Poor(er) live TV playback quality (1 Viewer)

[George Hines]

Hi All,

First of all, thanks to team MP for providing such useful software!

I've recently upgraded my old Media PC from MP1 (running 1.12) and built a brand new Media PC. I thought I'd give MP2 2.1 Pre2 Release a try.

My new setup works (Intel Nuc7i3, Hauppauge dual HD usb tuner), though I'm still getting used to MP2 differences. I've selected a client+server configuration (though I may experiment with remote clients later).

However, I have noticed that playback of live TV (strong 1080i digital streams) seems rather poor (v.s. my previous PC). The black levels have much more pronounced pixelation, the picture is softer, and the colors aren't as vibrant.

Playback of (non-TV) 1080p video seems fine (via YouTube, or VLC), so I don't think it is my graphics drivers or processor. I tried tweaking a few of the Intel HD 620 settings, but this seems to have no effect.

Needless to say I'm comparing two difference setups with nothing in common but my TV.

What might I be doing wrong? Are there any known issues with MP2 that would affect live TV decoding and playback quality? Is there any transcoding that is going on behind the scenes which could explain this?

Unless there is some settings that I'm missing, I thought I'd try reverting to MP1. I also have another USB ATSC tuner (Pinnacle) that I can try.

If I have to go back to MP1, is there any way I can save all of the TV channel mapping that I did? I had to map 100 channels as well as edit there channel names. I don't want to do that again if I can help it.

Thanks!!

 

[ge2301]

MP2.1 uses the same TV code as MP1, so it must be a setting issue.
Please check the settings, if everything is set to LAV, inclusing the splitter.

If the problem persists, please deinstall manually the LAV codec and install a previous version 0.63 from here. There are some issues with the latest LAV version 0.69. Others had stuttering and I had no sound any more.

Hope that helps. My TV quality is perfect and I'm running WMC in parallel and compare it.

 

[George Hines]

I had been poking around those settings and pretty sure I saw LAV everywhere. I didn't try changing them.

I'll deinstall / reinstall as suggested & report back.

thanks

 

[HTPCSourcer]

1080i sources require hardware acceleration. So you may want to experiment a little bit with the different choices in LAV until you find the right one. DXVA/Copy back is a good start.

If I have to go back to MP1, is there any way I can save all of the TV channel mapping that I did?

Open the TV configuration tool and export your channels, groups and schedules. In MP1 you can then open the respective TV Server configuration and import this file.

 

[George Hines]

Thanks for the tip about exporting my settings, I will probably end up doing that.

BTW: I tried uninstalling LAV filters, then re-installing first .63 and then .65, neither seemed to have any effect.

However, in poking around in the menus, there was a startup screen selection that said I have a Generic 720p monitor! I definitely have a 1080p monitor, in 1080p mode (Windows text is nice and sharp). In looking through the Client logs, it does appear that MP is initializing directx in 1280x720p. This might also explain why I see weird artifacts around the text in my menus.

So, if my poor video quality is due to scaling the video, how can I force media portal to recognize my monitor correctly? I recently installed the computer, so I have all the latest Intel drivers.

I saw some older posts mentioning similar problems, but the menu settings referenced were for MP1.

Thanks!

 

[HTPCSourcer]

it does appear that MP is initializing directx in 1280x720p.

You may be using MediaPortal in windowed mode. Alt-Enter will toggle through Full Screen / Window mode / Window mode always on top.

 

[George Hines]

Thanks for the suggestion, but windowing mode didn't seem to be the problem.

I read on another thread that Window's text magnification might be limiting the resolution to 720p. The text zoom on my pc was set by default to 150% (which actually looked quite nice). Resetting the zoom to 100% and rebooting seemed to fix the lack of 1080p. I was able to confirm that 1080p was now working properly by using cntrl-alt-F10. I think this was the primary cause of the poor video quality.

Once that was working, I noticed lower resolution channels were still overly blocky. I discovered the default effects was set to sharpen(complex) - not sure if I may have accidentally set that. Disabling effects restored video quality to a more normal look.

I still have some minor quibbles with the color, but that probably can be fixed as I mess with some of my driver settings.

All in all, it is looking pretty good now,

Thanks for the help!

BTW: Is there a way to set *all* settings in MP2 back to their defaults without re-installing?

 

[ge2301]

BTW: Is there a way to set *all* settings in MP2 back to their defaults without re-installing?

Currently not, but not a bad idea. You can simply delete the settings file in \Program Data\Team MediaPortal\...

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.

effects was set to sharpen(complex)

Yes, this is the default setting as on most 1080p or 4K displays this is looking best for SD material. We have tried it on various displays as this feature was developed and the majority was looking best with "sharpen(complex)" for SD and "none" for HD / 4K material. That's why those are the default settings.

And for resetting all MP2 settings to default. This is already possible today, but not from inside the GUI. You need to delete all .xml files in the client (or server, if you need) ProgramData config folder. On next run all settings are restored to their default values excerpt for the media sources (they are stored in the database) and the TV settings (also stored in the database)...