I have some basic newb questions....

[GravyNYC]

I"m new to this whole built your own pvr stuff so my question is this.. after reading alot of post from this forum and other forums just like this one. is it safe to say that when you hook your home made pvr up to your TV, the picture quality you get will NOT look as good compared to just having my digital cable connected right to my TV without going thru my computer?? I've read alot of posts talking about soft or blurry video ( this is my problem at the moment ) and video quality being not as good as REAL tv. what has your experience's been like?

[sub]

Lots of factors come into play in this question...type of capture card, video decoder you're using, video card you're using and the tv you've got.

I'd say my digital satellite tv, via DVB-S card, sent through video card's DVI connection to TV, is every bit as good as real TV. Infact, with type of setting, its digital all the way from the broadcaster to my plasma TV, and possibly better than I could expect through a normal set top box. This of course is best things can get.

[csy]

I have an analogue TV capture card (ATI550) on the input side and use Component TV-out to my SDTV on the output side, and obtain very good quality TV. You can't tell the difference between it and standalone-TV unless you deliberately look for the difference, and even then they are very close.

If you have quality hardware that has the potential to provide a quality sharp picture, there still may be tweaking required to achieve that quality depending your setup. An example being the deinterlacing method used has a big impact on how sharp the picture is.

[GravyNYC]

I have a hauppague pvr150 as my capture device and radeon 9800. The screen is noticably more blurry when i use component, i switched over to Svideo and that seems to have helped a little. But i installed BeyondTV and seems like the decoder for BeyondTV does a little better job on my TV compared to the decoder thats in GBpvr. Are there other decoders i can use with GBpvr?

[h00ch]

I had a setting in the ATI control panel for my Radeon 9600 Pro card to increase sharpness for the TV-out. That made a big difference to the clarity on the TV.

[sub]

I have a hauppague pvr150 as my capture device and radeon 9800. The screen is noticably more blurry when i use component, i switched over to Svideo and that seems to have helped a little. But i installed BeyondTV and seems like the decoder for BeyondTV does a little better job on my TV compared to the decoder thats in GBpvr.

The choice of video decoder does have quite an impact on the picture. They all produce a picture that looks slightly different.

Are there other decoders i can use with GBpvr?

Sure. The following are known to work with GB-PVR, but there may be many others. Which video decoder are you currently using? (GB-PVR doesnt ship with one)

bitcontrol® MPEG-2 Video Decoder,DScaler Mpeg2 Video Decoder,CyberLink DTV Video Decoder,InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge,InterVideo Video Decoder,CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (ATI),NVIDIA Video Decoder,CyberLink Video/SP Decoder,Elecard MPEG2 Video Decoder,Moonlight-Elecard MPEG2 Video Decoder,MainConcept MPEG Video Decoder,MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Video Decoder,Sonic Cinemaster® DS Video Decoder,Zulu HDTV Video Decoder(BDA),Nero Video Decoder,GPL MPEG-1/2 Decoder

[GravyNYC]

bitcontrol® MPEG-2 Video Decoder,DScaler Mpeg2 Video Decoder,CyberLink DTV Video Decoder,InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge,InterVideo Video Decoder,CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (ATI),NVIDIA Video Decoder,CyberLink Video/SP Decoder,Elecard MPEG2 Video Decoder,Moonlight-Elecard MPEG2 Video Decoder,MainConcept MPEG Video Decoder,MainConcept (Hauppauge) MPEG Video Decoder,Sonic Cinemaster® DS Video Decoder,Zulu HDTV Video Decoder(BDA),Nero Video Decoder,GPL MPEG-1/2 Decoder

where can i get all these decoders? I'd like to try them all and see which one gives me the best picture. The one i'm using is intervideo noncss i think.. i'm at work at the moment and cant tell you exactly what it is.

[sub]

They come with various applications. The Cyberlink one comes with PowerDVD. The newer Intervideo ones come with WinDVD. The NVIDIA Pure Video decoder is available at their online shop. The mainconcept and elecard ones are available at the elecard.com as part of their video player software...etc.

[GravyNYC]

Ohhh i see.. so i guess id have to install the respective media player software to get thier decoder... after i install thier software.. do i have to do anything to GBpvr to tell is that there is a new decoder? or will it pick it up automatically?