Poor quality in LiveTV - not Sage specific though...(long)

[rotaryracer]

Well, after months of messing around and talking the talk, I FINALLY downloaded the SageTV trial to go with my newly installed PVR250.

Prior to doing this, I tried the myHTPC TV Plugin - yeah, it works, but the interface looks like it was drawn with crayons. I had configured it to use my NVDVD 2.55 decoder, but picture quality on LiveTV was pretty bad - grainy, washed out, and basically looking like I was pulling in a remote channel with rabbit ears.

Went to set SageTV, figuring this would be the be all and end all! Of course, wouldn't you know that the SageTV server happens to be down for the hour or so I want to install.....

In the meantime, I figure I'll try the competition, so I download the Snapstream trial. I will say this - I can't wait to Sage Studio is done so I can skin the interface - they've got a NICE looking product. Not sure about stability/features and no mouse control is ridiculous, but it does look nice! Anyway, I setup Snapstream with my NVDVD decoder, highest quality stream, and go to town. Hmmmm.....LiveTV is still pretty crappy looking - all the problems with the TV Pluging and I'm getting random stutters like the frame rate is too slow. Decide to move on to Sage...

The Sage server comes back up and I grab Dish network (Sage service doesn't cover Rochester, NY yet) for grins, figuring I can remap channels later. Buzz through setup, configure for the NVDVD decoder (not sure yet about the MPEG A/B/etc. or deinterlace and dScaler is greyed out), since I hear the NVIDIA decoder is supposed to be all that and a bag of chips.

Hey, waddaya know, LiveTV still stinks! It might be a better than the TV Plugin and roughly equal with Snapstream, but the quality on Phillips 19" monitor is pretty bad. I went and tried the Intervideo decoder, but it was worse than the NVDVD decoder - break up and jitters.

Now, I KNOW there are some discerning videophiles on this board and AVS and I know there's NO way they would accept this picture quality. After building my HTPC and spending the last two weeks configuring software for the moment I could do PVR stuff, this was kind of a letdown. Anyone have any thoughts based on the spec below?

• Abit NF7 with AMD AthlonXP 2500+ "Barton"
• 350W Enermax Power Supply
• Radeon (Powercolor) 9200SE with Cat 3.7 drivers
• PVR-250 wth newest drivers from SHSPVR
• NVDVD 2.55 decoder (also tried Intervideo)
• WinXP SP1 and all updates (including DX9.0b)
• Standard analog cable

I'm sure there's something in setup or config I'm missing (and I didn't have a lot of time to work on it last night). Any thoughts/input/ideas would be greatly appreciated.

It is supposed to show a picture at least as good as regular cable, right? Right?

Sincerely,

Disillusioned in Rochester (a.k.a. Jason Smith)

[msm]

Unfortunally you will not ever get as good as regular cable - why? because Sage (or for that matter any other PVR software) will need to compress the video down in order to store it, and therefore by the very nature of compression (yes, even mpeg2) the picture quality will be reduced. Added to this is the fact you are viewing on a monitor, which were never designed for displaying the interlacced images of a standard TV.

Now for the good news. You will be able to get a decent picture quality. Without knowing what your picture quality is atm, or indeed what you expect good to be, i expect it can be made better than your current version. Lets put it this way, it can look way better than a TiVO...

Ok, ideas to try..

Decoder: Not tried NVDVD tbh. But, the general concensus on this board is that the PowerDVD 5 codec produces one of the best pictures around. I think they do a trial version - grab a copy and see if that helps. Remeber to switch on Hardware acceleration in PoverDVDs configuration (right click power dvd goto cofiguration and find the correct button).

Brightness/sharpness etc

"out the box" the PVR card/drivers do a damned good job of providing possibly the worst sharpness/hue etc settings possible. Try and change these. There are detailed instructions in other posts on this forum - do a search for "sharpness" or "hue" or the like, and look at what other people have set them too for a good start. It makes ALOT of difference.

MPEG setting

Sage defaults to a mpeg setting of "great". At 2 Gb an hour this is a good setting, but there are better ones. Go to the detailed setup page, look under the multimedia tab (i think) and look for video setting (again i think - may be wrong on these..).Click the tab and choose a higher setting. Even if you don't want to stick at this setting, it will give you an idea of what can be acheived.

Just soem ideas to try. Sorry i can't be more specific about menu names etc atm as i am at work and my memory fails me. I'm sure others will interject if required

If you have no luck, then post back again. Jeff (Narflex) (the creator) and his brother (can't remeber his name, think it is Dan though...) are regular goers on this board, so no doubt if these idea don't help they will also provide support.

Your right about the interface but when you start using it, especially with a remote, it is very nice to navigate with. And like you said, the studio version looks fantastic. I have used (and bought) Showshifter, Snapstream and Sage in that order...for me Sage is a fantastic piece of software, well supported and in a very good state of deveopment. I don't think i'll be going anywhere fir a long while

p.s. I think Sage guide will cover the whole of the USA by November the 1st, so hang in there. Now, i just have to wait to it reaches the UK

[mlbdude]

Like MSM says, you will never get a compressed image to look exactly like an uncompressed one. Here are some tips to try to make the image look better...

