Poor playback in GB-PVR

[airberger]

Hello all,

I've scoured the message board for an answer to this and haven't really come up with anything. Here's the situation in all it's glory:

Clean install of Windows 2000 along with all service packs and updates on my crappy old Compaq PIII 850 MHz notebook, complete with PCMCIA USB 2.0 card. Original ATI Rage Mobility M1 card has S-video out which goes to the TV.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 installed OK, along with supplied Intervideo decoder and WinTV200 software. WinTV2000 picture is surprisingly good, both live and when playing back recordings.

Installed the most recent GB-PVR last week. I love it, the look, the interface, the scheduling app are all I could have hoped for.

But playback within GB-PVR sucks. During LiveTV and Recording playback, the picture is very dark. It's also sort of pixellated-looking, especially in darker areas. This is true whether I play them on the notebook LCD or the TV. But if I record files using GB-PVR, they play back in WMP9 and WinTV2000, and they look great. So right now I use GB-PVR to schedule and record and WinTV2K to play back. This works, but I can see this getting old pretty quickly. So here are things I've tried:

I did the DirectX quartz.dll rollback right after installation but this didn't change anything (picture was not choppy anyway, just dark and pixellated).

I have only two choices for video decoder in the "Playback" config tab: Default and Intervideo CSS. I've tried both with no change in results. Which makes sense in view of the Windows 2K clean install, I assume "Default" probably just uses Intervideo anyway. I've messed with the audio decoders too just for fun, also with no change in picture quality.

I use Overlay, GB-PVR won't let me use VMR7 or VMR9.

I've tried using Live Preview mode with encoder pass-through, and I've disabled Live preview, watching in time-shift mode, no change in picture.

It is possible to change the way playback looks in GB-PVR by messing with Color configuration settings (Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue) in WinTV2000, and some improvement can be made, but not to the point where I'm willing to watch it. My video card has some configuration settings, but none that help me.

So that's where I am. As far as I can tell, the Intervideo decoder is the only one on my system. WinTV2000 and WMP use it to great effect while GB-PVR seemingly can't. This is the only problem I'm having with GB-PVR, but it's a pretty significant one. Any ideas? Is there any way to determine whether GB-PVR is actually using the Intervideo decoder?

I'm not at home right now, but I can post screen captures later if anyone things it will help.

Thanks,
Derek

[reboot]

Update to directx9 should have given you VMR7/9 ability (if that ancient Rage can even do it).
Have you updated video drivers?
I think you're expecting too much from an 850 Compaq.

[sub]

But playback within GB-PVR sucks. During LiveTV and Recording playback, the picture is very dark. It's also sort of pixellated-looking, especially in darker areas. This is true whether I play them on the notebook LCD or the TV. But if I record files using GB-PVR, they play back in WMP9 and WinTV2000, and they look great. So right now I use GB-PVR to schedule and record and WinTV2K to play back. This works, but I can see this getting old pretty quickly. So here are things I've tried:

Sounds like there is nothing at all wrong with the recording.... this leaves us the playback components sounding like the culprit.

GB-PVR doesnt actually do the playback itself. Instead in delegates this task to video decoder components already installed on your machine. In this case it sound like these video components are doing a bad job. All I can suggest is installing some other video decoders and trying them out.

[airberger]

Thanks for the quick response!

I think the video card won't let me do VMR7/9, but I'm not sure that's important to me - maybe it should be, I don't know.

And I agree I'm expecting a lot from my crappy old notebook. But on the other hand, it already plays MPEG-2 files really well, via WinTV2K and WMP. I just want it to do the same thing through GB-PVR, using the same decoder. Maybe that's asking too much, but if so I'm not sure why.

Derek

[Ken34]

Sounds like there is nothing at all wrong with the recording.... this leaves us the playback components sounding like the culprit.

GB-PVR doesnt actually do the playback itself. Instead in delegates this task to video decoder components already installed on your machine. In this case it sound like these video components are doing a bad job. All I can suggest is installing some other video decoders and trying them out.

would divx, xvid, etc count as decoders?

[sub]

No. In this case we're talking about MPEG2 decoders.

If you were having playback issues with xvid avi files, then xvid decoders would be relevant.

[j3flight]

FYI:
xvid/divx == MPEG4.

[j3flight]

For MPEG2 decoders, I like DScaler5. (Note: NOT THE SAME AS DSCALER4!)
Others will debate their favorites, but it's a freebie, so give it a try.
http://www.dscaler.org/dscaler5.htm
Navigate to the DScaler5 forums and download the .006 version.

Jason

[psykoalby]

I'm having the same problems as airberger. The quality of the reception in GBPVR leaves a lot to be desired. It looks a lot like my old USB TV Tuner that I got two years ago.

[sub]

Same answer applies to you then aswell.