HD-PVR quality

[SageGk]

I installed the HD-PVR and I am less than impressed with the quality on the HD100. It looks GREAT on my PC monitor, but not as good as my STB on my DLP. A direct component connection from my STB looks MUCH better than the HD100. I have the recording quality on BEST and the conversion quality set to HIGH. Anything else I can do?

[Chriscic]

This is just the way it is. Output from my HD100 is slightly softer than directly from my cable box. I used to think maybe it was just that the Cable box just had a more robust decoder, but now I think the capture itself just loses a little sharpness and definition. This is hardly surprising of course.

Originally the HD-PVR was going to allow for a bit-rate all the way up to 21Mbps, but this got cut to 13 by release time. I wonder if we'll ever see an option for higher bit-rate added at a later date; guessing no as there's some limitation somewhere, but one can hope.

EDIT: Ok, on second read of your post, your cable STB should look a bit better than HD-PVR playback, but not a lot better. So something is wrong. Are you sure your HD100 is outputting HD and not 480i or 480p?

[Brent]

Something is definitely wrong with your setup. There is a VERY slight softening of the picture with the HD-PVR, but it is almost impossible to detect even on my 46" 1080p TV.

Check to see what your cablebox is outputting to your HD-PVR and check your HD-PVR settings. Something definitely has to be wrong if it looks a lot worse.

[ojosch]

If you go to nextcomwireless.com, they can modify almost any STB to capture bit for bit streams off the cable or satellite via USB. I had done the R5000-HD mod for my Dish211 STB and HD recordings are breathtaking on a regular LCD computer monitor (DVI 1680x1050), and almost that good on my boat anchor CRT projector with 100" 13.2 gain curved screen (w/ HDMI input card 1080p) and still pretty decent on my 65" CRT RP TV (component 1080i). I can't wait til a 65" Sony Bravia LCD TV (HDMI) becomes affordable to me and I will get one of those since they have an even sharper image than CRT can dream of. I do notice that the TV that has the 1080i just never looks quite as good as the others that run full 1080p with digital input signal. Some theater enthusiasts will tell you that component is just fine and adequate to do full 1080p but my TV only inputs max 1080i so I think this is the problem, since my CRT projector with full 1080p looks so much better even with a much bigger screen. So this is just food for thought.

One last thing to add about the R5000-HD mod if you do it to your STB is that this company has a special software you buy so that the SageTV can interface with it and use it as a tuner, so that the guides and all recordings are done through SageTV server. That's how I do it. And the HD200 Extender can play back those h264 and mpeg2 streams just fine. The R5000-HD mod also records the streams after the STB decrypts them so you can use them all throughout your home.

[SageGk]

My STB is set to output only 1080i. The HD100 is set to output only 1080p, BC I got tired of resolution switching (picture loss for a few seconds when changing channels). The PQ is good..but not breathtaking by any means. It looks incredible on my 22" lcd monitor, so something is being lossed between the PC and the TV in my living room. I have the recording quality on Best for the HD-PVR.
P.S. My TV is calibrated to the best of my ability and even SD looks decent on it, HD always looked incredible from my STB.

[HelenWeathers]

On my Samsung tv I have to calibrate each input seperately. Check and see if yours is the same. I am hard pressed to see any difference at all between my HD PVR recordings and my DirecTV STB.

[appelm]

I have found that if I use the HDMI connection from the HD100 or HD200, the picture is very washed out unless I use a custom resolution that matches the native resolution of my plasma. The effect was on all screens, video and static menus, HD-PVR output as well as HDHR output. I couldn't get my custom resolution to work with the HD200 so I tried component. Over component I've managed to find resolutions that my TV is displaying much more sharply with a darker (non-washed out) picture that is more similar to the custom resolution I was using over HDMI ont he HD100. Frankly I'm finding I like the component picture even better. Everyone's setup is different but its certainly worth trying different connections and different resolutions.

[SageGk]

Yes, my picture looks washed out too! I'll try components I guess and see what happens.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by SageGk

My STB is set to output only 1080i. The HD100 is set to output only 1080p, BC I got tired of resolution switching (picture loss for a few seconds when changing channels). The PQ is good..but not breathtaking by any means. It looks incredible on my 22" lcd monitor, so something is being lossed between the PC and the TV in my living room. I have the recording quality on Best for the HD-PVR.
P.S. My TV is calibrated to the best of my ability and even SD looks decent on it, HD always looked incredible from my STB.

Force the HD100 to 1080i, it's quite likely the HD100 is doing BOB deinterlacing on the 1080i where as your LCD does something less lame.

[SageGk]

Ok, I tried everything and it still isn't as sharp as it could be. I increased the sharpness of the HD-PVR via Sage and its a little better but I don't want to go too high, bc I don't want SD to look any worse. What other settings have you guys tweaked?

P.S. For all you guys running an HD100 with HDMI, go try it with components as suggested by another member...rich colors, makes the HDMI connection look washed out, especially in dark scenes.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by SageGk

P.S. For all you guys running an HD100 with HDMI, go try it with components as suggested by another member...rich colors, makes the HDMI connection look washed out, especially in dark scenes.

That means you didn't calibrate the display for HDMI.

[SageGk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

That means you didn't calibrate the display for HDMI.

Actually
i did calibrate it for HDMI, I think stranger89 hit it on the head. I went into detailed setup and changed the output resolution to 1080i and all is better now as far as brightness is concerned.

[SageGk]

Update, I went back to HDMI. The problem WAS with upscaling. I went into detailed setup and chose 1080i as the resolution and now the PQ is incredible.

[TorontoSage]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

Originally the HD-PVR was going to allow for a bit-rate all the way up to 21Mbps, but this got cut to 13Mbps by release time. I wonder if we'll ever see an option for higher bit-rate added at a later date; guessing no as there's some limitation somewhere, but one can hope.

Does anyone know why the maximum encoding bitrate was cut from the original 21 Mbps (I even heard it was going to be higher) down to 13.5 Mbps? The fact sheet for the Ambarella A2 processor doesn't say what the maximum encoding bitrate is (it does say that the 'Host/Bitstream I2S Interface supports bit rates up to 40 mbps' but a Google search shows that 'I2S' refers to audio, not video).

I can't think that it was because higher bitrates result in larger files and that Hauppauge felt that the file size at 13.5 Mbps was already too large, since the bitrate is user definable anyway.

The h.264 video codec is, bit-for-bit, up to 40% more efficient than the MPEG-2 video codec that is used in US HDTV broadcasts. A note on the myth.org says that 'a 13.5 Mb/s h.264 stream is roughly equivalent to a full-channel-bitrate MPEG-2 recording at approximately 19 Mb/s' . Since US HDTV broadcasts are a bit over 18 Mbps (no pun intended) then maybe that's why Hauppauge set the maximum (compressed) stream to be 13.5 Mbps (ie about equal to the uncompressed US HDTV broadcast rate). I wonder how the analog component video stream, which is the one Hauppauge converts, differs in quality from an HDMI stream, which is digital. Most people (ie the 99.9% of us with normal, albeit possibly corrected, visual acuity) cannot tell the difference between HDMI and compoment video even when looking at an 1920x1020p HDTV display, it seems.