Picture Quality / Blurry Text

[Jynxed]

Hi all,

I need some help with finishing off my HPTC again. I recently picked up a new mother board and did a fresh install of everything. I've worked out all the minor bugs out of everything and my last problem is picture quality is a little worse then I remember and blurry text. Its really starting to get annoying.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone can point me in the right direction. Picture quality is great if I skip the HTPC.

Heres my setup:

30" SDTV
ATI x1300 (latest drivers)
Purevideo decoder (latest everything, Nvidia icon showing in systray)
Nvidia DualTV tuner (latest drivers)
Lastest version of SageTV
TV out is done with an S-video cable.

[Wirenut]

I just yanked my brand new, ati x1650pro in lieu of an Nvidia 7600GT.

I have a nice system, but it's still only an AGP based mobo. So I have fewer options than the peeps with PCIe, but you can still get nice results for home theater with an AGP style card. You just have to look around.

I learned alot, and got a pretty decent picture out of the ATI though. It just was plagued with de-interlacing problems.

Make sure the TVout is selected as the primary monitor. Are you using VMR9 and FSE? That seemed to be the best for me and my card.

Also try googling the TRDenoise registry hack. It seems ATI has a noise reduction circuit that gets confused and causes blurring. Also, there's a reg-hack for Detail_Enhance... which also blurrs contrasting colors. I believe I found them over in the AVS forums. It helped. A lot. And be sure to try the AVIVO codecs. They seemed more stabile for de-interlacing with my ATI card than the purevideo codecs.... and AVIVO Codecs area a separate download from ATI, as well as the latest Catalyst and drivers which, I think is at v8.3 right now.

The purevideo codec seemed to work okay with the ATI card. My biggest problem with the ATI was de-interlacing. Some people will tell you that you don't need to de-interlace with S-Video out, and set the De-interlacing to weave, but that really looked crappy on my SD TV.[but better than poorly de-interlaced output] Once the de-interlacing is up and working in auto or vector adaptive or motion adaptive, it looks great.[Look under AVIVO settings in the CCC] I tried just about all of them.

Really, I had an awesome picture with my ATI, but if I fast forward or rewind or comskip the playing video, I had a 50/50 chance of a clear picture or the blurred picture. Fast forwarding and rewinding till I got a clear picture again... it was like a crapshoot. My mpeg2 video streams were captured with a PVR500MCE, and you might not have the problem with your Dual TV card.... as it seems to be of superior quality.

So really, I think my ATI was improperly pulling the cadence from the source mpeg... [ie. 4:3 pulldown] or maybe it was the Hauppauge encoders spitting out garbage in the mpeg capture... but swapping it out for an Nvidia and purevideo solved my problem altogether. Even still using the PVR500MCE for capture and encode.

I've been running ATI's with great success, but I have been at wit's end with my new X1650pro. I thought it was an upgrade from the 9600se I had... but when it worked... it worked well. When it missed the decode de-interlacing, it was really blurry. Tickers looked terrible.... try fast forwarding or rewinding a couple of times and WHAMMO... a clear picture... until comskip jumps and it's another 50/50 chance of goodness. I have spent much googling and there's a lot of people having problems with these cards right now. Definitely do some googling for like "ATI" and "blurring." There's plenty of hits. Me thinks the AVS forums had my answers.

You're not alone.

Maybe ATI's next Cat's release will fix it. [heard that before?...echo...]

I'm not biased either way with ATI or nVidia... just want a good picture.

Right now, my system hums along perfectly with an Nvidia based EVGA 7600GT for 129.00 bucks... with a very sweet picture.


Peace,

Wirenut

[Jynxed]

Thanks for the tips I'll looking into them. I did a descent amount of searching and have a few things that I'll try this weekend.

Anyone else with some suggestions.

[Wirenut]

Actually after replying to your thread.... and having the chance to work more with the Nvidia card, it appears the pulldown error happens still.

It seems whenever there is a search or jump, FF, or RWD, in the playing file, the de-interlacing either hit's or misses.

This may or may not be what you're seeing... I'm gonna open up another thread for this issue, as I believe it has only happened since I upgraded from 6.2 to 6.3.

This was more evident with the ATI, but the Nvidia card can be made to do it too.

Still, the TRDenoise and the Detail_Enhance reg hacks helped alot with the X1000 series card.

Best of luck to ya,

Wirenut