Noticeably soft picture on SD channels Australia

[bigrizz]

I have v5 installed on my Windows Server 2016 Essentials machine and using Kodi on my previous gen Shield as the client. All the settings are default. 

I notice that SD channel IQ is noticeably soft across all SD channels. HD channels look fine to me. Is there a way I can improve the IQ on SD channels? I see that the config.xml has options under SreamingProfiles to adjust VideoBitrate. Is this where I should be looking? I've left the preferred streaming profile as 'default' under transcoding. I'm not sure what this does. Should I change this to the resolution of my TV?

I'm a deadset noob so feel free to be explicit with your advice. Thanks in advance.

[mvallevand]

Unless you have enabled auto transcoding of recordings, which you should only do if you like the web app, NextPVR saves recordings as is. The image quality will have notihng to do with NextPVR or the platform.

You will need to look to your client settings. Some people don't like the AI that the Shield uses for image processing.

Martin

[bigrizz]

Sorry Martin. I should have been clearer. I was talking about live TV streaming. That leads me to think I should try recording a show then comparing the recorded IQ with the live TV IQ.

[mvallevand]

Live TV is sent to Kodi as-is with no processing at all.

Martin

[bigrizz]

Live TV is sent to Kodi as-is with no processing at all.

Martin

Thanks Martin. I just tested a recording and I can't see any noticeable difference between live TV and recorded TV. Would changing the framerate in config.xml make any difference?

[bigrizz]

As a point of reference, I played an IPTV stream of the same channel using Tivimate and the image was sharper than the Kodi image. It seems like there's some compression going on somewhere from the source to the client. Are you saying that NextPVR just sends the stream unchanged from the DVB-T tuner to the client?

[sub]

I was talking about live TV streaming.

How are you watching this stream? If it's in the web player, it will be transcoding the stream (and possibly making it softer looking). If it's in kodi, or native player, you'll just be getting a copy of whatever was broadcast. The decoder/renderer in your player could also be a factor.

[mvallevand]

Zero. As-is really means as-is. Playback is in the client domain.

Martin

[bigrizz]

Zero.  As-is really means as-is.  Playback is in the client domain.

Martin

Gotcha. Thanks for the quick replies. I'll fiddle with Kodi and see if I can improve things. Over and out.

[sub]

Ah, kodi. NextPVR will be living up to it's end of the bargain, and sending the native stream to Kodi.