certain shade of blue becomes pink in video encoded by HD PVR2

[wmclaxton]

I am using two Hauppauge HD-PVR2 encoders to record from two Set-Top Boxes using the HDMI out (routed through a splitter to remove the copy protection). Most channels record beautifully, but I am having an issue when recording CNN. As seen in the attached images, all the colors are correct except for a particular shade of blue which becomes pink. It is more obvious in the close up, and not all scenes have this effect, but it particularly appears when there is a set with blue backgrounds.

This effect is not visible on a monitor, only when viewing the signal on a PC, ie- via the HD-PVR2. The issue is present on two different STBs and two different HD-PVR2s.

[sub]

It's possibly the splitter. Are you seeing the same thing in the Hauppauge WinTV software?

[wmclaxton]

Do you mean the RF splitter? If so, I did try a direct connection of the RF cable from the wall to one of the STBs, bypassing the splitter, and still observed the same issue on the encoded output (ie- monitoring live TV using NextPVR).

WinTV is not presently installed on the encoding machines and I don't think the artifacts I'm seeing have anything to do with NextPVR. But perhaps I could try swapping the video decoder in NextPVR settings. I'm currently using "MainConcept MPEG-2 Video Decoder". Any suggestions?

[sub]

No - I mean't the HDMI splitter you're using to remove copy protection. I've seen these do some weird things to the picture in the past.

[wmclaxton]

I tried swapping the splitters to determine if it was a bad device, and I tried bypassing HDMI all together using composite connections, and these artifacts are still visible.

[sub]

Your set top box doesn't have any video settings for selecting the colour space or colour gamut? I've seen some set top boxes with the settings, and it's possible they could cause something like this.

[mvallevand]

In tuning channels if NextPVR doesn't determine the fps it records in SD not HD. It would help if you uploaded logs to see if this is the case, but you can try changing ModeSD settings in config.xml to one of the higher modes.

Martin