Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (9 Viewers)

[mike_bails]

Hi, I am experiencing trouble trying to get a good picture from TV3 out of my Nova-500-T card. Every other channel is great. The video tears but more noticeable is the video runs slower than the audio. I have tried lots of different codec/driver options to sort it out but not luck yet. The best I have so far is by installing PowerDVD ver8 and Nvidia Pure driver for my Nvidia Gforce 5200

Has anyone else experienced this problem with TV3?

TV3 runs in 1080i, not 720p like ONE, TV2 and the Freeview HD test channel. It needs to be deinterlaced to reduce tearing and due to 1080i's higher resolution it needs more power to run at a good speed. The speed is unfixable unless you upgrade your video card (A GeForce 5200 is a bit skimpy anyway) but you can improve picture quality by adjusting deinterlacing settings.

I had major issues with TV3 running on a Nova-500-T and a Gefore 6600GT. My solution was to buy a Geforce 8400GS (only about $45), load up Cyberlink PowerDVD (about $30), set PowerDVD to hardware decode H.264 and then set MediaPortal to use the cyberlink codec for H.264 decoding.

Has been working great for about 6 months now!

Mike.

 

[mforest]

I agree with Mike
You can spend hours trying to get it working. At the end, I recommend what I did. I got a Nvida 8500GT of trademe for $40. (8500GT supports ALL HD formats with hardware decoding).
If you want to play mkv h.264 movies, you also need ffmpeg and some more software. Just search the forum.
(I'm using WinXP sp2 (sp3 blue screen with my nova 500HD card) and it uses about 4% cpu for TV3 with a 2.1Ghz cpu.)
Another thing to watch out for is the balance between signal strength and signal quality. I had almost 100% signal strength but crap quality using a brand new high gain uhf antenna. When I switched to "bunny ears" I got 55% strength and 100% quality. Go figure...

/Martin

 

[daronb]

Hi Mark, I have CoreAVC 1.80 but the PowerDVD codec works a lot better with less keyframe drops. I'll try the 1.85 trial but suspect its as Karamu reccomends and will need to upgrade my graphics card. For $42.00 it's got to be worth trying !

Thank god I don't have to fork out for this baby.....http://www.gamma.co.nz/?product=15832

Martin, you mst have got a bargain on Trademe to get that 8500GT for 40.00 !

 

[mcraenz]

h.264 decoding is no job for the CPU. 8600GT + PDVD8 + good UHF antenna + Vista = Perfect Freeviw HD (in my expericnce)

 

[Kiwi]

Lip Sync

I have a strange lip sync problem. Using freeview DVB-T via 2200 card lip sync is fine on TV One for normal content. However when TV One broadcasts a HD SOURCE program, lip sync seems out. My understanding is that TV One (and Two) broadcast in 1280 x 720 the whole time, and they upscale their SD content to HD format. Thus I cant see why I would get lip sync problems on HD source material only?
Does anyone else see lip sync issues on HD source material?
Thanks

 

[daronb]

h.264 decoding is no job for the CPU. 8600GT + PDVD8 + good UHF antenna + Vista = Perfect Freeviw HD (in my expericnce)

I got a 9400GT. If that doesn't sort out my problems, nothing will !

 

[daronb]

Restore Point tip

So I got the 9400GT right....only to remember my MOBO only has PCI and AGP...doh !

Found a MOBO that supported my socket 478 processor and DDR400 RAM (Asus P4GPL-X Socket 478 PCI-express) that also has a PCI-E socket ! Change over for that lost me $20 as I could sell my Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000

Managed to boot it and get the drivers working *phew* but needed to strip out the drivers/codecs and MP and clean the registry then re-install everything.

First thing I did was to create a restore point in windows ! ! !

Thanks to everyone that gave me advice on how to get it fixed.

p.s. I've lost where you set MP to stretch all channels. At the moment they are all showing native aspect ratio and want them to fill the screen.

 

[Bleazle]

..First thing I did was to create a restore point in windows ! ! !

Mate, forget that - it's a waste of time (in my opinion), if things get really screwed up and you try to roll back it does stupid stuff like rename folders/application directories etc (it's crap).

I use Acronis True Image to take backup images - you can throw anything at your PC and if it turns to crap you can COMPLETELY restore it to your saved image. You'll never need to do a clean install again!!!!!!!! (just do a backup image of the basic O/S so that if you ever need to roll that far back it's just sitting there waiting )Windows restore doesn't come close.

You could also try Norton Ghost but I've never liked it - I found it too much of a mission to use (Acronis is VERY easy) but that was a few years ago so no doubt it's better than it was.

Just my opinion though....

Dave

 

[Nato]

What are us (You Kiwi's) Using to edit out ads for .ts files and resave or convert? I have found nothing that works correctly yet

 

[Bleazle]

What are us (You Kiwi's) Using to edit out ads for .ts files and resave or convert? I have found nothing that works correctly yet

I use Comskip to automatically cut out ads (for viewing in MP) and for programmes I want to put onto DVD I use VideoReDo Plus to edit and convert.

Dave