Weird TV Display

[tweeknockr]

Hi all,

So I finally got my HDTV tuner card working correctly, but now I'm having some difficulties with my standard def card (PowerColor Theater 550).

The main problem is that I'm (usually) getting a screen that looks as shown.

Interestingly enough, LiveTV usually looks ok, but when I record a show and play it back, it looks like this. I've tried all different mpeg2 decoders with varying results. The best one is "System Default" (which I don't know what codec it is... no other codec in the list yields the same performance).

When System Default is selected, it's kind of hit-or-miss, as it seems like sometimes the codec "corrects" for the problem, and sometimes it doesn't.

I've updated to the latest drivers for the card. The codecs that I have are Intervideo, CyberLink, DScalar, and NVidia. I don't know if there are others out there I should be trying, or if this is a problem with something else.

In my fooling around, it seems as though the problem is in the deinterlacing, as changing these settings (both on the Misc tab of GBPVR and within the individual codecs themselves) seems to have the greatest effect on the problem.

Thanks for any help!

[sub]

If you're using an nvidia video card, then this is probably the nvidia aspect ratio bug. You can try two things: (1) press F7 a few times to see if the 'full' aspect ratio works better, or (2) try switching to the 'VMR9 Custom' video renderer.

[tweeknockr]

Ah.. indeed I am using an nVidia 7600. Looks like I found a group of settings that works pretty well.

The only thing is that now on the standard def channels, the "auto" aspect ratio stretches the 4:3 to the 16:9 tv. It's not a huge deal, as I can just toggle F7 for the SD and HDTV channels, but is there a way to specify unique aspect ratios for different channels? (i.e. set all the HD channels to 'auto' and all the SD channels to 'pillar box')?

Thanks for all your help and incredibly speedy responses sub!

[Braklet]

While sorting out some decoder issues, I had the exact same symptom. It was very irritating. (nVidia 6600-based card in my case, and nVidia Video Decoder)

Modifying aspect via F7 didn't work. The only thing that finally got rid of it was VMR9 with Custom renderer.

I still have to fiddle with F7 depending on source aspect, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal. I find that "Auto" mode tends to work best.

The nVidia Video Decoder gave such big video quality benefits over the Intervideo and Cyberlink decoders (not to mention offloading rendering to my GPU) that I am willing to put up with some quirks.

[nitrogen_widget]

Actually I think the bug in in the latest nvidia drivers.
I have not had much luck with them on older hardware (6200)
I went to an older (84 something) driver & all was well.