Hauppauge HD PVR before/after samples?

[bastian74]

Thanks for the efforts. Well, I can't really see any difference in the two 720p clips, which is good news.

[mikejaner]

In case anybody's interested. Here's a clip from Transformers, recorded at 1080i in Stereo. Source is HDDVD.
https://my.syncplicity.com/share/yxs...v/TransClip.ts

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Here's a clip from Transformers, recorded at 1080i in Stereo. Source is HDDVD.

Mike, That's quite an impressive clip. You've seen the source direct to your monitor, how does the HD PVR compare to the source in your opinion?

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Mike, That's quite an impressive clip. You've seen the source direct to your monitor, how does the HD PVR compare to the source in your opinion?

The source is very close when displayed on my TV. I picked a high motion clip to show how well these devices capture when they are given a good source. I played back the same scene recorded off of a movie channel in HD, and the scene was horrible in comparison because of compression blocks all over the place. Even FIOS compresses the heck out of HD video.

[bastian74]

Well I finally got sage running with the hd pvr. It seems kind of soft to me. I notice the 5-o clock shadows on guys faces and stuff which are sharp native are fuzzy after the hd pvr. As far as I can tell there aren't any processing options for the pvr. I'm also confused about the record format according to sage: h.264 mpeg2. Shouldn't it be mpeg4?

[stanger89]

MPEG-2 is referring to the container type, and MPEG-2 Transport Stream.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by bastian74

I notice the 5-o clock shadows on guys faces and stuff which are sharp native are fuzzy after the hd pvr.

Are you watching native thru the YPbPr (passthrough) inputs on your TV or HDMI on the TV or are you comparing the component inputs hooked directly to your TV to the HD PVR recording?

What recording quality settings are you using on your recordings?

[bastian74]

I set up two 19" LCD monitors 1280x1024, one to the HTPC / HD PVR and one directly to the directv receiver; both via DVI cables. The Sat box was set to 4:3 crop (same signal to both monitors)

What stands out the most to me is that video compression (setting: great) from the HD PVR is that it makes people's faces look "waxy" or textureless.

Football games etc look great because they are images with high contrast and sharp edges.

The compression stands out the most if you watch a tv show with actors who have 5 o clock shadow as after compression the grit is turned smooth.

I took photographs of the side by side monitors here:
http://www.net-express.com/hd-pvr/


Anyone else notice the same thing?

The easiest comparison is to hook up the tv directly to the STB and to the HTPC on another input, then swap back and forth.

I have a 67" so I guess it's not as forgiving to compression artifacts. I kind of regret not getting the R5000 capture mod (captures raw mpeg4 from the STB) though I don't think it works on my STB: H21. Or does it?

[mikejaner]

Cant tell anything by your pictures. Did you use software decoding, or the HD100?

[Razillian]

I notice the image softening with the HD-PVR playback when using the Arcsoft decoders. Using the Cyberlink PDVD8 decoders things look just as crisp as straight playback to the TV, imo atleast. If you haven't done so already, try playback using an HD100 extender (if you have one) or different decoders (free demos available for almost all of them) and see if you notice a difference.

[bastian74]

I've tried various codecs in sage, and manually via graphedit. I'm not sure what's going on though, my CPU usage during HD playback of 1080i is always around 2% constantly.

Clearly the ATI HD3870 is offloading but I thought only like 2 applications supported ATI AVIVO?

I read a lot of posts about people not being able to get AVIVO to work, and I can't shut it off!

BTW, I have PDVD7 but not 8. (Came with my LG BD ROM)
Like I said, I don't see a difference, but I have a suspicion ATI AVIVO is doing it somehow instead. Does the software decoder in the graph even mater if AVIVO is offloading it? I wouldnt think so.

[bastian74]

Well, it looks like you're partly right. Not that I need a hardware decoder, but that it was not the source file that was the problem.

I still can't figure out how to turn off hardware acceleration on the ATI HD3870, but when I play the same file back on my other computer (opteron 185 dual core) with the core avc codec it looks much better. Faces don't look waxy.

So now I have to figure out what's going on with that ATI. It seems to do hardware playback wether or not dxva is enabled in the codecs.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by bastian74

What stands out the most to me is that video compression (setting: great) from the HD PVR is that it makes people's faces look "waxy" or textureless.

You should also change your recording default to Best H-264. It turns out "great" isn't.

[bastian74]

When I uninstall TME the cpu usage to playback a 1080i video is about 20%
When TME is installed (Specifically Theater) cpu usage is only 2% regardless of codec used, and the quality is much better.

Playback in graphedit and mplayer classic is smooth, however playback in sagetv is very very poor.

If I reinstall TME sage playback is smooth but quality is poor again.

Any ideas?

I don't understand why TME has an effect when it doesn't even show up in graphedit.

[proudx]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

When I first got my HD-PVR I directly compared Firewire capture (original bitstream) to a HD-PVR recording of the exact same clip. The HD-PVR recording looked nearly identical (no loss in quality that I could discern) when both were played back on my PC.

Now, one thing to note is that the original recording looked materially better on my Comcast DVR than either the firewire capture or the HD-PVR file played back on my PC.

Therefore my conclusion is the HD-PVR is recording the video nearly perfectly, but PC decoders are inferior to STB decoding. Therefore by going with the HD-PVR you will be giving up some slight (but noticeable) quality if you have a big screen (I project on a 110" screen). Also, I believe Brent Evans has noted that the HD-PVR recording quality is every bit as good as recordings from his HDHR (which also records the raw bitstream).

In particular, my Sage HD100 media extender plays back a bit softer than my cable box.

I've had all sorts of problems with my HD-PVR setup by the way, but that's not what you're asking about.

Hope that helps.

So are you saying even with a sage hd100 media extender connected to a hdhomerun the quality is not on par with the comcast hd dvr boxes?

[Slack]

I downloaded the clips linked to earlier in this thread. to determine if my sage box was up to playing them. But I get an error about sage being unable to render the audio.

Sage 6.4
Audio out via SPDIF to amp.

How to play these?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Slack

I downloaded the clips linked to earlier in this thread. to determine if my sage box was up to playing them. But I get an error about sage being unable to render the audio.

Sage 6.4
Audio out via SPDIF to amp.

How to play these?

Those clips were made with the old stereo aac drivers. Try playing the clip with Total Media and if that works, you can edit your sage.properties files like mentioned in this thread;

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=37951

[Slack]

Yeah, well my MicroATX with onbaord nVidia 6150 chipset was not up to the task. Half expected that, was hoping pure video would save me.

Guess it's time go server-client and get a HD200.

[Steve52]

Originally Posted by Slack

Yeah, well my MicroATX with onbaord nVidia 6150 chipset was not up to the task. Half expected that, was hoping pure video would save me.

Guess it's time go server-client and get a HD200.

I had three client computers with nvidia 6150 chipsets, and I was only able to get one of them to work properly with HD PVR files. It was the last 6150 motherboard I purchased. I just installed an HD200 to replace one of my clients and it is working great so far.