PQ - Sharpness

[Smoker]

Greetings

Was looking closer to my PQ and noticed that the difference between tv through gbpvr and straight through the coax was some sharpness. i am using the nvideo decoder currently. So I am wondering what settings (or different decoders) I should look at to clear up the sharpness of my picture.

::EDIT:: BTW I am using the mb S-Video out.

[elbryyan]

Are you talking about a feed from your cable or satelite company or an OTA antennea? If you are using an antennea then the picture may be less sharp because of the svideo connection from your pc. If you have a DVI or HDMI? connection then that would probably show you a better picture.

[Smoker]

I have comcast analog cable and I see a bit of a difference between the sharpness when I watch tv through gbpvr and when I watch straight through the cable (no tuners or gbpvr).

[HtV]

You might want to try the hauppauge tweaker tool. You can change the sharpness-settings with it.(and some more)
http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/tweak...weaker.zip

[pastro]

Are you recording at the highest bit rate? Some of the softness will be due to compression. Also tweak the PVR150's sharpness to its highest setting and your tv out to its highest setting. There is also a temporal filter and a spatial filter that will effect sharpness in the tweak tool advanced settings. I don't know which way makes it sharper but I'm sure a quick experiment would show it. Basically you want to make those filters do less filtering because they are intended to blur in time (across fields) or space (across lines). This will create more noise though so it will need to be a tradeoff of blur versus junk.

If you have a progressive display the deinterlacing will make a difference as well. If you are running a standard TV, it doesn't do a thing.
The antiflicker setting on an interlaced display can blur your picture. The more you remove flicker the more you will blur the picture. These filters work by making the even and odd fields look more similar so you can't see the flicker between fields.


Btw, I run mine at the middle bit rate, and I have the sharpness tweaked all the way up in the tweak tool and my tv out. I have the flicker set to minimum. I haven't played with the spatial or temporal filter because my picture is pretty good but it could be sharper.

If you burn a DVD and play it on the DVD is the picture sharper? That will help decide if it is on the encoder or the TV side.
Good luck.

[Smoker]

I have a standard tv so thats not interlaced correct ?

I will have to check out those settings in the pvr150 and tv-out when I get home. I do know I had played with the flicker control on the tv-out but can't remember if I had put it back to the default or not.

[pastro]

Standard tv is interlaced. Your TV gets a complete frame at something very close to 30 times per second (for NTSC). However, it receives half of the information, at just about 60 times per second. It displays all of the even lines, and then it displays all of the odd lines. Your eye does the rest.

[sub]

You may also find you get a better picture with Overlay instead of VMR.

[Smoker]

I thought I had read where overlay wasn't as good as vmr even though it's niceer to the cpu.

[sub]

Most people say the picture quality is better with Overlay, but I personally prefer VMR with its nicer OSD abilities (semi-transparent etc).