Denmark
Hi,
I’m not really satisfied with my tv picture, and I hope someone can give me some pointers because I’m a bit lost! It’s not that I can’t find any threads concerning better tv pictures – the problems is that there are so many that I’m now completely confused!
To start out with this is the ‘main’ parts of my HTPC setup:
HAL9000 – Family Entertainer
Motherboad: Asus M2N-E
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2 4200+ Box 65W
RAM: 2 x G.Skill DDRII 1GB PC800
HardDisk: Samsung SpinPoint P80SD SATAII
Graphicscard: Asus GeForce GF6600 TOP PCI-E 256MB Silencer
DVB-T: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T
DVB-S: FloppyDTV-S + 'Dual CA CAM' (/w. Canal Digital 'Family')
TV/’monitor’: Samsung 32” LCD – connected with VGA cable (1366x768@60hz)
OS: Windows XP Pro UK /w SP2 (all updates until 04/12/2006)
"Frontend": Media Portal v. 0.2.1 /w svn from the 26/11/2006
Video Codec: Nvidia / MPV
Audio Codec: ffdshow
My Nivida setting are:
Hardware Acceleration: ’Yes’
De-Interlance Controle: Smart
De-Interlance Mode: VMR default
Enhanced nView support: Prefer VMR9
-I have also tweaked the PureVideo control panel so I have access to a lot of other settings, but I haven’t changede anything!
I have to say that my tv pictures has improved a lot the last few days, as I have made a lot of updates/tweaks etc. from information found in various fora, eg. in the threads:
“Attention!! these microsoft patches fix many things!!!”
and
“Registry settings for Nvidia decoders”.
But I’m still not super-satisfied with the result.
I ‘try’ to use Nvidia PureVideo codec for video, as I have been told that it is by far the best, but MPV codec actually seems superior in real use!?! And when it comes audio, the one DVB-T channel I watch (Danish TV2) doesn’t work with Nvidia so here I use ffdshow (I can’t make MPA work with Animal Planet – and that’s a must for my girlfriend!)
The main problems I encounter are:
Primary:
’Pixel-bars’
Ever so often there will be drawn a bar/line of ‘bad pixels’ across the screen, just for a fraction of a second but still totally unacceptable.
‘Frame-stutters’
Even worse is it when the picture momentarily freezes and then resumes very shortly afterwards
(also a fraction of a second) it’s like the HTPC somehow ‘lost’ some frames!
‘UnSmooth’
This has also improved greatly, but there is still a tendency for moving text, like in the bottom-line of CNN, or in movie credits to be ‘unsmooth’ and make ‘micro-stutters’ – this also applies for sports like in a football game!
'OOS'
Sometimes my picture is out-of-sync with the sound (or the otherway around!?!)
Secondary:
‘Pixel-effect’
It happens that the picture is somewhat ‘pixel-like’, eg. I can see ‘pixel-squares’ in waves in the see! – not that often though
’Unsharp/blurry’
The picture is not exactly super-sharp, but has improved greatly the last few day (earlier seemed a bit sharper, but was very ‘interlaced’) – It seems that there is a ‘blur-filter’ activated, and static boxes (e.g. ‘name-boxes’ seen on the news) have a slight vibrating effect (this has also been better earlier!) – But even though it is still a bit blurry/foggy I don’t know if you can expect more from DVB-S/T, I know I can’t expect ‘HD’ quality. But if it can be improved it would be nice.
The thing that ‘Frame-stutters’ is worse with the ‘Nvidia codec’ than with ‘MPV’ – here I usually get the less irritation (but still intolerable) ‘pixel-bars’ instead - but sometimes it also stutters! It also seems that when I record a show, generally all errors are ‘improvede’ a bit, so the playback looks better than live!
As I mentioned, I primarily watch satellite-tv, and have tested the signal with 'FastSatfinder' and a Set-Top-Box and both told me that both signal- strength and quality was at 65% - FastSatFinder had a ‘low’ of 64% over a 6 min test. (I have been told that 60% is quite fine!)
Some has pointed out to me that the problem might be with connected to ‘VMR9’ – and when I try to start tv ‘in the background’ (from the ‘Home-Screen’) MP refuses and gives me an error related to ‘VMR9’
Another problem could be the up-scaling of the tv-picture to 1366x768 – and also the matter of Hz (but the tv wont run at 50hz)
I really hope that someone out there has a solution – or at least some thoughts on my problems! (If it is necessary I can make sceendumps and a few videoclips as examples – but as I said, they a generally not showing all the problems in ‘live tv’)
/MadDuke
I’m not really satisfied with my tv picture, and I hope someone can give me some pointers because I’m a bit lost! It’s not that I can’t find any threads concerning better tv pictures – the problems is that there are so many that I’m now completely confused!