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&threadid=1680

Also, make sure you are using a high recording bitrate. One of the best settings. That will aleviate the macroblocking. You will have to fiddle to with the brightness / hue settings till it looks good for you.

My biggest problem was the deinterlacing and the Elecard filter with DScaler\Adaptive deinterlacing is the best I have gotten it so far.

Good luck!

[Mike Young]

I am starting to understand that the Capture Quality affects the LIVE TV quality ? I would have never thought this, but since it is allways capturing I suppose it makes sense, if we are actually watching what is being captured.....I had originally assumed that what I was watching was a pass-through signal. If this is true then for best LIVE TV quality it should be set to the highest rate?

I can confirm that fiddling with the Gamma, Contrast, Hue, Color Saturation etc. all made a huge difference in my picture quality. I also found that I could tune the TV color settings to help. Im still not where i want to be, but getting there!
I am using the same hardware as the previous poster.


mike/

[mlbdude]

Yes the default capture setting will be used for live TV and as the default for all favorites and manual recordings as well as for IR recordings. You can override this for favotrites and manual recordings. I wish you could set it for IR as well. Idealy, I would want my Live TV super high bitrate, and my IR's at a lower bitrate so that I could get more on there.

[msm]

I am starting to understand that the Capture Quality affects the LIVE TV quality ? I would have never thought this, but since it is allways capturing I suppose it makes sense, if we are actually watching what is being captured.....I had originally assumed that what I was watching was a pass-through signal. If this is true then for best LIVE TV quality it should be set to the highest rate?

Spot on. There is no pasthrough signal - what you are watching is always what is been recorded and therefore, yes, the higher the capture rate the better the "Live TV". This is why, when you pause and resume, you don't see anychange in the picture quality. If a passthrough signal was used for live TV then you would notice a drop in quality if you paused it and restarted as it would have to switch to recorded content.

If you want to tweak the capture settings further, i think that if you go to advanced video settings , via the detailed setup (same place you adjust the brightness etc), you can manually tweak the capture rate etc. Not sure if this applies to Sage though, but i think it would.

Matt

[rotaryracer]

Thanks guys. I do have a copy of PowerDVD that came with my DVD drive, so maybe I'll try their codec. I'll also downloaded and installed the Elecard player last night, so I'll experiment with theirs as well.

I've never used a TiVO, so I guess I had a false impression that they didn't have any image quality problems. When I heard "better than TiVO", I guess I assumed "as good as live" - know what happens when you assume, huh?

I'm going to keep tweaking, as I think spending some time in setup and trying different configurations should help some. I guess I my expectations might have been unreasonably high, but I had hoped I'd see an increase in video quality (similar to what I expect to see on DVD).

I appreciate the tips and will try to implement tonight - any other thoughts/comments/feedback is appreciated!

[jmeeks]

Why do you expect to see DVD (or similar) quality from the Dish signal? The NTSC signal is not DVD quality. Do you see DVD quality from Dish Network when fed directly to your TV? That's interesting.

[rotaryracer]

Nope, jmeeks, sorry for the bad analogy. The point I was trying to make was that in general, once it's tweaked well, a HTPC can provide a better DVD feed to a HDTV than a standalone player.

I'm not using Dish network (just SDTV analog cable from Time Warner) and had read from others on this board that the analog signal through Sage actually IMPROVED the quality when compared with a direct feed.

Obviously I'm now fairly certain that was faulty information.

Essentially, I want as close to (equal or better than would be nice!) a direct analog signal feed as possible. I understand the limitations and shortcomings of NTSC - I guess I didn't realize that adding in the PVR-250 and any PVR software (Sage or otherwise) would significantly decrease the quality of the NTSC signal further.

Can you elaborate on your setup? Decoder used, bitrate, etc.?

Thanks!

Jason

[jmeeks]

I'll give you my settings when I get home. My picture quality does not degrade when using SageTV and the PVR250 compared to a direct feed to my TV. (significantly or otherwise)

I know I'm using 2 GB per hour quality and I'm pretty sure I'm using the Hauppauge decoder with the tweaks advocated by Jeff (Narflex) as shown here: http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...=&threadid=284

[mlbdude]

Actually, it is imposible for it to NOT degrade. You may just not be able to notice with your setup. By compressing the image, parts of the image are lost. There is now way around it.

The best you can hope for is to get it close enough to not notice. Using 3 GB per hour I can get mine to look almost as good as the source image. Places where you can still notice quality degredation will be black areas (macro blocks pop in no matter what that is just a limitation of MPEG2) and text. Small text is often difficult to read and blurred slightly.

rotaryracer, keep messing with you settings. Using the higher bitrates, and the proper deinterlacing you should get a picture that is good enough. Plus you get all the added bonuses of a PVR to offset what is lost.

