PVR500 native resolution & scaling

[dp250f]

First off, I have been using GBPVR for a year now, and it is by far my favorite PVR program. Thank you Sub, for giving us such an excellent PVR solution.

Now, on to my question,
I noticed for a while now, using both ATI TV Wonder PCI and PVR500, that the PVR500 has 1 image attribute which I cannot figure out how to get rid of. It's hard to describe, so here's what I'm talking about:

Capture 1, from the ATI card:


Capture 2, from the PVR500:


Look at the text, mostly where it says "weather.com"
Notice how it is clear and defined on the ATI capture, but on the PVR500 capture, it is blurry horizontally.

Normally, this wouldn't bother me because something like this would not show up on a TV. There's always a hitch though, which is the fact that I watch TV on my computer monitor, and using a DLP projector on a 108" screen. It's VERY noticable when blown up to that size.

I only use the ATI card when both Hauppauge tuners are in use recording stuff and I want to watch a 3rd program.

My thinking is that it has to do with the native format the PVR500 uses, a resolution of 720x480. The ATI uses 640x480. I'm wondering if there is a way to make the PVR500 use 640x480. I suspect that would fix everything if I could figure it out.

Thanks.

[daphatty]

You are using both the ATI capture device and the PVR 500 in GBPVR right?

What software video decoder are you using? I have found that no one decoder works best for every capture device. (Which sorta exposes one of the FEW weaknesses of GBPVR.) I've had to settle for using my HDTV software decoder since the Fusion 5 doesn't perform acceptably with anything else. That means that my PVR USB2 capture quality suffers.

[dp250f]

Actually, those screen caps were taken with DScaler, they're raw video, not decoded video. I never figured out how to get the software encoder stuff working good for using the ATI card in GBPVR, so I just use DScaler to watch live TV with the ATI card when the other 2 tuners are busy. I will just buy another PVR500 if I ever want to record more than 2 programs at once.

The horizontal blurring happens in either application, so I know it's not a decoding issue. I am using the NVIDIA Pure Video decoder for GBPVR and it is set as the default decoder for my computer.

[daphatty]

Ok so now I am confused. The screen grabs were using the Dscaler decoders but you normally use the nVidia decoders?

[Chris.Day]

That artifact can occur when the comb filter falls back to the basic notch filter, either through it being intentionally turned off in the driver (as for PAL countries) or through comb errors being too high.

[dp250f]

The screenshots are from the standalone program Dscaler 4.1.15, not using the DScaler 5 mpeg filters.

[dp250f]

That can happen when the comb filter falls back to the basic notch filter, either through it being intentionally turned off in the driver (as for PAL countries) or through comb errors being too high.

Hmm.. It's an NTSC source, using the card's internal tuner if that helps. I can play with those settings and see if it makes a difference, but how do I go about changing them?

[Chris.Day]

If you want to play with the comb filter, look in the Registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwpp2\DriverData and create these new DWORD values:

HcwMakoReg_SrcCombCfg_OR = 20000000
HcwMakoReg_SrcCombCfg_AND = 00ffffff
HcwMakoReg_CombCtl_OR = 00500000
HcwMakoReg_CombCtl_AND = FF00FFFF
HcwPALCombFix = 00

Change the number I've highlighted in bold to adjust the comb threshold (range is 00-FF).

Note: When editing you won't see the zeros at the start.

Note: Since you're in NTSC land, you might be able to set this instead (for the first two):
HcwMakoReg_SrcCombCfg_OR = 22000000
HcwMakoReg_SrcCombCfg_AND = 00ffffff

[dp250f]

Hmmm.. I tried that, and it made some vertical blurring happen as well, without improving the horizontal blurring....

Here's to looking for the next magic registry dword