ATSC HD flickering

[shimshady]

I have a HVR 2250 with that i use with regular analog cable as well as OTA channels. Im having a problem with flickering in the OTA channels, its sort of annoying and im wondering if its a problem with the tuner or codec. Im gonna try and download other codecs when i get home currently i am using ffdshow. I saw another post about using some community codec pack (for use with mkv files) so i might give that try. Does anyone else have this problem, it doesnt happen with analog channels. Thanks

[TonyXL]

What are your system specs? What's your OS?

[shimshady]

Windows XP, AMD Athlon X2 2.8ghz, BioStar T series 790GX, HVR 2250, HDMI out to the TV.

[johnsonx42]

Do you get the flickering with all your OTA channels, or just some? Perhaps the 1080i channels flicker while the 720p are OK? That would be a de-interlacing problem. Such issues absolutely plagued me until I switched to Win7. Now I get crystal clear OTA HD, with nary a stutter, flicker or tear - even horizontal scrolling news/sports tickers are smooth as silk.

Assuming you'd rather solve this without switching to Win7 just yet, codecs and video card drivers are the usual suspects. You should install the latest video drivers from AMD and get the AVIVO pack as well which will give you the ATI MPEG-2 Decoder.

Also, what video renderer are you using? Many people, including me, end up running VMR9 Full Screen Exclusive to get smooth video playback.

note: in Preview Mode LiveTV, or while playing a Recording, you can see the video resolution by pressing Ctrl-O. It doesn't work in timeshift mode though, Ctrl-O is used to catch-up with the live stream instead.

[shimshady]

Thanks for the advice...i will give it a try. The flickering drives me crazy, i end up focusing more on that then i do the show.

[shimshady]

VMR9 Full screen fixed the problem, however, i think im seeing a difference in resolution. The picture doesnt seem as crisp as it was...is it my imagination? What exactly is the difference between the VMR9 custom and full screen? I think i might have to many codecs installed as well so im gonna try and get rid of some of them.

On another note, is it possible to have my analog channels in 4x3 mode and HD channels in 16x9?

[johnsonx42]

I don't see how there could be any resolution or image quality difference between the VMR9 modes. All VMR9 FSE does is lock the screen so that PVRX2.exe is the only application with access to the screen; everything else is the same. Sub understands it much better than I do of course.

Regarding aspect ratios, if you have your TV shape set correctly, pvrx2 will switch aspect ratios for you if you're in Auto mode (F7). However if you're using ffdshow, it won't work by default: in the ffdshow output settings there's a settting called "Set pixel aspect ratio in output media type" which has to be enabled, or PVRX2 will not see the aspect ratio (it inserts a filter called "GB-PVR Flow Status" in the playback graph which catches the aspect ratio and passes it back to PVRX2).

[sub]

I don't see how there could be any resolution or image quality difference between the VMR9 modes. All VMR9 FSE does is lock the screen so that PVRX2.exe is the only application with access to the screen; everything else is the same. Sub understands it much better than I do of course.

I agree. I wouldnt expect to see any visual difference between VMR9 Custom and VMR9 FSE. The only difference is that VMR9 FSE tells windows that it'll be in an exclusive mode, "so dont let other windows renderer anything". This FSE can result uses slightly less system resource, which can result in slightly smoother video, but the colorspace/resolution/appearence of frames should be identical.

[shimshady]

I think i was imagining things. CSI looked great last night, however in high action scenes the screen starts to get ....patchy, i think is the best way to say it. Does this have something with some deinterlacing issues? I will search more on the topic but the VMR9 FSE fixed the flicker. Thanks

[TonyXL]

Could be the codecs, could be the source. I've noticed drastic quality differences in HD channels on my FiOS service. ABC seems to be pretty bad overall, very blocky. Fox NFL on Sunday looks awesome.