Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE full fields question (1 Viewer)

gxtracker

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  • July 25, 2005
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    Forgive me if this has already been asked and answered before, but Ive searched this forum as well as several others, and the web in general, and can't seem to find an answer to this question.

    After building a HTPC for myself a few months ago, my father has been 'amazed' by mine for a while now and called me the other day, asking that I build him one. Now my father is quite picky about his auido/video - I on the other hand, am not. :D

    The Question:

    I've been looking at the PVR-150 to put in his new box, but my father watches a lot of sporting events here in Canada, and most sporting events are broadcast at 60 fields per second. My concern is, since the PVR encodes everything onchip even with straight TV watching, will his sporting events be displayed at regular NTSC framerates? (29.97) If so, then that wont work, he'll complain that its like watching a movie with bad frame rate. (which i can also see the difference like he does to tell you the truth)

    This is the only thing holding me back from starting the purchasing/building stage right now. can anyone with a pvr-150 series card or one of its brothers tell me how sporting events or other full field programs are displayed on the card? I'd like to do everything through Mediaportal like I have on my box, but I personally could care less if my sports are only 30 fields per second. 8)

    Thank you for any insight.
     

    Taipan

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    Hi gxtracker,

    I may have misunderstood your question, but I think that you have "fields per second" confused with "framerates"?

    NTSC is broadcast at 29.97 frames per second, and since it is interlaced, each frame is made up of 2 fields - field one is all the odd number lines and field 2 is all the even number lines - which is (almost) 60 fields per second.

    I don't believe that the PVR-150 changes this frame rate? So it should look exactly the same as "normal" TV?

    Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.... :(
     

    gxtracker

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    Taipan,

    I had a chance to re-read over my post and managed to confuse myself. :lol: Let me try to explain what I mean a little better:

    Like you said, all NTSC broadcasts have 2 fields - the even lines and odd lines. because of how the fields are interlaced, televisions can display 60 fields per second.

    The important thing to note is that this isnt true 60 Frames per second, because each field is offset from the last one. To the average viewer though, they see 60 updates per second.

    Now, what a lot of TV cards do, is only sample the analog video at 30 frames per second, because the manufacturer knows that most people watch drama shows, or cartoons, or whatever other content that has a frame rate no greater than 30 frames per second.

    Television sporting events on the other hand, use high quality cameras that actually display content at 60 fields per second, giving your football or racing event very fluid, smooth video.

    My concern is if the PVR-150 which im looking at purchasing will display straight tv watching at the full 60 fields per second, or will it lower the sampling rate to 30 frames per second because it has to go through the encoder chip onboard.

    its a hard symptom to describe unfortunatly, its really some thing that once you see it for yourself, you understand it, and since I cant record a sample to demonstrate what im asking, that makes things even tougher. :(
     

    kamrat

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    May 24, 2005
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    Ok - I think I can help out here.

    What your father is worried about is a very big concern for me as well. Sports with only 25 updates (I live in PAL county) per second is next to unwatchable in my opinion. I am a broadcast professional and to me all this talk about fields and frames makes perfect sense. You are both right in the way you describe the phenomenon.

    I also had this concern before building my HTPC and I even called Hauppague in Sweden to try and get an answer but I did not manage to explain the problem in a way they understood. There is a major problem in trying to get computer people to grasp this strange television thing.

    Anyway - enough talk about this. I now have a HTPC with both a Hauppague DVB-T card and a Leadtek analog card with hardware MPEG2-codec.
    Both cards produce an excellent 25 frame/50 field image!
    The key to getting this displayed on your tv/monitor/projector is to use the right codec and deinterlace settings. I can easily make the picture "strobe" by changing codec or settings.
    I am using the Nvidia Pure video Decoder but I have also managed to get nice results using the built in codec from Dscaler.

    The video is displayed right both on my projector that is hooked up to my VGA output and on my CRT-tv connected with S-VIDEO.

    Good luck!
     

    gxtracker

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    Kamrat and FlipGer,

    thank you for the reply gents. Kamrat, Im glad you understand what im talking about. At least I dont feel so bad now having trouble describing what I mean. :D

    Im glad that both your DVB-T card and your analog card display the full 50 field image; that gives me more confidence that the hauppauge should be ok, but of course, im not fully convinced. The main reason I am concerned is that my analog card will not display the 60 field per second image through its WDM driver. (which is what mediaportal uses) The only way I can view 60 fps television is by using dscaler, but dscaler taps directly into the tuner hardware, and thats not very user friendly for someone like my father. :?

    FlipGer, thank you for the website. I've bookmarked it, but it really doesn't answer my question. I know all about interlacing and how to de-interlace, but I guess the main question lies on if the onchip encoder actually encodes interlaced footage. I was under the assumption that the encoder would only record progressive content after the 3:2 pulldown, but maybe thats not the case?
     

    kamrat

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    May 24, 2005
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    I know all about interlacing and how to de-interlace, but I guess the main question lies on if the onchip encoder actually encodes interlaced footage. I was under the assumption that the encoder would only record progressive content after the 3:2 pulldown, but maybe thats not the case?

    Since pulldown is not an issue in PAL I have no idea how this could affect things. However, from my experience using my two cards and from what I have heard from friends that also can tell the difference between 25 and 50 images/second I'd be very surpriced if one of most common cards (pvr150) can't encode interlaced content.

    Go for it! :D
     

    gxtracker

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    Good point Kamrat. I know that there are people out there that have this PVR card and are most likely more nuts about their video quality than you or I could ever be. :p

    I've done a bit more searching on the net, and cant find anything to convince me otherwise. I'll post my results back here when I pick it up.

    Thanks everyone!
     

    gxtracker

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    Well, Santa was good to me this year, and I got a PVR150 MCE. I've been playing around with it right now and my question is answered: Using the right codec, the PVR150 will display full 60 fields. watching sporting events or even general TV is about 10x better than what it was from my other card.

    Im very please with the card. Now all Hauppauge needs is a hardware encoding HD card, and we're set. :D
     

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