Formating the PC

[madcat]

The rig (can you call a laptop a rig? it's a T42) I'm running GBPVR is very limited. Until recently, there was no real problem. However, moving from my old SD 27" Sony to my new Pio 50" Plasma (PDP-5070HD if anyone is interested) introduced some problems:

I did see some image tearing before, but it was never a big deal. I was running with 800x600, however, now I run with the Pio native 1360x760. I can only think this caused more load on the poor display card (plus, with the huge screen I can see any small problem).
I get either horizontal image tearing in several locations on the screen, or some effect that looks like poor deinterlacing (or re-interlacing...) - on fast movements lot's of litle horizontal stripes at the edges, or I get something like image tearing along the diagonal line from top-right to bottom-left across the entire screen.
It changes when I play with the different MPEG2 Decoders, etc.

So, in order to try and squeeze last bit of juice from this laptop, I decided to format it and install clean.

I have basically two questions:
1) Is there a way to backup GBPVR config and use it later (all the directories, capture sources, guide, etc)?
2) What would you guys recommend to install in terms of Codecs, Encoders, deinterlacers, etc.
The T42 has 1GB mem, but a small "ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB". I'm using the VGA out now, but may use the DVI instead. It's being used for Live TV, recordings, and Divx/XVids.

thanks

[nitrogen_widget]

Before you reformat, you might want to try throwing 480i at the the TV.
720x480 if your laptop can do that resolution & let the TV upscale the video.
Just to see if it looks any better.
Some TV's have good scaling.
Some don't.

Using the DVI should give you a better picture & will limit the amount of analog to digital conversions.

[fuzzweed]

1) If you're reinstalling the same version GBPVR you can use the same config.xml, BUT I've found that sometimes the problem can reside with this file, and as setting up GBPVR is really relatively quick and simple there is something to be said for doing it from scratch. The same goes for the GBPVR database (either .mdb or db3 depending if your Access or SQL based). Don't forget to export your recordings from the config app and save the recordingdump.xml somewhere safe to reimport later, and also save any other databases for plugins (e.g. music/MP3 databases). Make sure your hard drives are labeled the same after the reinstall to avoid problems.
2) AC3filter for audio (although I use a dolby digital amp, so may not be important in a laptop) and descaler mpeg2 codec are my favorites.

[Ted the Penguin]

try the overlay renderer, that usually fixes problems people have with image tearing due to meager system specs