channels not sharp at all and out of tune :(

[zeltak]

hi all

i have a wintv pvr 150 and finally i got my HTPC working perfectly. the only problem now is that whenver i open the tv option, the channels start blurry and black and white and it takes 5-8 seconds until the chanells are tuned
properly. after that it works well sometimes and sometimes stays very blurry and not sharp at all. when i close the program and restart it then the whole tuning proccess starts again. has anyone come across this?



Zeltak

[flavius]

Are you using VMR9? Have you tried overlay? What's in that box? What decoders do you have available?

[zeltak]

hi

ive tried it with everything, overlay. vmr9, vmr7 etc... tried it with alot of decoders, the default ones,the wintv pvr ones, etc...i am really frustrated....they picture quality is still very bad...not focused and takes forever to tune. could this have to do with the video card (gforce3 64 mb)? it works fine with dvd and divx. anyway i really am disappointed with the money i spent, sage tv is an awesome software but since i cant get a picture quality thats even 80% of a normal atv antena its frustrating. would appriciate any additional help!

Zeltak

[domc]

I just purchased the bundle that SageTV offers with the PVR-150. Everthing is working as planned except I've got a FUZZY picture and MPEG artifacts.
My situation is that when the video is being viewed in a small window it looks find. Blow it up to watch LIVE TV and it's horrible.

I assumed that if I bought the bundle from SageTV it would work right out of the box. Guess I was wrong.

[Blkhrtd]

Originally Posted by domc

My situation is that when the video is being viewed in a small window it looks find. Blow it up to watch LIVE TV and it's horrible.

I assumed that if I bought the bundle from SageTV it would work right out of the box. Guess I was wrong.

I found that I had to basically tune both my individual recording cards, (or at least put them on the same lvl with respect to each other) and also fine tune the computers display settings.
I was very unhappy with my picture in the beginning as well, but found that my computer was pumping out far too high Gamma and brightness so everything looked a bit washed out. Also, because my cards were not tuned similarly, if I tuned my computers display to one tuner's recorded show, it would be off for recordings done by the other tuner.
Also, download the free trial of the NVIDIA Purevideo decoders and see if you get better visual results. Three things to do, the first you should do anyway, the third is just a matter of taste and what works best for your setup:
1.) Tune the cards individually to record at the same settings (contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, gamma).
2.) Tune the output of my computer display/vid card (constrast, gamma, sat, hue)
3.) Started using the NVIDIA Purevideo decoders (I have an ATI card and see outstanding results when using these decoders).

Those seemed to be the three things that made my recordings/playback very nice. If you do the above, and still see artifacts on the enlarged screen, try upping the recording quality to something like DVD Standard and see if that helps you out.

-Shadrach