New system - NEW TV !!!

[geogecko]

Yep, while SD content isn't the best on a 1080p display, it's still very watchable.

I was afraid of upgrading to an HDTV, because of all the negative comments about PQ of SD content.

Now, it may be different if you are feeding an SD signal from say, a STB directly into a HDTV input on the TV, because PC scalers are actually very good, considering.

I was surprised to see that my DVD collection actually looked better on the HDTV than the SDTV they used to be played on.

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by blade

Not true, when I got my first big screen HD set I was very disappointed with the PQ using analog cable. Once I got a cleaner signal coming in and calibrated my display it looks fine. The PQ on my HD set looks just as good if not better than any SD set I've seen using analog.

I agree that HD sets show more of the imperfections in the signal especially on a large TV. You need a cleaner analog signal than you do with a SDTV. There are a lot of people using HD sets and analog signal and I doubt that would be the case if the picture was actually horrible.

When you say "analog signal" are you referring to RF? My system is full digital after the RF tuner input. The "digital" system is analog as well until it goes into the STB analog to digital receiver.

The RF goes into my PVR500 tuner then onto HD through Sage, etc. then displayed with a high def display adapter on PCIe then out on HDMI to the TV

I agree that the digital tuner has less possibility of quality loss, but after that the signals should not degrade.

One thing I did find out was that the STB S-Video looks a bit better than the tuner signal.
Maybe I need an amp or something before my PVR500? The signal is split 3 ways from the wall.
RF form wall jack to 1) STB 2) TV antenna input 3) PVR500 antenna input

TV looks OK though.

mcb

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by geogecko

Yep, while SD content isn't the best on a 1080p display, it's still very watchable.

I was afraid of upgrading to an HDTV, because of all the negative comments about PQ of SD content.

Now, it may be different if you are feeding an SD signal from say, a STB directly into a HDTV input on the TV, because PC scalers are actually very good, considering.

I was surprised to see that my DVD collection actually looked better on the HDTV than the SDTV they used to be played on.

Ahh - scalers.
Maybe thats one of the areas to look at.
The "upscale" to HD could very well be causing some of my problems.

mcb

[blade]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

When you say "analog signal" are you referring to RF? My system is full digital after the RF tuner input. The "digital" system is analog as well until it goes into the STB analog to digital receiver.

The RF goes into my PVR500 tuner then onto HD through Sage, etc. then displayed with a high def display adapter on PCIe then out on HDMI to the TV

I agree that the digital tuner has less possibility of quality loss, but after that the signals should not degrade.

One thing I did find out was that the STB S-Video looks a bit better than the tuner signal.
Maybe I need an amp or something before my PVR500? The signal is split 3 ways from the wall.
RF form wall jack to 1) STB 2) TV antenna input 3) PVR500 antenna input

TV looks OK though.

mcb

I was talking about regular old analog cable. I didn't mean to imply that it had anything to do with your problem one way or another. I just wanted to point out that the myth that only a HD signal will be watchable on a HD set isn't true.

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by blade

I was talking about regular old analog cable. I didn't mean to imply that it had anything to do with your problem one way or another. I just wanted to point out that the myth that only a HD signal will be watchable on a HD set isn't true.

Yeah - I understand what you mean. I was just saying there should be no SIGNAL degradation after the tuner and it should look the same if there were perfect decoders, scalers, displays, etc.

mcb

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

Ahh - scalers.
Maybe thats one of the areas to look at.
The "upscale" to HD could very well be causing some of my problems.

mcb

Oh no - here I am talking to myself again!

Is it possible my displayed picture would look better if I used component video instead of HDMI? I assumed that the digital would be better, but maybe the analog HD input would be better on my TV when I have a SD source? Now it seems I've got a pretty good picture after I turned up the GB per hr / quality setting. I still have little sparkling fringes along the tops and bottom of on screen TV text and horizontal lines. Sage generated text is excellent. It seems the fringe comes from pixels flipping back and forth from on to off just above and below the horizontal edge of the text or line. Is it possoble the component video would scale better inside the TV?

mcb

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

Oh no - here I am talking to myself again!

Is it possible my displayed picture would look better if I used component video instead of HDMI?

Possible, but not likely, the difference between the two should not be "significant".

I assumed that the digital would be better, but maybe the analog HD input would be better on my TV when I have a SD source? Now it seems I've got a pretty good picture after I turned up the GB per hr / quality setting.

Sounds good, that shouldn't have changed the brightness any, did you do something different to figure that out?

I still have little sparkling fringes along the tops and bottom of on screen TV text and horizontal lines.

Sounds like deinterlacing issues. I missed/forgot what video card and decoders you're using.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

Also, do I have to restart Sage TV each time I change a video or audio setting?
Or does that just apply to the .properties file?

