Picture quality sucks, lots of glitches, where to start?

[Subversive]

Hi everyone,

So, I recently decided to build my own PVR, and found this site along the way. Here are my system specs:

This is my main computer, fyi, so I use it for lots of other stuff.

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.8 ghz)
1 Gig RAM
Nvidia GEforce 4 Ti 4200 AGP 8x
XP Pro
2 x HP 150 MCE (they were sold out of the 500's when we were shopping, so we bought 2 150's)
1 Media MVP connected via ethernet to my router
GBPVR downloaded and installed
1 32 Inch Acer HD television, connected to the MVP with RCA cables
So, here are the problems.

1)
a) The video quality does not look very good. When I watch live TV via the MVP then switch the TV input to the direct cable connection, the direct cable connection looks markedly better.
b) Recorded programs look decidedly worse than, say, a torrented avi file of the exact same program. This is despite the fact that I have set them all to record on high quality, and that all the .avi files take about 1/5th the space on my hard drive as the .mpeg that GBPVR records.

2) It seems a large portion of my recordings have a glitch so I can't skip ahead. It doesn't happen on every recording, but when it does happen, pressing the >| button on the MVP remote usually jumps me back anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes. This makes it incredibly frustrating to watch a recorded program, as we have to sit through all the commercials, or risk having to start all over.

Potential reasons for the problems that I've come up with:

1) My system isn't powerful enough to do all the stuff I have going on (e-mail, numerous web pages, torrents, online poker sites, remote desktop to work sometimes), and do a good job of recording at the same time. (this one seems most likely to me, but I'd love some other opinions)

2) My video card is not that good anymore. (this one seems unlikely since I am using the MVP, my video card should have nothing to do with it, right?)

3) My installation of GBPVR is buggered and I need to fix it somehow. (I doubt it is this, but it's possible)

4) The Media MVP sucks and I should output directly from my video card instead.
(this seems pretty likely too, but long video cables are a lot more expensive than ethernet, which I can get for free, so I hope it's not the case)

Anyway, at this point my wife is basically wondering why we didn't just buy the Shaw HD-PVR and be done with it, and I'm kind of starting to agree with her. I'd really love some suggestions about how we can make this home PVR setup better. Sorry for the long winded post, but I appreciate any help anyone can give.

Thanks.

[sub]

2) It seems a large portion of my recordings have a glitch so I can't skip ahead. It doesn't happen on every recording, but when it does happen, pressing the >| button on the MVP remote usually jumps me back anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes. This makes it incredibly frustrating to watch a recorded program, as we have to sit through all the commercials, or risk having to start all over.

This is the Hauppauge PVR150 timestamp bug. A fix can be found here: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=14006

[Subversive]

This is the Hauppauge PVR150 timestamp bug. A fix can be found here: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=14006

Thanks for the quick response. I've installed it, added the registry keys, and rebooted. I assume this won't fix any previous recordings that had problems, will it?

Any ideas about the picture quality issues?

[sub]

Thanks for the quick response. I've installed it, added the registry keys, and rebooted. I assume this won't fix any previous recordings that had problems, will it?

No it wont fix old recordings, but new recordings shouldnt have this broken timestamp problem.

Any ideas about the picture quality issues?

No. Mine produces a pretty good picture. To my eyes it looks much more like regular tv than the output of a video card.

Some people seem to rave about the MVP video output, other seem to think it looks crap - not sure why. Might be a perception thing, or maybe some MVPs are better than others.

I guess you next step would be to work out if its a recording problem or playback problem. Does the same video look better on the PC?

[rscheller]

How much hard drive space is used by one of your one hour GBPVR mpg recordings? If it's not around 4+Gig then you're not recording in highest quaility.

Can you be more specific in describing what your TV picture from the MVP looks like? Too light, too dark, blocky, pixelated, grainy, fuzzy, colors over saturated, whatever.

Also, if your using the MVP included RCA video cable, you might want to try an S-Video cable.

[Subversive]

How much hard drive space is used by one of your one hour GBPVR mpg recordings? If it's not around 4+Gig then you're not recording in highest quaility.

Can you be more specific in describing what your TV picture from the MVP looks like? Too light, too dark, blocky, pixelated, grainy, fuzzy, colors over saturated, whatever.

Also, if your using the MVP included RCA video cable, you might want to try an S-Video cable.

Thanks for the reply.

I just checked and a 1 hour show is coming in at around 2.8 Gigs. It's definitely set to 'high' in GBPVR, is there a way to get it higher?

The picture is pixelated and fuzzy, as well as awfully dark.

I switched to a good quality s-video cable last night, unfortunately it doesn't seem to make a difference.

[Slice]

The guys here can tell you better about the details I post below. But when I first loaded and setup my system I had very poor quality dark and blocky with live TV. Tried different quality settings and tweaks with little/no success. I also had loads of codecs installed and one of them was effecting my TV playback quality. Now I don't use an MVP (Dont own one) just my case connected by SVHS to my TV.
At first when watching live TV through my box the quality was much worse than the direct conection to the TV (even with the SVHS cable) Now it's exactly the same.

I had one of the mega codec packs installed and I removed this and all other codecs and using "gspot" added back only the ones I needed (This was recomended somewhere on here!). At this stage the quality improved greatly! To finish I also puchased the nvidia purevideo codec (of which there is a free trial!)

I'm still a newbie so all I said above may be corrected but this seemed to work for me.