HVR1600 Analog Poor Quality and Interlace

[crashbowman]

I am having trouble with my HVR-1600 in GBPVR. The quality is pretty annoying and at first I was thinking because it was an analog souce on a 32" HDTV, but the more I work with it the more I get confused.

1) When the Coax is directly connected to the TV the picture quality is really good and no interlace lines.
2) In Win TV the quality is not as good, but there are no interlace lines.
3) In GBPVR the quality is bad and there are interlace lines on everything.

I would really like it to look like it does when connected to the TV, but I can probably live with the worse quality, but no interlace.

Another problem/weird thing is that the only way to view TV in the standard 4x3 aspect ratio is to use pillar box. This is not that big of a problem, but it is of centerered and shifted to the right. I also thought AUTO should give the 4x3 aspect ratio, but maybe I don't completely understand what the AUTO feature does.

Thanks for any help.
John

[sub]

What video decoder do you have selected on the playback tab of the config app?

I also thought AUTO should give the 4x3 aspect ratio, but maybe I don't completely understand what the AUTO feature does.

Yes, auto would normally display the correct aspect ratio.

Do you have a 4x3 tv or a 16x9 tv?

What video card are you using?

[crashbowman]

I was using Default as the Video Decoder, but I just downloaded the trial of Nvidia Pure Video and it seemed to fix everything, although I really would like a non $20 option.

My video card is a Nvidia 8500GT.


I have a 16x9 HDTV, but the main problem came with displaying Analog 4x3 content.

As I said above all this seemed to be fixed with Pure Video, but I was hoping to be able to do these things without buying it.

Thanks,
John

[sub]

'system default' just tells Window's try to find one on your machine. The problem you encountered means its finding a poor MPEG2 decoder as the system default.

There are plenty of other free MPEG2 decoders out there. A couple of common ones are:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Dsca...ilters.htm

[crashbowman]

OK after trying out MPEG-2 Decoders today I had many problems and saw the problem I never got solved in the following thread resurected.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=27096

Here is a rundown of what problems I am having.
1) Cyberlink (VMR9 does not fullywork even with the mod's listed all over this site, limited to Overlay)
2) Intervideo (DVD locks up a few minutes into playing)
3) Nvidia Pure Video (Weird black and white lines and circles, it worked fine at first and then this started, make it completely unusable)


I was able to get Cyberlink to work with my 1600 with decent quality video which was my original problem, but I just can't get past the VMR9 issues with Cyberlink or get another DVD decoder to work properly.

Thanks for the help,
John

[qam1600]

I got an HVR1600 because of the new QAM support, and I must say the analog quality is absolutely HORRIBLE when recording from my Comcast cable. The analog quality from my PVR350 is much, much better.

The channel scan only found one QAM channel, so unless I can figure out how to tune in more channels, this damn thing is going back to the store for sure!

[stustunz]

how many tuners do you have coming off the cable
try disconnecting all but the one going to the hvr1600

[qam1600]

Right now I only have a 2-way splitter, one for the TV and one for the tuner. I was going to hook up a 3-way splitter for QAM until I found out the HVR1600 is so bad with analog. For now I have the TV line hooked into the old PVR350, which continues to capture just fine from the signal on this line.

[stustunz]

well you could be getting loss in the 2 way splitter
if you can remove it and run the cable straight to the tuner
then see if it is any better
if it is then a good signal amp may help

[qam1600]

Comcast has a promotion for digital boxes, free for one year, so I got one. Quality is now good using the S-Video input on the HVR-1600 and changing channels on the digital box with the IR Blaster.