I don't think this part was answered, but I might have just missed it... when you make those changes within the SageTV, they will take effect the next time you play a video, so you don't need to restart SageTV. Recording quality setting changes take effect the next time a recording starts.

When manually editing the properties file, you have to edit the file while SageTV is not running or else your changes will be ignored & overwritten. So, in this case SageTV would be restarted as part of the editing process requirements.

- Andy

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

But before you go troubleshooting that you might try downloading some HD-WMV content off the web (microsoft has clips available for free) to see if they look good in comparison to your normal recordings. Or load up a DVD.

....

it could be the video codec etc.

I finally got some HD content from the MS web site and my picture looks really good using those clips.

There are still a few problems, but I think now that it is in the record side.

One is marginal signal strength. My STB has been dropping out on HD a bit, so I ordered an amp to see if that will help. The signal strength says -3db (was +1 before I split the RF to connect my SageTV box) and TWC says -2 is about as low as it should go.

The other thing I see now is a slight stutter occasionally.
There are threads with solutions to that that I have to try so I'll do that.

What are the video codecs? PureVideo, etc?

mcb

[cslatt]

Did you ever get around to trying to record in higher quality (higher GB/hr). If you are still at the sage default recording quality then it will definitely look bad on that big TV. I can't even stand that quality level on my 27".

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

What are the video codecs? PureVideo, etc?

Ya, purevideo. I have long been having problems with HD and my 6600gt, read my post here to see what I did to fix it.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19210

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by cslatt

Did you ever get around to trying to record in higher quality (higher GB/hr). If you are still at the sage default recording quality then it will definitely look bad on that big TV. I can't even stand that quality level on my 27".

Yes, I did turn that up. Way up - to the MAX !
I have enough storage, so, it won't affect me too much.
450GB / 3GBph = 150 hours.
When 500GB dips below $100 I'll get another disk.

Now, quality is OK, but I still have "noise" around the fringes of things, especially on-screen TV text (vs SageTV text which is very good) and straight horizontal lines. Actually even worse is a line that is just off horizontal. The edge seems to have the "jaggys" pretty bad. I think this might relate to interlaced vs not, but I haven't worked on that yet. There are de-interlacers available, but I need to research to see if that could be the problem and how to use them.

I am also looking at getting a better RF signal. My HD STB drops out once in a while saying "Poor Signal", so that may have an effect on my PVR500 as well.
I split the RF as:
RF->2way#1->STB and 2way#2->TV and PVR500
So, STB gets 1/2 while the TV and Sage get 1/4 of original signal level.
I also may try a 4way instead, but then they all get only 1/4.
I've got an amp on order, so I'll see if that helps.

By the way, I just hooked up an S-Video cable from the STB to Sage and that picture looks pretty good. Now I have to look at several channels to see if it is better on all of them. Using the STB is real slow to change channels though, so I'd like to use the PVR500 tuners.

mcb

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

Now, quality is OK, but I still have "noise" around the fringes of things, especially on-screen TV text (vs SageTV text which is very good) and straight horizontal lines. Actually even worse is a line that is just off horizontal. The edge seems to have the "jaggys" pretty bad. I think this might relate to interlaced vs not, but I haven't worked on that yet. There are de-interlacers available, but I need to research to see if that could be the problem and how to use them.

I will guarantee, or your money back , that that's a deinterlacing issue. You've got a 6600, I think you owe it to yourself to give the nVidia decoders in DXVA mode a try.

[blade]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I will guarantee, or your money back , that that's a deinterlacing issue. You've got a 6600, I think you owe it to yourself to give the nVidia decoders in DXVA mode a try.

I definetly agree. I have a 6600 and it looks pretty bad with the Sage decoders. The Nvidia ones make a huge difference.

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I will guarantee, or your money back , that that's a deinterlacing issue. You've got a 6600, I think you owe it to yourself to give the nVidia decoders in DXVA mode a try.

What level of nVidia to I need?
NVIDIA PureVideo Platinum
NVIDIA PureVideo Gold
NVIDIA PureVideo Bronze

I'm looking at GOLD. Looks like the most features for the money.

mcb

[mcbinder]

Originally Posted by blade

I definetly agree. I have a 6600 and it looks pretty bad with the Sage decoders. The Nvidia ones make a huge difference.

What's your setup look ilike?

mcb

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mcbinder

What level of nVidia to I need?
NVIDIA PureVideo Platinum
NVIDIA PureVideo Gold
NVIDIA PureVideo Bronze

I'm looking at GOLD. Looks like the most features for the money.

mcb

None of those features work outside WMP/MCE. If you're using Sage, Bronze is all you need.

[geogecko]

2nd that.