Can I get good codec display quality?

[nyle]

I have a Panasonic Plasma and the display on it when using the built in tuner with SDTV is great. However, with Sage using the Purevideo or PowerDVD 7 codec the screen looks grainy. Is this because of the MPEG2 nature of the TV tuner and the best the encoders can do? I've tried a lot of settings and I'm just at a loss

Screen Size 50" Class (49.9" diagonal)
Display Resolution 720p
Compatible Signal Formats 1080p/1080i/720p/480p
Aspect Ratio 16:9 (Widescreen)
Native Resolution (Number of Pixels) 1366 x 768

The computer is a Shuttle XPC Athlon 64 3500+ 1GB RAM, Windows XP Pro, fresh install, Nvidia 7600GS with latest drivers.

I try it with Overlay or VMR9, FSE, no FSE, I change the record quality up to 3GB/s to no affect. If I'm 15 feet away from the TV it looks ok but if I'm within 9 feet you can see the pixelation. (And I have bad eyesight. My wife can see it further away.)

I have a Hauppauge HVR-1660.

It's not the cable run as the built in TV tuner looks great and I have a good filter/amplifier when the main run enters the house that's HDTV compatible as well. Right now I'm working on SDTV though.

Any suggestions?

How about a different TV tuner that does MP4 native? Would that help?

Thanks,
-Nyle

[Djc208]

The issue is not with the capture quality. You can't capture what isn't there, so turning the capture quality higher than TV standard doesn't do much but make bigger files. The problem is with the way the computer is scaling the image to fit the screen.

Do the Sage menus look clean? How about DVD or HD media?

The TV upconverts the SD signal to fit the HD resolution on the screen. Since your computer can output at HD resolutions it does not do this with the computer input so the computer needs to do the upconverting. This should be handled by either the decoder software or the video card drivers. Have you messed around with the decoder settings at all? How about the video card settings? This is where I'd look next.

Make sure your graphics card settings are what the TV manufacturer recommends. The TV is basically a glorified monitor and like any monitor it handles certain resolutions better than others. Then look into the video card and decoder settings.

[nyle]

Originally Posted by Djc208

The issue is not with the capture quality. You can't capture what isn't there, so turning the capture quality higher than TV standard doesn't do much but make bigger files. The problem is with the way the computer is scaling the image to fit the screen.

Do the Sage menus look clean? How about DVD or HD media?

The TV upconverts the SD signal to fit the HD resolution on the screen. Since your computer can output at HD resolutions it does not do this with the computer input so the computer needs to do the upconverting. This should be handled by either the decoder software or the video card drivers. Have you messed around with the decoder settings at all? How about the video card settings? This is where I'd look next.

Make sure your graphics card settings are what the TV manufacturer recommends. The TV is basically a glorified monitor and like any monitor it handles certain resolutions better than others. Then look into the video card and decoder settings.

Thanks for the reply. I should have given more details. Yes, the menus look clean as do DVDs. I can't for the life of me get QAM to work off my 1600 even following he guides. It just messes up my TV tuning and I gave up so for HD, I can't comment.

I think the majority of it is in the scaling/converting as you talk about. I'm using a resolution that the TV supports and DVDs look great. So it's all in the tuner upscaled to the TV.

I didn't see a lot of tweaks for the 1600, I'm using the NVidia Pureviudeo codecs but I've tried like 4 others. My video card is AGP so I'm limited to the speed but it's one of the last NVidia cards for AGP. If memory serves. I've played with the settings in sageTV.

I just wish this could get simpler. I'd pay more for SageTV if they'd bundle it with a better codec that was easier to tweak. I wouldn't even mind buying a specific video card to run SageTV on that was listed a sompatible. Anything to make it easier to get better quality out of the TV content.

My TVs tuner looks great on SD content. SageTV does not.

-Nyle