Live TV Quality Bad

[plynn]

I am having a little trouble with the playback quality of live TV. I am not sure If I have all the settings right, or what setting would work better, but the quality of live playback is bad. The immage looks very pixelated. i am not sure if it is due to using the software encoder or what, but i am open to any suggestions. I have attached a couple images of the quality of the picture and the type of settigns I am working with. Sorry but I am a novice at this. Thank you

https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~plynn/settings.jpg
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~plynn/bad_quality.jpg
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~plynn/config.xml
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~plynn/config-recorders.xml

[stefan]

Is it only during live playback? Since you use both software encoder and software decoder at the same time, maybe your machine isn't up to it? But at the same time I would have thought things would get choppy instead of pixelated. But I've never tried anything like that so I'm not sure at all...

[plynn]

I dont believe that it is a hardware issue. I was able to use the tuner before with intervideos Home Theater software and everything worked fine. I am not too sure what encoders or decoders would work the best. If anyone one knows please let me know

[pfarrell]

I'm a GBPVR greenhorn and I'm experiencing the same problem. In summary, the picture quality of Live TV is poor while recorded shows look fabulous. I have an nVidia FX5500 graphics card and Hauppauge MCE 500 installed on an eMachines T2545 (Celeron 2.5 gHz) with 768MB RAM. I have read a few posts indicating that the power supply may be to blame for the problem. I'm somewhat reluctant to replace the power supply. How likely is it that this is the cause?

[pfarrell]

I have been playing around and noticed something interesting. There are a few channels which have no issue with picture quality while watching live tv. There are only a couple channels that are this way -- and they are all grouped together.

This doesn't sound like a power supply issue -- or it should affect all channels.

I'm using the Intervideo decoder, overlay manager and DirectX 9.0b.

[pfarrell]

I messed around with this some more and found that the WinTV2000 application and the Tuning Assistant work perfectly and produce crystal clear picture on all channels. For some reason I cannot get GBPVR to behave in the same manner while watching LiveTV. Only recorded shows (or a few select channels of LiveTV) have good picture quality.

I tried using FreqCopy to create the appropriate registry entries which did not exist previously -- but no dice. The entries were created for my country code but they don't seem to make any difference.

What am I missing?

[stefan]

The only setting that I'm aware of that can have an impact on only live tv is Deinterlacing on the Misc tab. Usually "encoder passthrough" works best, but you can try "none" and see if that makes any difference.

[stefan]

I just realized that you have a hauppauge 500. That means that you have two capture cards in one. One will be used for recordings and the other for live tv. Either you have a bad splitter, so that the one tuner gets a antenna feed that is worse than the other (check that by switching the cables around and see if that helps), or your card is bad. Or, you have bad settings for one of your capture sources

[pfarrell]

Stefan,

The Hauppauge MCE 500 does have two tuners but has only one input. The board itself has an internal splitter. Therefore, I am unable to switch the cables around. Besides, the input signal cannot be to blame if other tuner applications can display video properly.

I will try changing the deinterlacing setting again. I'm pretty sure that I changed it at one point in the past, but it didn't make any difference. It is currently set to pass through.

I would like to know how the Tuner Assistant displays video. Does it use DirectShow or some other method of video display? If it uses DirectShow, shouldn't it work identically in GBPVR?

Patrick

[sub]

The tuning assistant uses the exact same code to display the channel, but it will always be using the first tuner. When you view live tv in GB-PVR, it'll use the last capture source, which PVR500 owners usually set up as the second tuner (device #2).

There have been a few people with problems with crappy performance on one of their two PVR500 tuners.

It would be interesting to see how live tv performs for you if swap the device numbers in your capture sources. ie, so when GB-PVR goes to use the last capture source it picks up the first tuner (device #1)