Poor Picture Quality (1 Viewer)

[hook]

Im using a Hauppauge wintv-pvr 150 to connect my cable settop box to my htpc
but the colours look washed out , i have a co-ax cable going from the tv out on my stb to the tv in on the tv card jack,
My stb only has tv out and 2 scart sockets ( 1for tv and one for vcr) is their any way of connecting my tv card via its composite connection and how ?
and would this improve the picture quality

 

[mzemina]

Im using a Hauppauge wintv-pvr 150 to connect my cable settop box to my htpc
but the colours look washed out , i have a co-ax cable going from the tv out on my stb to the tv in on the tv card jack,
My stb only has tv out and 2 scart sockets ( 1for tv and one for vcr) is their any way of connecting my tv card via its composite connection and how ?
and would this improve the picture quality

Need to have you fill-out the support template.

I'm thinking your gamma is off on your video card and you need to go into its setting to correct it.

 

[hook]

Thanks for replying, dont have the net at the moment im using a friends PC so cant fill in the support template but sounds worth a try ,how do I do that,
Im using a dvi-d cable to connect pc to tv but was thinking I should have got a dvi-i cable,
2 more things, I connected the PC to tv using composite, picture was terrible but colours looked fine,
and when I record anything and then play it in windows media player and not MP the colours are also ok

 

[Pom]

MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.4
Windows Version: XP Prof. SP2
CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2GHz)
HDD: Maxtor 200GB
Memory: 1GB DDR
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X
Motherboard Chipset: VIA 4in1
Motherboard Bios:
Video Card: ATI Sapphire Radeon 9550 256MB
Video Card Driver: 8.273.0.0
Sound Card: Onboard Advance AC'97
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE
1. TV Card Type: Analog (Hardware Encoder)
1. TV Card Driver: 2.0.43.24103
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: DScaler
MPEG2 Audio Codec: DScaler
Satelite/CableTV Provider: Telewest Broadband
HTPC Case: Standard ATX
Cooling:
Power Supply: 500W ATX
Remote: Hauppage MCE
TV: Hyundai ImageQuest A321 (32")
TV - HTPC Connection: Sub-D

Hi Hook,

I have a similar set-up to you which i have working well now. Hopefully some answers to your questions:

1\ Buy a SCART to A/V adapter (SCART one side and red/white/yellow phono plugs the other) plus an A/V cable. The SCART adapter needs to be an 'output' type. Do you live in the UK? If so go to B&Q or Homebase and buy one which has an Input/Output switch on it so you can't go wrong. Then connect your stb to TV card via the A/V inputs and bypass the tuner completely.

2\ To improve picture quality try this (which worked for me). Go into your graphics card settings (don't know what card you have, for ATI cards its called Catalyst) and make sure that under Video settings it's set to 'Let the Application Decide'... or something like this. Basically you want the graphics card to allow MP to automatically optimise the video settings (gamma etc.)

Also you should go into MP Setup -> TV cards -> double click on your TV card -> go into Quality settings and make sure that the 'Avg' and 'Peak' boxes are not set too low (they want to be >4000 kbps). Actually MP should've automatically set these if it correctly recognised your TV card. Can't remember exactly what mine are but i know 'High' is set to 8000 (avg) and 12000 (peak) then gradually reducing down to 'Portable' by about 1000 each time.

 

[hook]

Hi porn , I went into the video card card settings and adjusted the gamma slightly and its much better tho still not brilliant(its an nvidia card), just going from memory here but think MP set the avg and peak boxes as described by default,

I already tried the scart to a/v route tho it was a cheapo so might not have been working to good,having said that I only tried the composite side of things,
I'm not to sure what you mean but did you connect the 2 audio cables to the tv card and the s-video cable as well
Things would be ok if I could just adjust the video on my TV unfortunately it only runs at 60hertz and I cant adjust the colour thats why I was asking about the DVI-I cable (tho it prob wouldnt make a difference)

 

[Pom]

I'm not using s-video, i'm using the yellow phono plug video input (would like to call it composite but not sure if it is - these various inputs confuse me!)

I tried a DVI-I connection to my LCD TV and had some problems so ended up reverting to a standard PC (VGA) connection and saw no difference in picture quality.

Seems strange you can't adjust colour on your Tv, have you thought about investing in a new one...?

Lee

 

[hook]

You've misunderstood me m8,
its a brand new 27" LCD HD Ready tv and I can adjust video just fine its only when I use it as a PC Monitor I cant and Im now using a new STB and thanks to this forum I got it working pretty decent

 

[Pom]

That's all that matters eh! Sorry for the confusion.