Mediocre video out

[PnP]

I'm a newbie at this so forgive me if some of these issues have been resolved or answered in previous threads.
I have recently purchased the USB2 bundle from Frey and am in the process of building my PVR.
I'm using the 19 inch computer monitor for my output until I get this thing tweaked to an acceptable quality level before hooking it to my infocus projector.
The video quality goes from barely acceptable to poor, depending on what input I use to the Hauppauge encoder.
I set the monitor at 1280x1024 resolution, same as the projectors native resolution. For comparison reasons I use the standard Mpeg2 encoding setting. The encoded video quality is from acceptable to poor as follows:
Using Cband analog video input the PVR video out is acceptable,
with very few artifacts.
The built in Hauppauge TV tuner PVR is not as good but still acceptable.
Using my son's Dish Network 6000s S_video ouput to the PVR
there are fairly severe diamond shaped artifacs in the video, especially noticable in a freeze frame. Garbage in = garbage out ?

Maybe its coming from trying to re-encode an already Mpeg2 video
stream? Could we somehow bypass the encoder in these cases and get better results? I have seen a Dish Network Model 508 PVR which had much better video than the Sage/Hauppauge combo. Any ideas anyone ?

[krutaw]

[i]Maybe its coming from trying to re-encode an already Mpeg2 video
stream? Could we somehow bypass the encoder in these cases and get better results? I have seen a Dish Network Model 508 PVR which had much better video than the Sage/Hauppauge combo. Any ideas anyone ? [/B]

Honestly, I had the same type of complaints about picture quality until I went ahead and purchased a PVR-350. Now that I've got it setup with SAGETV 2.0, I'm happy as a clam. It looks just as good as a vcr.

[mikbro]

Keep in mind that you are looking at your picture on a hi-res monitor, from (I would imagine) less than a foot away. Through that up on a projector from 12-14' away and some of those issues get smoothed over.

I have one of our systems up on a 10' diagonal Sharp PG-A10X and it looks great (with C-Band, Cable, and Starchoice sources).

The issues you are seeing with the dish picture are very much gigo - your other sources are much better quality (especially c-band - see my website for how to have Sage control your system).

You will want to bump up your encoding to 5.6 gig/hour - it will make a difference on your better sources.