Noob needs help - getting the most out of my tuner card

[Astantax]

Hi all,

I'm totally new to this, and after spending some bones on some RAM and a Tuner card, I have sucessfully got it all to work. I can record shows, I'm using yapi to get the channel listings, etc. So far, so good.

My hardware is as such: 2.3 GHZ P4, 256 mb RAM (i'm still waiting on amazon to deliver an addition 512 megs, so ram upgrade is imminent), NVIDIA Geforce card (I'm not sure which, but I can find out), Audigy 2, and Hauppauge WinTV 150 MCE (kit with remote).

I have the cable (I think it's digital cable, but again, I'm not sure, and I'm not sure if it even matters with respect to my problem) from the wall split once to accomodate a cable modem. The line not going to my cable modem is then split again, one line for the TV itself, and one line for the computer Tuner card.

Even after buying the NVIDIA decoder codec and playing around with all possible settings in the playback config, LiveTV / recordings still look noticably grainy/distorted. I have it to the point in which there is no stuttering or jerkiness, but what I'm going for is to have TV look as good as my DVDs, which I'm playing through the same computer (they look great). I'd settle for at least as good as playback on my actual TV. Is this possible? Did I screw up and buy an outdated card? Is it the encoding on the card itself? Or do I just need a better computer / faster CPU / drivers / a miracle?

My TV is a samsung 32 inch LCD HDTV. I have it on 4:3 non-stretched mode, and yes, I know that analog signals on HDTV are lower-quality. What I am experiencing through the tuner card is lower in quality than normal live TV.

Thanks for you help! Sorry if a million people have asked this already. I did try a forum search, but it only yielded posts about 1,000 other scary problems I hope I never have.

- Brian

[note: edited for clarity / typos. hindsight is 20/20]

[Hairy]

Brian,

I'm no expert by any means. But if it was me I'd first play a recording in VLCto see if there is any discernible difference, and check the picture quality in the default Hauppauge software.

I would also try just connecting to the Capture card in the PC on it's own (i.e remove anything else connected to the cable signal), to see if the picture quality increases. If it did then maybe the signal isn't up to par, from my experience TV capture cards need a good healthy signal.

I'm sure there are plenty of people on here with better ideas, but if it was me thats what I'd try first.

Good luck

[Astantax]

Brian,

I would also try just connecting to the Capture card in the PC on it's own (i.e remove anything else connected to the cable signal), to see if the picture quality increases. If it did then maybe the signal isn't up to par, from my experience TV capture cards need a good healthy signal.

I will definitely be trying this, and all of the other things you mentioned, but I'd like to point out that my TV is recieving the same signal split an equal amount of times, and there is no issue regarding quality degredation. Obviously a TV's internal rendering components differ marginally from that of a 3 year old DELL computer...so try I shall.

Thanks for your help. if anyone else has any other advice, please let me know.

- Brian

[nitrogen_widget]

What resolution & what bitrate are you recording at?

[Astantax]

Forgive my noob-ness, but when I go into the NVIDI codec config page, the bitrate information is a bit of a mystery to me - not that I don't understand bitrates, but there doesn't seem to be a way to change the setting. Under the bitrate field, there is something that appears to be a white bar, under which are various bitrate values, increasing in size from left to right. Looks almost like it could be a meter, but it doesn't seem to be interactive at all. Clicking on it yields no results. Perhaps there is some way to access more advanced settings?

How can I tell what resolution it's capturing? My spidey-sense tells me it's not the same thing as the windows screen resolution setting...

Ps. later today I can and will post screenshots. Thanks for your help!

- Brian

[Deusxmachina]

If the picture looks like it does in Live TV, then whatever recording settings you use shouldn't matter since you're not recording. The video decoder choice in GBPVR's config file can matter on that, but I daresay not a whole lot. I've tried a billion or so different video decoders, and while I could pick out some differences in various of them, none look "bad" to me.

If you're comparing live TV on your PC through GBPVR to live TV on your TV through your cable box, the difference is probably in your 150 card. I just read a few posts yesterday of people saying their 350 cards have a better picture than their 150 cards.

