Hauppauge - 1577 Capture Card (1 Viewer)

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome to the forum n0rm4an

and the quality is good, not great.

Can you attach a screenshot so that we can see what you're referring to?

I have the colossus configured for VBR 20/24 Mbits, and tried CBR 20 Mbits, and have the same results, lots of quality loss.

My understanding is that the maximum bitrate for the first Colossus is 20 Mb/s (that's what it says on the Hauppauge website too), so I don't know how you are able to configure it for VBR 20/24 Mb/s.
Where are you performing this configuration?

Then I saw the new colossus, but the bit rates it supports are FAR lower

I don't know if I agree with your statement.

The Hauppauge website says:

Colossus 2 uses a high quality Analog Devices video front end, and a Magnum studio quality video encoder. The Magnum encoder supports data rates are from .2Mbits/second to 13.5 Mbits/sec CBR, with VBR datarates running to about 21 Mbits/sec.

13.5 Mb/s (CBR limit) is lower than 20 Mb/s... but 21 Mb/s (VBR limit) is higher than 20 Mb/s.

 

[n0rm4an]

Hi, thanks for your fast answer.

and the quality is good, not great.

Can you attach a screenshot so that we can see what you're referring to?

I'm afraid I cant. But let me be more clear about this. When I plug the DECO to the TV directly, the image is very sharp, It's sharp almost like a BD 25GB. I tried to take a picture with my dslr and it dont reflect the qualitty I'm talking about, and I dont know any other way to capture the TV (not PC) screen.
When I connect the DECO to the Colossus on a PC, and the PC to the same TV, and open mediaportal, or record with the ArcSoft ShowBiz, the TV looks like a 720p 4GB movie compared to a FULL 50GB BD, or something like that, I hope you understand me.

I have the colossus configured for VBR 20/24 Mbits, and tried CBR 20 Mbits, and have the same results, lots of quality loss.

My understanding is that the maximum bitrate for the first Colossus is 20 Mb/s (that's what it says on the Hauppauge website too), so I don't know how you are able to configure it for VBR 20/24 Mb/s.
Where are you performing this configuration?

In the ShowBiz -> Capture -> Format -> Video Encoder -> Bit Rate (up to 20 M) and Peak Bit Rate (uo to 24 M) in Variable Average Mode. If you want I could capture the properties screen.
To confirm this, some time ago, I recorded some Shows with ShowBis and TVServer, and the info of the .TS files confirm this.

Then I saw the new colossus, but the bit rates it supports are FAR lower

I don't know if I agree with your statement.

The Hauppauge website says:

Colossus 2 uses a high quality Analog Devices video front end, and a Magnum studio quality video encoder. The Magnum encoder supports data rates are from .2Mbits/second to 13.5 Mbits/sec CBR, with VBR datarates running to about 21 Mbits/sec.

13.5 Mb/s (CBR limit) is lower than 20 Mb/s... but 21 Mb/s (VBR limit) is higher than 20 Mb/s.

Ok, you dont have to agrre with me that is FAR lower, 20 vs 13.5 is 48% more bitrate, and 24 vs 21 is more than 14%, but remember that these are the peaks in one pass on the fly encoding, the average still is 13.5 and 20, let say WAY lower?

Dont get me wrong, I'm using MP since 0.23 (I think it was .023 or so) and I love IT (some times not so much), I tried to move to MP Cousin's XBMC/KODI a few times, but I never stop using MP, centralized mysql DB and Yatse, to name a few are great things, but Live TV and Trailers on local disk are too. Maybe in the near future MPODI have the best of both worlds .
I have the HD-PVR 1 5 or 6 years ago, and whe I change to the Colossus 3 or 4 years ago the Quality improvement was very noticeable. The HD-PVR has bit rates similar to the Colossus 2 (I know that in VBR the Colossus 2 has 21 Mb peaks), but may be, because Hauppauge uses a new chip that improves the quality and/or the profile settings.

Thanks for all you time, and all your work with the Hauppauge HD-PVR family. I'm a big fan.

 

[mm1352000]

Thank you for the compliments.

It sounds like you're setting the bit-rate correctly, so I'm not sure what else I can say to help you.

When you connect the DECO to the TV, would I be correct to assume you are using an HDMI connection?
...and when you connect the DECO to the PC (Colossus), are you also using an HDMI connection?

I am still interested to see a screenshot from the PC, even if you can't get one from the TV. In MediaPortal you can take a screenshot by pressing the F11 key. The screenshot will be saved to your "My Pictures" folder.

Regards,
mm

 

[n0rm4an]

Ok, just start over, to carify, I'm not complaining, seeking support for colossus 1 or trying to hijack in this thread. I'm happy whith colossus 1, it was the best option till now.
I see the new colossus 2, I get very excited, I start seeking info and found this thread, but then, I compare the specs, and here I am.
Is the change from Colossus 1 to Colossus 2 an Upgrade or a Downgrade?
Has anoyone have real data? Not just snake oil, personal opinions or comments about some magic eyes guru.

P.S.: At the moment, I have all my connections using HDMI cables, but I made all king of tests with component and HDMI compinations finding no real difference. Me, my Family and Frineds participate in the blind tests on the 46 and 55 TVs, and with the EPSON 1080p projector on a 110 inch screen. Nobody could tell if the connection was digital or analog, but ALL of them see a real difference between direct vs collossus connection, all blind tests.

 

[mm1352000]

Okay. I thought (and still think) there must be something wrong with your configuration - either Colossus, GPU, codec or other - for the Colossus picture quality to be bad. If you don't want help to check your configuration that's fine. I definitely can't supply information about the difference between the 2 Colossus versions.

 

[n0rm4an]

Ok, I tried the screenshot, but depending on where you take it, it varies a lot, so I take 4 small videos, 2 VBR and 2 CBR with MEPO and ShowBiz. I can confirm that in the client they look the same, so if there is a problem, It must be in the capture. The settings in the Colossus are: 20 and 20/24 Profile HIGH, no resize nor nothing, If you need any specific setting please askme.

I really thank you for your interest. May be theres something to change that I dont know.

http://nitroflare.com/view/8BC6893C873FBD6/MEPO_VBR_20-24.ts
http://nitroflare.com/view/8C5B6C298940C3C/MEPO_CBR_20Mb.ts
http://nitroflare.com/view/E0D5B54381ACB19/ShowBiz_CBR_20Mb.TS
http://nitroflare.com/view/74EAB082D8C67CB/ShowBiz_VBR_20-24.TS

 

[mm1352000]

My data cap is only 10 GB per month, so I'm limited in how much I can download. I chose to download 40 MB from the MEPO_CBR_20Mb.ts for examination...

When I use TransEdit to examine the sample, it looks like the video data rate is approximately 20 Mb/s as expected.
Interestingly, TransEdit is telling me that ~3.5% of video packets are lost. I'm not sure why that would be. Maybe it is a sign that the encoder is somehow overloaded?
Subjectively, the skin colour/tone (eg. on Jessica Alba's arm) looks blotchy/blurry. Initially I thought maybe this could be due to the channel provider's source, the channel provider's encoder, or perhaps even low light conditions during filming.
Fortunately I have a 720p direct digital recording of the same movie from a local channel, so we can do a little comparison.

Here is a screenshot (VLC player) from your sample:

Here is a screenshot from approximately the same frame in my source:

What do you think?