WinTV-PVR-USB2 in PAL-M (1 Viewer)

[wesleyer]

MediaPortal Version: 0.2.1.0
Windows Version: XP Professional SP2
1. TV Card: WinTV-PVR-USB2 MCE
1. TV Card Type: Hardware
1. TV Card Driver: Bundled driver, version: 2.2.73.24023

Hello,

I'm having problems in using this card to watch/record analog TV using the PAL-M system.
If I use Hauppage's bundled application (WINTV 2000), everything is fine. However, on MediaPortal the image colors are strange, and the image looks fuzzy, like it was out of focus.
PAL-M is actually closer to NTSC-M than to the european PAL (same framerate, same resolution, different color system), so I did a test setting up my channel in MediaPortal as a NTSC-M channel...the image was ok (not fuzzy anymore), but it was black and white (this was expected, since the signal was really PAL-M).
I have attached the MediaPortal log for the two situations (channel as PAL-M and as NTSC-M).
Can anyone help ?

Thanks,

Wesley

 

[dman_lfc]

wesleyer - edit a channel in configuration.exe and set it to PAL-M and then re-test that channel in MediaPortal.

DMAN

 

[wesleyer]

wesleyer - edit a channel in configuration.exe and set it to PAL-M and then re-test that channel in MediaPortal.
DMAN

Hi Dman,

That's exactly what I did. The PAL_M log attached in my first post was gotten after I had setup a channel as PAL-M using Configuration.exe. All I got was the strange colors and fuzzy image.

Wesley

 

[dman_lfc]

and if you don't do it....?

 

[wesleyer]

and if you don't do it....?

If I just add the channel without setting it explicitly to PAL-M (the color system will be displayed as 'Default' in the configuration screen), the result is visually the same as setting it to PAL-M (strange colors and fuzzy image). I don't have a log for this situation right now, but I can get one if it is helpful.

Thanks for the help,

Wesley

PS: I'm using the composite video input of the card, not the antenna/cable input.

 

[wesleyer]

Hi,

I keep trying to get this working on MediaPortal, and I have some additional info:

I have done a test with VirtualVCR (a DirectShow capture app). VirtualVCR does not work properly with this device (it can't capture video from it), but it allows me to edit the device video capture properties. In addition to the TV system, the interface also has a "Output enabled" flag. If I set it to unchecked in VirtualVCR, then enter Media Portal, the image "fuzziness" is fixed. However, if I exit Media Portal and then run it again, the "fuzziness" is back (and running VirtualVCR again shows me that the "Output enabled" checkbox is checked ). Looking at MediaPortal source code I couldn't find any place where this property might be set, so I'm guessing that maybe the device driver is setting this as default whenever MP starts the capture. (please bear with me here, since I'm not familiar with DirectShow, and neither with C#).

Anyway, the colors are still strange. My guess is that maybe this can be fixed by a hue adjustment, but I couldn't find a way to do it through Media Portal, and adjusting it in VirtualVCR does not give a good enough result.

I have downloaded that latest source code from svn, and I have successfully built MP, so if anyone has some source code change suggestion to fix this, I'll be more than happy to try.

Regards.

Wesley

PS: A correction from my previous post: if I leave the channel to default, it will use the color system I have last used...if it was PAL-M, than the behaviour is exactly the same I got setting the channel to PAL-M.

PPS: While going through MP code, I found what seems to be a problem in PAL-M handling: in the method SetTVFormat of the IVac class (Core/DShowNET/Helper/cards/ivac.cs) sets a VideoFormat member variable depending on the format, and uses this variable later to decide what video size to report. PAL-M should be treatead as NTSC in this context, and not as a regular PAL system, since its frame rate and size are the same as NTSC. Unfortunately changing this did not fix my problem.

 

[wesleyer]

Here I am again...

The problem with the colors were fixed...I needed to change the video codec to other than MPV Decode Filter (I'm using the Intervideo NonCSS video decoder for Hauppauge now, but the Dscaler video decoder seems to work fine also).

However, I still have the "fuzzyness" issue. I'm adding screen caps to this post so you can see what I'm talking about. The file normal.bmp is a screen cap without the issue, the file problem.bmp shows the problem. If you look closely at the picture with problems, you'll see that it is almost like it has two images combined, in a slightly different position.

Just to clarify how the problem happens:

1- I go to the VirtualVCR application I mentioned and set that Output flag to no
2- Enter MediaPortal: image is fine
3- Turn off TV viewing in MediaPortal and then turn it on again (or exit MediaPortal and enter it again): image has problems. After that, image always has problems, unless I reset that Output flag once again.

I appreciate any help you might provide.

Wesley