Watching HDTV good, recording/watching bad.

[skyking]

I have an
AMD785 motherboard with integrated 4200 graphics
Hauppauge 2250 capture card
sargas 2.7 Ghz currently at stock speed.
2GB ram
XP Pro
ATI Mpeg decoder

Watching HD content is fine. The usual stutter when you select a channel but once you are watching no artifacts, etc.

As soon as I start recording it gets grainy, worse than SD content. It looks almost watery. I checked and it is playing back at 720 by 540? If I simply play the HD channel it will play at 720P or 1080I.
The really bizarre thing, I tried pausing a 720P channel one time, and it worked perfectly. That has only happened the one time.
If I do get a recording to go at 1080i, the playback is stuttering far beyond usability.

[pBS]

first i'd say check the logs to find out exactly which codecs are being used...
cuz that sounds like some other codecs behavior, dscaler?
what cat ver are you using? using matching avivo codec? [same ver]
sounds like problems deinterlacing...[720p needs none so should look fine]

try ffdshow tryouts beta6 w/libmpeg2 codec for mpeg2 and n12 output colorspace checked only..
if that doesn't work properly, then it's drivers...try a different version of catalyst..
oh and set 'wait for vertical sync' to always on..

[skyking]

will give all that a go later today. Thank you.