OR, if you're comparing video on your TV to video on your PC, maybe your monitor just makes things look grainier. I guess one way to check that would be watch a file on the TV via TV-out on your PC and compare, assuming it has a TV-out. That introduces yet another step that can alter signal quality, but hey.

Kind of hard to fault the signal strength if it's an equal split between the PC and TV, and it's hard to fault recording settings if it does it with live TV. Signal strength COULD be the problem like was mentioned, in which case you then get to blame the TV for having too good of a tuner or blame the 150 for having too bad of one. If your Geforce card is ooollld, image quality may not be up to current standards, but I wouldn't think it'd be bad enough for anyone to say something about.

I use Media Info to be sure of resolution and what type of audio and all that of a media file. Works well, and also adds itself to your right-click mouse menu for ease of use.

And Hairy mentioned VLC player. It's a self-contained player that only uses its own files, so it's great to use when wanting a second opinion on how a file plays or looks.

[Astantax]

I use Media Info to be sure of resolution and what type of audio and all that of a media file. Works well, and also adds itself to your right-click mouse menu for ease of use.

And Hairy mentioned VLC player. It's a self-contained player that only uses its own files, so it's great to use when wanting a second opinion on how a file plays or looks.

New, hopeful development:

I took your suggestion and I downloaded and installed VLC player. I set it to open capture stream, and bam - the cable signal came in clear as day! it looks absolutely fantastic! So, is there a way to tweak the settings in GB PVR somehow so that I can achieve the same level of quality? Do I need to download some other codec?

Btw, I went into GB PVR's config and messed around with the capture source...I opened up the area that lets you mess around with bit rates, and I set the numbers under "LiveTV" to be as high as "High Quality", and then even higher...changed all the settings around multiple times, and no dice. Video coming in to GB PVR looks grainy and compressed, like a youtube video. Plus, it's slightly squashed for some reason, even though I have it set for 4:3. VLC displays the captured steam nearly as good as my TV itself. The only issues with VLC was that I couldn't get VLC to play any audio, and none of the de-interlacers worked (trying them closed the stream automatically), but that's water under the bridge (or will be, i hope...)

I found out some important information. Here are my stats:
Windows XP Home, all major updates installed up to and including .Net 3.0
SP2
P4 2.40 GHZ, 256 megs of Ram (to be +512 when my ram order comes in, i'm hoping monday)
Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 MCE
Soundblaster Audigy 2
Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 with AGP8x
60 gig HD

Any ideas as to why GB PVR doesn't seem to want to do what I want it to do?

Thanks for all your help!! You guys are really nice to help out a newcomer like myself.

- Brian

[sub]

Its quite likely your MX 440 doesnt do a good job with Direct3D making it look average with PVRX2 (since it uses Direct3D based renderers).

Maybe try setting GBPVR.exe to use the Overlay Renderer in the config app, then try viewing the recording in GBPVR.exe to see if it looks better. A lot of earlier cards did a much better job with Overlay than with the newer renderers.

You could also try the EVR renderer with PVRX2.exe to see if it helps.

[Astantax]

Sub - would buying a new graphics card help? I don't think my setup could handle a spiffy awesome new one, but that'd be too expensive anyway - would an upgrade to a better nvidia card be worth it? Do you have any recommendations?

edit: I have been running PVRX2.exe with the EVR renderer enabled...it is an improvement, but there is still noticable noise/distortion/grain/ugly

- Brian

[sub]

Sub - would buying a new graphics card help?

Maybe, but until you try it we wont know for sure.

To make sure its not a recording issue (rather than playback), when you play one of the recordings made by GB-PVR back in VLC, does it look good or bad? Its not clear in your description above, but it doesnt sound like thats what you did.

edit: I have been running PVRX2.exe with the EVR renderer enabled...it is an improvement, but there is still noticable noise/distortion/grain/ugly

Did you try GBPVR.exe with the Overlay Renderer?