Try some different decorders. Earch offers different delinterlacing options. Again, for me the Elecard filter with DScaler\Adaptive deinterlacing beat the Intervideo ones hands down due to the DScaler deinterlacing.

Good luck.

[StylinLP]

Interesting thread here. Not sure I follow some of it but that thing about Recording quality effecting output I never knew about. Thanks for that bit of information! Will use that next.

Im not sure what some of you are talking about using PowerDVD. Why use that when using SageTV with Hauppauge 250 card? I don't get it.
I also have a Hauppauge 350 card. which I could use the s-video output which is hard ware decoding.

Someone suggested using Elecard and Dscaler. Umm..is this better image quality that the hardware decoding in PVR 350 card (s-video out)?

[mlbdude]

Using the 350's (or an XCard) output is the best of all. The source signal will not need to be deinterlaced through software at all. Skipping that step would remove one more operation that is modifying the source signal. A propper interlaced signal would simply to sent to the TV.

The reason to try different decorders is simply the fact that not all are as good as others, and all opperate differently with differences in hardware (video cards mainly). And all use their own deinterlacing algorithms. Not all are created equally.

DScaler is recognized to be the best deinterlacer you can use. So it is a real benefit that Sage supports it vie the Elecard filters.

[stanger89]

Hi all,

I got inspired to try something by this thread and succeeded - Imagine That.

The details are posted here:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&threadid=1699

But basically I built a graph with ffdshow using dscaler's histogram filter to set my brightness and contrast in the Video Proc Amp pannel. I just did this and haven't had much time to evaluate but it looks good so far.

[StylinLP]

So using the Hauppauge 350 is the best way to go then. Except the fact its using only s-video out. ummm...what also bothered me about that is I don't think there is anyway to scale the image. Is there? What if I want to watch a show at 720p. maybe I need to read more Hauppauge manuals. I dont think SageTV lets you choose resolution...

mlbdude you didnt contradict yourself about the best way to go in your post? hehe. Hauppauge350 s out or Dscaler with Elecard...

[salsbst]

One reason people may claim that SageTV actually improves the video quality over straight NTSC is the deinterlacing. If you are looking at a progressive scan monitor then raw NTSC (interlaced) won't look as good as deinterlaced. So, while there is nothing you can do to make MPEG2 perfect, it's faults may be considered by some to be undercut by the gain you get from deinterlacing.

If you are using an SD TV, then the 350 tv out is a worthwhile option.

If you are using an HDTV then you definitely want no part of the 350's tv out. Your computer monitor is a lot like an (almost) HDTV, so you'll see more detail and a progressive image by avoiding the 350's tv out.

Right?

[StylinLP]

ohhhh...I see. you did mean SD TV is Standard Defination TV right?

If im not going to use the S-video out (hauppauge350 hardware decoder) to connect to my Pioneer 50" Professional series 503cmx Plasma screen then I would either use the DVI or RGB out of the Radeon9600pro card? If I did that then I would either need a software mpeg decoder (Hauppauge) or use Elecard plus Dscaler? I havnt even seen an Elecard before. Dont know what that inputs outputs are. Or is there a better solution.

[mlbdude]

I kind of did, but that is cause they are very different. For SD TV the best is to use a harware out solution like the 350. For those that have a hardware out solution it ends there. Most don't have a 350 (including me) so when using the TV out of your card, the best I have seen is using the Elecard MPEG2 decorders with DScaler.

For digital TV that is a whole nother ballgame. You would definately want to use DScaler somehow, so the Elecard filters again come into play. You would want to set your Radeon to output in a progressive resolution (probably a non-standard one that may need to be unlocked) using the RGB or DVI connections. Probably the highest your TV can do. The SVIdeo connection would be bad since it is outputting interlaced. I don't have a digital TV so others will have to help with that stuff.

For unlocking your Radeon cards here is a great utility.

http://www.rage3d.com/r3dtweak/

I used it to open up 720x480 and overscan. Not sure if digital users need overscan or not though.

Have fun.

[falchulk]

To get rid of blocky areas in the color black, change the Black or Blackness setting on your TV. Its this same setting that will allow you to darken the areas above and beneath letterbox programs. This makes the area appear "off" instead of a dark grayish.

[StylinLP]

Great. I think I now know what I am going to try.

To play back SageTV from the Hauppauge 350 card Im not going to use the s-video out. Because I have a Pioneer 503CMX 50" with D-sub RGB in, 5 BNC in, S-video in, DVI in. With a stock resolution of 1280x768 60hz and 70hz.

So Im thinking of trying the Elecard software codex and possible see if I can or shoudl use Dscaler with that. (I thought I read that Elecard is one so why need dscaler?)

THen outputing the signal out my DVI or RGB d-sub from the Radeon 9600pro