Why is my MPEG2 playing so grainy? (1 Viewer)

[New Daddy]

I have a huge problem with playing MPEG2 movies.
The picture quality is really poor and grainy. The quality does not improve regardless of which codec I use - CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (in fact two of them in a row), ffdshow Video Decoder, Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder, Roxio MPEG2 Video Decoder, Roxio Smart Decoder, Sonic Cinemaster VideoDecoder 4.3.

Other videos - avi or even HD videos - play just fine. It's just MPEG movies.
Interestingly, the "thumbnail" preview of the video that you see from the MP is fine.
But when I switch to the full screen view, the quality really deteriorates.
I know small resolution makes video quality look good, but the difference is so huge.

What can be the problem?

 

[CCob]

How big is your screen/resolution, and what kind of MPEG 2 sources are they? TV, DVD?

 

[solas989]

Ccob asked excellent questions - especially the source.

If I record off of cable analog, the picture is "grainy" or even "fuzzy" on my 46" Sony.

Did you rip them yourself or did you dl them?

Solas

 

[CCob]

You will most certainly get a fuzzy (blurry) picture with interlaced content as this would have been de interlaced using the blend method (especially on 720x576(PAL) TV transmission) .

I this situation you can disable MediaPortal's de-interlacing, and use ffdshow raw as a post processing filter within the TV section. You will then be able to use ffdshows de-interlacers, which are much better than the built in ones that MediaPortal has. I get great results using the yadif de-interlacer.

 

[New Daddy]

How big is your screen/resolution, and what kind of MPEG 2 sources are they? TV, DVD?

My screen: 46', 1920x1080
The MPEG in question was ripped, by myself, from a VHS video.

The thing is, the original VHS video was certainly not grainy, and it was not grainy when I played it back with my Tvix (which is a dedicated xvid player) on the same TV.
Since it was really fine on my Tvix, I'm assuming that it should come out right with the right hardware/software.

 

[CCob]

Does the Tvix use a different connection to what your using for MediaPortal (e.g. HDMI vs Composite)

 

[frenzy]

Post a screenshot because as you see nobody understands "grainy" in the same way. We have a grainy=blurry and a grainy= interlaced-like. To me grainy=noisy but you could also mean blocky.

Anyway with a VHS rip you won't get the same quality as with a DVD or even a TV transmission. VHS res. is 480x330 while DVDs as you probably know is 720x576. Another parameter is deinterlacing as was mentioned. Probably TVix is using some internal processing which you would have to simulate on your pc or is a really bad encoder (most probable).In any case try to use ffdshow and activate these filters in this order:
Resize: Specify Horizontal size: 1280 or 1920 (depending on your processor power not your screen)
Resize Settings:Lanczos, 4 taps and Luma sharpen .15, Luma blur .50

Noise: Luma noise 3, Chroma noise 3, mplayer noise, every other slider to far left (0)
Sharpen: XSharpen, threshold 150, strength between 15 and 30.