work in SageTV only windows media player. Thus I have my decoders set to nVidia Video Decoder for video & AC3 Filter for audio.

Another part of the issue may be that you are using an ATI graphics card. I don't know how well the nvidia decoder works with ATI hardware. There are features of the nvidia video decoder that are written to take advantage of nVidia hardware. Namely the PureVideo deinterlacer. For your set up you would probably want to select the nVidia Post Processor, as it rely's on the CPU instead of the graphics hardware. For my set up the Sage mpeg decoder just doesn't compare to nVidia one, a Huge improvement. But then again I have nVidia hardware.
.

[JDizzy]

I am actually using DVI to connect to the TV

I have seen the aspect sliders as described above but cannot seem to find them again. For some reason when running video (they say to click the icon to access the settings), I can see the icon but clicking on it does nothing...

I have changed my resolution down to 1600x900 and now the entire Windows desktop is visable on screen with a 1" gap on sides and 1/2" on top.

If I could find the slider, it sounds like the ticket as I also need some weird resolution to fill the screen and trying to make a custom one.... well, after looking (and scaring myself once) I don't think I'm cut out for that....

I do have a Nvidia GeForce 7300GS video card and I can get awesome video and AC3 audio using the Nvidia decoder with the internal Sage DVD player.

Fortunately, my sound card and surround system is good enough to mimic the surround effect pretty well for my imported video (which does in fact have true AC3 audio with it, but it just doesn't want to play).

I guess getting things dialed in isn't the easiest undertaking but the results are well worth it and having people as yourselves to help guide the way is priceless.

Thanks
JDizz

[blade]

Originally Posted by JDizzy

I have seen the aspect sliders as described above but cannot seem to find them again. For some reason when running video (they say to click the icon to access the settings), I can see the icon but clicking on it does nothing...

When you go into the video card settings I think the section you're looking for is called nView or something like. I believe you want to click Display Settings in the nView section and you'll click on underscan I think. I'll try to check as soon as I'm back at my TV to see exactly what it's all called.

To access the Nvidia tray icon you'll need it to be the default decoder. Then you can play back a video in windows media or set Sage to use the default decoder. For some reason you can only access the Nvidia tray icon when it's used as default and not when you select it by name. At least that's typically the problem.

[JDizzy]

I guess the way it is that you fiddle around, try different resolutions and configurations and finally come up with something you can live with...the best of all worlds.
I found all the controls, went back to square one......worked my way back up and basically ended up with what I originally started with only getting to this point via a different path... with the same results..

I can live with what I have and can do everything with onr remote (which was a main part of my criteria)
JDizz