Poor DVD resolution & DVD menu funkiness

[patja]

Hi all, I am in week 1 of evaluating Sage and am seeing a few odd issues with DVD playback.

I noticed that DVDs seemed noticeably soft, so I pulled up the Avia widescreen resolution test pattern and found that the 6.75 MHz circle was a complete blur. Exiting Sage and running VMC brings it up crystal clear. I tried Overlay, VMR9, and switching between the Nvidia Purevideo 185 decoder and Microsoft's vista MPEG decoder, same results.

I also see that the way DVD menus are displayed is a bit hit or miss. Sometimes the menus come up overlayed on top of the previous menus. This is particularly noticeable on discs with menus that go deeper than one level. Again in VMC these all behave as expected.

And I get lockups in DVD menu navigation occasionally as well, where I see the spinning circle forever and have to kill Sage using the task manager.

This is all with ripped DVDs, and I have seen some forum posts suggesting that the problem can be with the rip. I don't think that is the case for these as they were all ripped recently with the current release of AnyDVD, and they all play flawlessly in VMC.

My system is pretty clean, I just built it a month or so ago, so it doesn't have codec packs random filters or other trash cluttering it up. I do have Arcsoft TME installed and ac3filter, but thats about it. It is an Asus p5q-em running the Intel G45 chipset.

I would really like to get this working as Sage has a lot of appealing features such as the HD-PVR support and the promise of a good experience with extenders.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[patja]

I have now tested with the DVD in the drive with the exact same results: DVD menus are not being rendered correctly consistently, and Sage is unable to fully resolve the 6.75 MHz pattern (it is a complete blur).

Are these the same results everyone sees?

What about the HD100...does it fully decode full DVD resolution?

[Taddeusz]

Bring this to the attention of SageTV by sending an official support request.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by patja

Hi all, I am in week 1 of evaluating Sage and am seeing a few odd issues with DVD playback.

I noticed that DVDs seemed noticeably soft, so I pulled up the Avia widescreen resolution test pattern and found that the 6.75 MHz circle was a complete blur. Exiting Sage and running VMC brings it up crystal clear. I tried Overlay, VMR9, and switching between the Nvidia Purevideo 185 decoder and Microsoft's vista MPEG decoder, same results.

What video card are you using? Is DXVA enabled?

I also see that the way DVD menus are displayed is a bit hit or miss. Sometimes the menus come up overlayed on top of the previous menus. This is particularly noticeable on discs with menus that go deeper than one level. Again in VMC these all behave as expected.

And I get lockups in DVD menu navigation occasionally as well, where I see the spinning circle forever and have to kill Sage using the task manager.

This is all with ripped DVDs, and I have seen some forum posts suggesting that the problem can be with the rip. I don't think that is the case for these as they were all ripped recently with the current release of AnyDVD, and they all play flawlessly in VMC.

My system is pretty clean, I just built it a month or so ago, so it doesn't have codec packs random filters or other trash cluttering it up. I do have Arcsoft TME installed and ac3filter, but thats about it. It is an Asus p5q-em running the Intel G45 chipset.

I would really like to get this working as Sage has a lot of appealing features such as the HD-PVR support and the promise of a good experience with extenders.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Not sure what to tell you, I haven't had problems anything like that with my PC client. But mine is XP not Vista. nVidia decoders and my 6800 in DXVA mode do a pretty good job even with the HQV DVD (I don't have AVIA).

[patja]

I am using the Intel G45 integrated video/audio/HDMI chipset and yes it is using DXVA.

The strange thing is that Vista Media Center (VMC) and Arcsoft TMT both display the full resolution flawlessly on the same PC, so it is something odd and unique to Sage.

I have submitted a support request and am awaiting a response.

Thanks for the replies. Anyone else able to test with Avia on the 200 TVL resolution test pattern?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by patja

I am using the Intel G45 integrated video/audio/HDMI chipset and yes it is using DXVA.

What decoders?

[patja]

I have the Arcsoft decoder that comes with TME, the Nvidia Purevideo 185 decoder, and the Microsoft MPEG2 decoder that is built in to Vista.

Through perserverance (also known as trying different combinations of decoders, overlay/VMR9, and FSE on/off) I have managed to achieve some measure of success. Turning Vista UAC off might have contributed as well. Turning UAC off made Sage put its configuration file(s) into the c:\program files folder which in turn caused it to re-initiate the setup wizard.

In the end, what I have achieved is:

1. None of the decoders are displaying the 200 TVL resolution test pattern correctly in VMR9.
   
2. All of them are displaying it fine in Overlay.
   
3. Only the Nvidia decoder also results in seeing the DVD menus rendered correctly with highlighting of the selected menu entry.
   
4. Only the Nvidia decoder results in deinterlacing that passes muster when I go through the Spears & Munsil test disc (many of the same bits of test material are on the HQV test disc).

So all in all, it is kind of OK now. I would like to get VMR9 working however.

[Quazeye]

Hi,

Did you ever figure out what was wrong with the DVD menus in Sage? I have a problem where it works on sage but on the hd 200 some of the dvd menus act weird... like I click on a menu item and it takes me to a totally different chapter etc. This only happens on some dvds. I have these dvds ripped to TS folders.

Thanks,
Q
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mexico city hotel

[patja]

Things got much better when EVR was added. I haven't really had problems with the menus on my Vista HTPC since then. I also have an HD200 and have seen rare cases of menus being fouled up, but not recently (I keep up on the betas)

[Quazeye]

Sorry but I don't know what EVR is? Also are you talking about the betas of SageTV?

So what is EVR?

Thanks,
Q
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Harley-Davidson FLHS