Atlast...

[sfnet]

Hi All,

Finally, my PVR project is 95% completed. I thank all the members, and special thanks & salute to CSY for his very informational insights & posts.

Hardware:
PIII 1GHZ, 512 RAM, 120g HDD, WINTV PVR150, GeForce 6200 256 AGP4x, PureVideo, WinXP Pro Sp2, GBPVR 0.98.13b

Connection:
SA 4200 cable box S-Video/Audio out to PVR150
Graphics card S-Video Out to SD Sony TV.
PC Audio Out to SD Sony TV
IR Blaster working!!

Started with the above mentioned hardware, except for video card MX4000(sucked big time). Upgrading to 6200 made a huge difference. Black lines disappeared during high contrast/bright scenes. Still had pixelated video and gradients appeared as patches. Brightness/contrast/color vastly improved. Hauppauge tool helped in reducing the pixelations. Adjusting Temporal & Spatial Blur (dont know what it means) made the picture quality 95% close to the tv tuner's quality. Adjusting the filter will effect Sharpness of the picture. Current Temporal Filter is 6; Spatial Filter is 8; Video & Audio decoders: Purevideo decoders(Prefer Overlay) & Overlay manager.

Unsolved issues 5%

1. Shud fine tune to match TV tuners quality
   
2. High speed motion scenes, the subject in-focus is acceptable, whereas the background appears heavily pixelated.
   
3. Occasional pausing for fraction of a second (is it stuttering) happens.
   
4. Aspect ratio set to "Auto" produces no video, audio is ok.
   

Any pointer's appreciated.

Everything specified is related to Live TV only. Video playback was never a problem.

Thanks all.

ps-GBPVR works with the min HW recommended

[Ted the Penguin]

the problems you have having with the auto aspect ratio, they are expected, as the auto option does not work for overlay, just remove it from your config file and it will be good.

try increasing the quality of the video you record, see if that fixes anything. might make stuttering worse

[sfnet]

Thx Ted.

Forgot to mention, when the live tv is viewed in a window half the dimension of the tv screen, I dont see any pixels. Only when full screen it appears. Is my HW not capable of producing full TV screen video?

[nitrogen_widget]

What resolution are you running at?
I find 800x600 doesn't work so well sometimes & that switching to 720x480 fixes that.
also set your live TV resolution to 720x480.

this eliminates scaling.

[sfnet]

Already the resolution set @ 720x480 NTSC

[Ted the Penguin]

you dont see the compression artifacts when the video is scaled down because they are covered up by the downscaling. they will probably get really bad if you watch it on a normal computer screen.

it is not a hardware issue because as you said video is fine. you really need to tweak your live tv settings, that should help your picture quality

[sfnet]

I applied the patch supplied by Sub in the below thread...

http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...stcount=49

Refer to v0.98.13 survival guide
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=19525

Guess what?? stuttering stopped!! I can use VMR9 in GBPVR and purevideo.

But quality is only 90% of TV tuners

[sfnet]

Watching LiveTV thru GBPVR produces patches instead of gradient. But gradients are fine thru Sony TV tuner. Used hauppauge tool, and this is the optimized quality that I could tweak.

Any ideas? Please suggest?