NextPVR Forums

I just took the plunge and bought an MVP for my house since I have a GBPVR system in my bedroom. My GBPVR machine is one of the single greatest inventions EVER! Love it!

So now I've got this MVP so I can use the GBPVR machine in more than one room (mostly just to watch recorded shows, not schedule recordings or anything really). It works great and was a snap to set up (once I remembered Windows has a firewall :p ). There are some minor questions and issues I have though. I'm using GBPVR v.99.05 and the default dongle.bin that came with it. The MVP is revision D1 I believe.

1) The picture quality is just ok. The picture is dark, so I went into direct.ini on the GBPVR box and set ALL video settings to 100 (setting one of them or a few of them didn't help). This makes the video quality on the MVP better, but still not nearly as bright or clear/crisp as when I play it on the GBPVR box through the TV. The only cabling difference is the MVP is using RCA video cables and the GBPVR box is using an SVideo cable. Would that create THAT much difference? If not, what more can I do to improve picture quality? It's not unwatchable, but it could definitely be better. Also, does changing the video settings in direct.ini affect the GBPVR box itself, or just the MVP unit?

2) The video stretches off the top of the screen by a small amount. Is there a way to adjust the video size from the MVP? From browsing through the forums it seems like there isn't, so maybe THIS can be corrected by going to an SVideo cable. Again, this is a minor annoyance because it doesn't seem to cut off much, just enough that when viewing the main menu of GBPVR through the MVP I can only see the bottom half of the clock at the top.

As I play with it I'm sure I may have more questions, but those are the 2 issues I've ran into so far. Like I said, nothing so terrible that I can't live with either of them. Great work! Thanks very much!

Quote:Also, does changing the video settings in direct.ini affect the GBPVR box itself, or just the MVP unit?

They change any recordings made by GB-PVR with an analog device, so will affect any place you attempt to play the file (PC or MVP).

Quote:2) The video stretches off the top of the screen by a small amount. Is there a way to adjust the video size from the MVP?

No, there isnt. Are you aware that TVs have a certain amount of overscan, meaning that even when you watch regular TV the picture is usually stretched off the side of the screen. The amount of overscan varies from TV to TV.

Sub,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm ok with those answers. Like I said, it's minor annoyance type stuff. I'm mostly concerned with the brightness issue. Do you think SVideo vs RCA would make a difference? Anything else I should try?

Do you think it could be related to this from the FAQ?

sub Wrote:They change any recordings made by GB-PVR with an analog device, so will affect any place you attempt to play the file (PC or MVP).

Wait a minute... it affects the RECORDING, not things already recorded?

hollow5555 Wrote:Wait a minute... it affects the RECORDING, not things already recorded?

Correct. GB-PVR has no say over the colour settings on the MVP, but it can affect the colour at recording time with the tweaks to those settings in direct.ini (but only with analog cards).

hollow5555 Wrote:Sub,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm ok with those answers. Like I said, it's minor annoyance type stuff. I'm mostly concerned with the brightness issue. Do you think SVideo vs RCA would make a difference?

It wouldnt make any difference to the overscan. It might help a little with the brightness thing.

Strangely I can use the same MVP on two TVs I have, and one gives a dark'ish picture, the other gives a brilliant picture with no such issue. I'm not an electronics guy, and dont know why this would be.

sub Wrote:Correct. GB-PVR has no say over the colour settings on the MVP, but it can affect the colour at recording time with the tweaks to those settings in direct.ini (but only with analog cards).

Believe it or not this is really good news! That means that when I changed the brightness settings and thought it made things look better it actually was all in my head! That means the video quality on the MVP is something I can live with if I have to. I'll give the SVideo thing a shot, and I think either way I can deal with it.

Your comment about different TVs is interesting. I'll give that a shot just to see what happens.

Anyway, thanks for the help and keep up the great work!

Quote:Believe it or not this is really good news! That means that when I changed the brightness settings and thought it made things look better it actually was all in my head!

Yeah, I didnt imagine that was the case when you commented about setting them all to 100. This would result in some extreme appearance - probably very over saturated bright bright white picture or something similar.

The MVPs have always had issues with the brightness level or oversaturated color (actually it's low Luminance due to an impedence mismatch of 220 ohms instead of the standard 75 ohms). At various times they said it would be corrected in drivers but only minor improvements have been seen.

As to sub's experience with different TVs, some sets allow the different video inputs to have unique settings for brightness, contrast, color, etc; so you can adjust for things like the MVP without having to reset the TV to compensate each time you switch inputs. In simplest form, video 1 might be set to "Sports", video 2 to "Movie", etc.

Another thing I have seen with the MVPs is an odd corruption that can occur when a video fails to start properly (black screen with sound that you have to stop and restart). After this happens the video will be expanded in all directions creating loss of image on all four sides. You will have to pull power and reboot the MVP to correct it. I have three MVPs and have seen it on all of them with various software versions.

This mismatched resistor is really starting to intrigue me. I work for an industrial control company and we do a lot of in-house hardware work. I wouldn't be hard for me to have the 220ohm resistor "professionally" replaced with a 75ohm... Would this really fix it? I'm debating whether it's worth it or whether I should just stop being such a perfectionist since the video as it stands now is more than watchable.

Thanks again, all! If I decide to do the resistor replacement I'll post my experiences with it.