slow video/"ghosting"

[Torque]

I've had this issue since I've been using my PVR. When watching shows that have fast moving objects, I see what I can only describe as "ghosting"... like trying to play a video game on an LCD monitor with a slow response time (20ms+)

It's very tough to watch shows where the filming was done "hand held" and not steady or the camera pans around alot.

I'm trying to grasp what could be causing this.

I'm using the s-video out on the embedded Geforce MX graphics chip on my Nforce motherboard. Would upgrading the video card help this (btw, I tried an AGP Geforce 4 ti 4200 with s-video out, no difference)? The TV is the only viewing source near the computer, so I don't think I could use an Xcard because I don't have another monitor nearby to display the desktop if I ever needed to get to it.

I've also tried many different codecs with no change in video speed. The video quality isn't bad, it's just it isn't as fast as watching tv direct from my satellite. For instance, watching NASCAR or something fast paced like that results in a blurry image. I'm not using any post processing things like ffdshow (i couldn't figure out how to use it and frankly don't want to spend hours trying to figure it out).

Maybe this type of thing is inherent in PC PVR solutions?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[lseats]

This thread may help -- specifically replacing quartz.dll in DirectX9c:

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=5600

[sub]

Does it look like this http://www.dscaler.com/screenshots/index.htm

[dottore]

try using overlay, you seem to have the "tearing" problem...with vmr9 there is an exclusive mode, but i don't know, if gbpvr is using this.

[Torque]

Sub, no, it doesn't have those lines thru it like that top picture. The image looks mostly like the bottom, but just tears.

This happens when viewing live TV, not just recordings. Could it still be the quartz.dll issue? From what I gather, people were having the issue with just recordings, but I might be wrong.

[sub]

Did you try Dottore's Overlay suggestion?

[Torque]

I tried Dottore's overlay suggestion last night. I think it might have been slightly better, It didn't ghost/tear quite as much but the live guide was horrid looking, so that won't work.

Here's something that's wierd, if I press the fast forward button twice, of course, the video is moving faster than normal, but the image, IMO, looks perfect! No ghosting and very fluid looking. Then when I hit play the quality seems to go down and the ghosting is worse... I would think it'd be the other way around. It's almost as if it's skipping every other frame when playing normally, so that's why it looks so crappy. That could be why I still have the audio sync issues after an hour... actually, that makes perfect sense. If it's skipping say every third frame and video plays normally at about ~30 frames a second, then after about an hour, the sound would be ~1 second off!

[Torque]

BTW, I'm using V93.10 now. I'll be trying the quartz.dll fix tonite to see if that helps.

[dottore]

using overlay results in no transparency in osd. thats why the live-guide is looking bad. you need a skin with a background in the live-guide (like bluemce2 ;-)).

try using ffdshow for better quality. and for the audio-sync: how about trying reclock as audio renderer? google around, you will find both of them for free download.

you can't expect good tv-out quality from an onboard nvidia-chip. they are known to be bad at tv-out. try radeon-cards.

[Torque]

Actually, i'm still using my own skin, as I wanted more info viewable, so I used smaller fonts (I have the live guide showing three channels instead of two). It was the fonts that were really hard to read, like they were so sharp, they looked blocky or something. They just looked really bad.

Anyway, I replaced the Quartz.dll last night. Happy to report that the ghosting is pretty much gone. The picture looks pretty good. But now I can't fast forward... is this a known bug?