Dull picture

[JimPletcher]

GB-PVR 1.2.9
Geoforce 5200FX (driver 81.85)
Hauppauge 1600
Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz
2 GB RAM, Win XP pro (clean install)

The images displayed on the CRT analog TV are noticebly dull ,and lack the highlights and dynamic range of the direct antenna connection.

Have dorked with NVIDIA settings to no avail.

Is this symptomatic of computer output to the TV, or is there something I can do to improve things?

[pBS]

try overlay...
or turn off any anti-aliasing [AA] in video card's 3d settings...

[JimPletcher]

Thanks for the reply.

Anti-ailising is off.
I will look into the overlay.

This is a poor representation of (otherswise) good TV reception. I hope there is a way around it, because I really want to use a digital video recorder.

[philly_phenom]

I had similar issues when I connected to my TV w/ a 5200...

[pBS]

what resolution? how is it connected to tv?
i hope it's sd cuz that one won't do hd very well..just doesn't have the horsepower..
but it should be sharp....those can be set to display extra sharp with driver adjustments...[mostly 'sharpness' in the driver..lol]

plus set the flicker removal to low or none if using svideo out..

[JimPletcher]

Thanks for the comments people!

This is SD, with the card set at 1024 x768 - using S-video
The picture appears to be sharp, just can't get the brightness up.

Should I be looking at a different video card?

This is a test situation in a SFF PC, and AGP 8 video is all that is available.
I will gladly build a new PC (with quieter componnets) if I can be sure the picture will improve.

[philly_phenom]

There's no reason for it to be set at 1024x768 - your TV only displays 480 lines & you are wasting your graphics card's horsepower to generate a resolution your TV can't even display.

Try setting your display to 640x480 - my first machine had a 5200FX and I got my best performance at the lower resolution. You gain absolutly zero by setting it higher than what your TV can show which means you are needlessly burdening your graphics card.

[JimPletcher]

Thanks, the 1024 x 768 is largely for the monitor (which I'm using in parallel, to iron things out).

I just dropped to 640 x 480, and if there's any difference - its small. The antenna (and/or VCR) feed is still more brilliant than the PVR.

Possibly I should reword my original question to say:
Is anyone getting the brilliant whites from their DVR that the TV is capable of?
If so, what are you using for capture and display?
Could s-video be part of the culprit?

This is an appropriate time to mention that this is a great forum. What I've learned here has been a tremendous help! My thanks to everyone.

[mikeh49]

Here are a couple of thoghts/suggestions:

Search the forum for posts by csy; he has provided excellent configuration suggestions for SDTV set up for both Nvidia and ATI cards. For NTSC, he recommends 720X480 resolution, which worked well for me. Also, there are a number of other settings that he recommends that are in his posts, and also in the Wiki, I believe.

You may have trouble getting a true picture (so to speak) with both a monitor and a TV connected to the video card. I'm not sure the card can fully understand what to do with two devices connected and this may contribute to your lack of success with the video card settings. So, have only the TV on the S-video for final adjustments, after getting the basics in place with the monitor. The desktop will look terrible on the TV, so I used Ultra VNC for remote control from another machine on the network. Unfortunately, the 720X480 resolution is nearly unuseable for things like the Nvidia control panel, so I used a utility called scrnmode to change the resolution to 1024X768 for tweaking, and then back to 720X480 for GBPVR.

After you get the above set up, then you can deal with the picture quality. I used the Nvidia decoder and VMR9 custom renderer with my Geforce 6200 feeding a CRT SDTV via S-video and got a well saturated, well contrasted picture. You can adjust the Hauppauge encoder saturation, brightness, contrast, etc settings for analog recordings in the GBPVR direct.ini file (or at least you could for the PVR-150). (You can also search on Hauppauge tweaks for additional ways to do this.) For digital broadcasts, the capture card doesn't do anything, so it's all in the playback. The MPEG decoders also have similar settings, but I haven't figured out how to adjust those, or make them stick. You might also try the 90 series Nvidia drivers, that's what I used.

With all the above said, I don't think you can get a picture from an analog capture card that is indistinguishable from live TV; the encoder on the card and the decoders on the computer are just not that good, from what I understand, compared to, for example, the professional multi-pass encoders that are used to make DVDs. Speaking of DVDs, you could make a DVD of one of your recordings and then watch it on a DVD player to see what the capture card is producing. This should be able to separate the encoding from playback issues.

Good luck!

[JimPletcher]

I just tried connecting only the TV. The results may have been a little better, but I can't tell for sure. There is still a significant difference between antenna/VCR and PVR feeds. Except for the dulled highlights, the picture is fine.

I will look for posts by csy, thanks for the reference.

There is apparently still a lot more experimenting for me, but I have the feeling you summed it up when you said:

I don't think you can get a picture from an analog capture card that is indistinguishable from live TV; the encoder on the card and the decoders on the computer are just not that good, from what I understand, compared to, for example, the professional multi-pass encoders that are used to make DVDs.

Still, I'll keep plugging on and IF anything noteworthy turns up, I'll post it here.