Video Card

[sterlicious]

I'm currently running GBPVR 1.0.16 on the current machine listed below. We're generally pleased with the PVR as something to record our shows, but there is a pretty decent drop-off from the digital antenna signal and our recorded shows. It's not choppy, it's just not near as crisp. Would a video card upgrade make much difference?

Current Machine:
AMD Athlon 1.33Ghz
DFI AK75-EC motherboard
640MB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 4000 video card*
OS is on a pared down 6GB hard drive.
GBPVR/BeyondTV are outputting to a dedicated 300GB Seagate hard drive.

My second question is whether a new video card added to the potential machine listed below would be enough to run the latest version of GBPVR. I really like the new interface and would love to use it if I could.

Potential Machine:
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1.8GHz
MSI K8N Neo2-F 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Motherboard
640MB of RAM - could possibly up this to 1GB if I thought it would make a difference.
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 4000 video card*

Lastly, what kind of video card do I need to get? I want to get one with S-Video and HD outputs to keep my options open, but beyond that what do I need to look for? Memory size? DirectX? OpenGL? Please bear in mind that I will not be upgrading either of these computers for at LEAST 3 more years, so I do not want to buy more video card than I need.

Thanks for the help. I know this was wordy.

[gEd]

It is quite common for people to find the quality from the analogue tuners to be a little soft compared to live tv.

try the Hauppauge tweak tool before changing you video card.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ge+pvr-150

I assume you need an AGP card. It's hard to recomend an AGP graphics that will last at LEAST 3 years.

Memory size? 128MB is fine. Often the cards with smaller amounts of memory have faster memory chips which can help (I think)

DirectX? PVRx2 used directx. any card in the last few years will support directx so forget about this.

Before I built a new server, I was using an Nvidea 6600GT which gave fantastic s-video playback with the purevideo decoder.

Some of the older cards can run a bit hot and noisy - which may or may not be a factor for you.

Best thing is to have a look on fleabay.

If you are using XP , you don;t need more than 640MB RAM

[pBS]

another thing you can try is simply adjusting the sharpness settings in direct.ini...it has made a world of difference for me..
[my card was set way too hi for sharpness,yours may be low,try 50% to start]

yea, if you upgrade the video card it'll make quite a difference...
if you actually need AGP card then yea, not many choices left out there, but there are some rather good ones left still...

i'd get a ATI HD 3650 if going agp [and probably even if going pcie also], it's a fully hw accelerated card, and has svideo, component[rgb] and dvi, vga and hdmi outputs [tho doesn't always come with all cables, all the cards have all the outputs]
it has edge sharpening filters to help crispiness of video..

note of caution, 8.12 drivers didn't work well, cat 8.11 works flawlessly tho..
and on agp cards, it's a custom driver on cd so don't lose original cd as you can't usually dl the driver from ati, have to get it from card maker...
that said, you should be golden if you just use the cdrom drivers that come with it..

[Bathman]

What type of screen are you outputting to?

If its CRT then via s-video in my experience the picture quality is always worse than the inbuilt TV tuner.

I have always got the best picture quality when I have set the TV resolution to the transimitted resolution. e.g. for uk freeview resolution set to 720x576 gives the best picture.

What type of Video Renderer are you using?

Overlay, VMR9, EVR give the best results (in that order) with VMR by far the best. In fact is was the reason I upgraded to Vista. (even though i'm not over keen on the interface)

Graphics card wise i have used.

AGP MX4000, 5200, 6200

PCI-x 7300LE, 2400, 3450 and 4350

The pick of the bunch for AGP being the 6200 as it was fanless (most important) and ran pretty cool. The 5200 and 6200 had similar picture quality with both of them much better thatn the MX4000. You could pick up a 6200 of ebay pretty cheaply.

PCI-x wish the 7300LE had been the best card i have used in a HTPC. Best picture quality, fanless and runs very cool.

This week I have put a 4350 into my HTPC as I want it to play back BBCHD. Picture wise I can tell no difference between this and the 7300LE.

I would be wary of the AGP 2 and 3 ATI series as hardware acceleration for blue ray, 264, mkv etc it has been reported to be flakey - i'm sure other wil be able to advice further.

[sterlicious]

I am indeed outputting to a CRT. We have a 27" Sony Wega from 2003-2004, I think. My PVR is currently disconnected, but I am reasonably sure that I am using the VMR7 or the Overlay because (again, as I recall) my old graphics card couldn't really handle the VMR9 very well.