Sports Programming - Best Quality Settings?

[tvcardseeker]

I'm using GB-PVR with a pvr-250. I've tried the default settings for medium and high quality with football games, but it's still a little grainy, and when things like kickoffs or passes happen, it's just not very smooth.

If I increase the bitrate in the high quality setting and make it consistent will this help?

Does anyone know of good settings for recording sporting events in GB-PVR?

Thanks!

[ydekmekji]

hey tvcard, i've had similar issues. I've given up watching sports through gbpvr--one thing that might work is watching in timeshift mode

[tvcardseeker]

Will another program record with better quality, or is a function of the pvr-250 card?

[SLGF2A]

My experience has been that what you are describing is a function of software decoding. I use a 350 for playback (which does hardware decoding) and it handles everything I can throw at it (including football) with results practically indistinguishable from my cable feed. I've heard similar things about the XCard.

I started out with just a USB2 which, like the 250, has no hardware decoding and I experienced the same thing you are describing.

[sub]

Try a different decoder, they all look slightly different.

[capone]

Displaying live sports is one of the hardest things for the TV card/system/decoder to do. That's why it's a good stress test for how good your rig is. There's only so much you'll be able to do w/ decoders and settings. At some point, your only option will be buying more powerful hardware.

[Ken34]

Displaying live sports is one of the hardest things for the TV card/system/decoder to do. That's why it's a good stress test for how good your rig is. There's only so much you'll be able to do w/ decoders and settings. At some point, your only option will be buying more powerful hardware.

I agree, it could probably be your system that is making look like that, maybe a new proccessor or video card update?

[tvcardseeker]

Hmmm. I'm playing back through xbox media center. What's the best codec for playback on mpeg2 recordings?

[capone]

I like the nVidia, but who knows what the xbox will like. I think you range of options will be limited, as it's not really even the primary function of the device to be a media center, just a nice fucntion to have.

[borgs5]

To see whether it is the decoder that is causing the problems (and I expect it is, possibly in conjunction with TV out problems) I would do the following:

Use something like Ulead MovieFactory 2 to burn a sports TV programme to a DVD and then watch it in a standalone DVD player. The reason I suggest MovieFactory 2 is that it can burn without having to recode the video so you know its not going to introduce more motion artifacts. If it looks great on the DVD player then at least you know that the encoding isn't the problem.

If you had a PVR 150 then I would suggest changing the temporal filter setting but I'm not sure you can do that on a 250.