To start out with this is the ‘main’ parts of my HTPC setup:
HAL9000 – Family Entertainer
Motherboad: Asus M2N-E
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2 4200+ Box 65W
RAM: 2 x G.Skill DDRII 1GB PC800
HardDisk: Samsung SpinPoint P80SD SATAII
Graphicscard: Asus GeForce GF6600 TOP PCI-E 256MB Silencer
DVB-T: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T
DVB-S: FloppyDTV-S + 'Dual CA CAM' (/w. Canal Digital 'Family')
TV/’monitor’: Samsung 32” LCD – connected with VGA cable (1366x768@60hz)
OS: Windows XP Pro UK /w SP2 (all updates until 04/12/2006)
"Frontend": Media Portal v. 0.2.1 /w svn from the 26/11/2006
Video Codec: Nvidia / MPV
Audio Codec: ffdshow
My Nivida setting are:
Hardware Acceleration: ’Yes’
De-Interlance Controle: Smart
De-Interlance Mode: VMR default
Enhanced nView support: Prefer VMR9
-I have also tweaked the PureVideo control panel so I have access to a lot of other settings, but I haven’t changede anything!
I have to say that my tv pictures has improved a lot the last few days, as I have made a lot of updates/tweaks etc. from information found in various fora, eg. in the threads:
“Attention!! these microsoft patches fix many things!!!”
and
“Registry settings for Nvidia decoders”.
But I’m still not super-satisfied with the result.
I ‘try’ to use Nvidia PureVideo codec for video, as I have been told that it is by far the best, but MPV codec actually seems superior in real use!?! And when it comes audio, the one DVB-T channel I watch (Danish TV2) doesn’t work with Nvidia so here I use ffdshow (I can’t make MPA work with Animal Planet – and that’s a must for my girlfriend!)
The main problems I encounter are:
Primary:
’Pixel-bars’
Ever so often there will be drawn a bar/line of ‘bad pixels’ across the screen, just for a fraction of a second but still totally unacceptable.
‘Frame-stutters’
Even worse is it when the picture momentarily freezes and then resumes very shortly afterwards
(also a fraction of a second) it’s like the HTPC somehow ‘lost’ some frames!
‘UnSmooth’
This has also improved greatly, but there is still a tendency for moving text, like in the bottom-line of CNN, or in movie credits to be ‘unsmooth’ and make ‘micro-stutters’ – this also applies for sports like in a football game!
'OOS'
Sometimes my picture is out-of-sync with the sound (or the otherway around!?!)
Secondary:
‘Pixel-effect’
It happens that the picture is somewhat ‘pixel-like’, eg. I can see ‘pixel-squares’ in waves in the see! – not that often though
’Unsharp/blurry’
The picture is not exactly super-sharp, but has improved greatly the last few day (earlier seemed a bit sharper, but was very ‘interlaced’) – It seems that there is a ‘blur-filter’ activated, and static boxes (e.g. ‘name-boxes’ seen on the news) have a slight vibrating effect (this has also been better earlier!) – But even though it is still a bit blurry/foggy I don’t know if you can expect more from DVB-S/T, I know I can’t expect ‘HD’ quality. But if it can be improved it would be nice.
The thing that ‘Frame-stutters’ is worse with the ‘Nvidia codec’ than with ‘MPV’ – here I usually get the less irritation (but still intolerable) ‘pixel-bars’ instead - but sometimes it also stutters! It also seems that when I record a show, generally all errors are ‘improvede’ a bit, so the playback looks better than live!
As I mentioned, I primarily watch satellite-tv, and have tested the signal with 'FastSatfinder' and a Set-Top-Box and both told me that both signal- strength and quality was at 65% - FastSatFinder had a ‘low’ of 64% over a 6 min test. (I have been told that 60% is quite fine!)
Some has pointed out to me that the problem might be with connected to ‘VMR9’ – and when I try to start tv ‘in the background’ (from the ‘Home-Screen’) MP refuses and gives me an error related to ‘VMR9’
Another problem could be the up-scaling of the tv-picture to 1366x768 – and also the matter of Hz (but the tv wont run at 50hz)
I really hope that someone out there has a solution – or at least some thoughts on my problems! (If it is necessary I can make sceendumps and a few videoclips as examples – but as I said, they a generally not showing all the problems in ‘live tv’)
/MadDuke
