New hardware, old quality issues

[Stargrove1]

Hi there,

I'm using gbpvr for quite a few years now. I started with an AMD Athlon 2700+, an Asus board, a hauppauge pvr350.

In the beginning I used the tv out hardware mpeg decoder from the 350 and the picture on my tv was quite good. Then sub discontinued the support of the tv out and I changed to the tv out of the board, the resolution was higher, but the videos were a little bit blurry. The sub started the next generation with pvrx2 and my gfx card didn't support vmr9. Therefore I purchased an old ATI 9600 and it worked again quite good. Then I bought a Samsung 37" LEB650 with HD and suddenly I saw how blurry the picture really was :o) I thought its time to say goodbye to my old hw and changed to an Intel 5300 duo core cpu, Gigabyte Mainboard with HD sound, HDMI out, 2GB Kingston RAM, 1TB Samsung Spinpoint, (very) low noise housing and a DVB-C TT 1501. Now the pc is very silent, very fast, but the picture is not as good as I imagined it. It's still a little bit blurry an motion blurring also occurs, if I play the the same file with the internal media player of the samsung, the picture is sharper, clearer and most of all nomotion blurring at all.

Does anybody have an Idea how to improve that? Best resolution, best mpeg2/divx/xvid encoder, renderer or something how I can get rid of the motoin blurring?

And thanks to sub for this great work over all the years, if only windows would work that good ;o)

[BigMoose]

I assume you are using HDMI to the TV? Do you have the resolution set to the native resolution of the TV plus the refresh rate set to whatever your video feed used? (50Hz in PAL land, 60Hz in other places). By the sounds of it you're having internacing problems if it's blury on motion. What format is the video in question? What codecs are you using? Try different video decoders or load graphedit or graphstudio and play around with the codecs until you get a better picture.

[Stargrove1]

I assume you are using HDMI to the TV?

Yes

Do you have the resolution set to the native resolution of the TV

No, I am using a smaller res (13xx x 768) to be able to read the win desktop, but I tried the native 1920x1080 with the same result, but the colours look a little bit odd with the hi res.

plus the refresh rate set to whatever your video feed used? (50Hz in PAL land, 60Hz in other places)

In the lower freqs I tried 50, 60 and 75 Hz, in full hd I only could use the 60Hz (I am located in germany -> pal)

By the sounds of it you're having internacing problems if it's blury on motion.

I don't think its the interlacing, I know how that looks from my old analog days. It is just like watching with an tft of the early days with high reaction times.

What format is the video in question?

Tried MPEG2, DIVX, XVID

What codecs are you using?

I'm not quite sure at the mpeg2, Divx and Xvid from Xvid.org

Try different video decoders or load graphedit or graphstudio and play around with the codecs until you get a better picture.

I allready tried a few but was not satisfied with one, I was wondering if I am doing something completely wrong.

[BigMoose]

I would strongly recommend setting the refresh rate to the Hz of the media you are playing. Not sure if German PAL is 50Hz like the UK, but you'll never get it perfectly smooth otherwise. While you should be able to get smooth motion with other resolutions, I wouldn't recommend picking anything just cause it fits, I have good results on 1080p (best the TV can support) or 720p - but I wouldn't pick any old "PC" resolution.

As for the deinterlacing, there are several different deinterlacing methods, all of which produce different results. Hoborg produced a good exmaple of various different deinterlacing methods and the results (cant find the post now!). It sounds like the codec isn't using hardware deinterlacing - have a look for Hoborg's post and see if it matches the bluring you are seeing. Try the MPC video decoders, or cyberlink for some that do use dxva (his SAF pack might help you - I dont personally use it as have to set too many different filters for bluray playback, but others have reported good success from it)

[Stargrove1]

To the refresh rate, afaik it was not possible to change to 50Hz (pal in ger), only 60 Hz is possible in the intel gfx adapter setup. Do you think it is different (or better?) to use the DVI port to the TV? Now I use the HDMI out because it also supports the audio, especially the AC3.

Thank you for the tipps, I will try those and report the results.

[BigMoose]

I assume from your first post that the graphics card is onboard the motherboard? What is it? I had terrible trouble getting my ATI to do 50Hz at a sensible resolution (until a more recent release of their drivers had it as an option). Powerstrip allowed me to change the refresh rate regardless of the options offered by the ATI software. The refresh rate is more likely to cause stutter than bluring though so it's probably worth sorting that out first and worry about the refresh later.

[Stargrove1]

It's an onboard gfx with 256MB shared. The Mainboard (GA-G41M-ES2H) has an integrated gfx adapter called "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500" and shall be DX10 capable, but I didn't find DX10 for that, only for Ati or Nvidia. I watched the 3D demo from DX9, but that grafic was smooth and no motion blurring at all.