Hauppauge PVR150 image quality not great

A

asmielia

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2003
Messages
337
Hi,
I've finally finished setting up my media centre properly. I bought a Hauppauge PVR150 with MCE remote and I'm loving the functionality that the MCE is giving me. It's just fantastic.

But, a major gripe I have is that the image quality just isn't the greatest. I have a digital set top box from my cable provider, with RCA outputs going into my Hauppauge card, then RCA outputs from my ATI 9700 pro into my 27" CRT. The STB also has a coax output which I'm using to plug directly into the TV. This way I can directly compare the image quality difference the HTPC brings.

Here are the problems:
1. The 9700 pro is compensating for overscan by outputting a smaller box. While this is great for using Windows and occasions when I need to see stuff in the corners, in general, it just cuts down slightly on the viewable area of TV/movie watching. Is there anyway to change the overscan for only when I'm using MCE? Maybe Powerstrip would do the trick.

2. I'm noticing some slight choppiness and some slight blurring on movement during TV watching. Also, the image quality in general just isn't nearly as crisp as without going through the tuner. It almost seems like it's in lower resolution. Is there anything I can do to improve the image? The Hauppauge CD didn't really come with much, just drivers really.

3. The remote came with an IR blaster which I'm using to change channels on the STB instead of on the tuner itself. It works fine, but lets say I'm on channel 12 and hit channel up, it will then send 0-1-3-enter to the STB, which causes a noticeable delay in tuning. Probably close to double the time to change channels which is annoying. Is there anyway to force MCE to just send a channel up signal instead?

Apart from that, I really love this thing. The guide is incredible and significantly better than my set top box's guide. The GUI is so slick, most options are super easy to set up. I really want to use my HTPC for all my TV watching but if I can't fix these problems, I'm not sure that I'll be able to.

Thanks in advance,
Adrian
 
1) powerstrip or be sure you have the latest drivers with the contrl center. there is manual overscan adjustment in them

2) You are facing a couple of problems here, but there are ways to imrove them all at least a little. First problem, all PVR's degrade picture quality. I had an actual Comcast provided DVR and comparedit side by side to a raw signal and there was blur and color loss. it is just the nature of encoding. there is some loss. Second problem, "digital" cable. Digital cable is a scam in my opinion. all of your basic channels are still analog. everything that is 2 digits generally. Analog cable suffers greater "degredation" during the encoding process because it is a dirty signal. The first, easiest and best way to improve the overall quality is to get a cleaner source. When I had comcast analog cable, I almost ditched the HTPC the quality was so bad. But then I swapped to direcTV and now it is great. the processed dish is as good as the raw cable was. sometimes better. Second thing is be sure you are using the newest drivers. there is also a site that offers tweaks for the hauppauge cards. haven't tried any myself and I can't remeber the URL. should be able to turn it up in a search though.

3) as far as I know, you can't program channel up. not sure why, but the IR setup never asks for it to learn. However, because the PVR card is always creating a dynamic buffer to allow for timeshifting, there will always be a delay. and since the card creates a new mpeg file everytime you tune to a station, channel surfing isn't the best idea with an HTPC. that is why you have a listing guide. jump to the guide, browse the listing, and only choose a channel when you want to watch it. some people have a hard time dropping the channel surfing habit, but once you get your favorites set up, you won't be watching much live TV anyway. At any point, I have 6-20 hours of programming recorded with the commercials marked for skipping and ready for viewing. I only use Live TV for the kid stuff.
 
Thanks a lot for your help.

1. OK, thanks, I'll look into this some more. This isn't really a big deal anyway, just a minor gripe.

2. I'm not sure switching cable providers is really an option for me, mainly because of financial reasons. Plus, I really like my cable provider. So can you explain to me why a dish would offer a better signal? You still need to connect the dish's STB to your PVR card using some sort of analog cable right?

3. The funny thing is that the IR setup does ask me to push channel up. Then it doesn't use it at all. Weird. Anyway, I have a feeling MS did this to make sure that the STB and the Guide were always in sync. If you went ahead and used the STB's remote to change the channel to 26 and the guide thought you were still on ch. 20, then did nothing but channel up/down, you'd be constantly out of sync.

I guess you're right, I should just learn to use the guide more. I'm really impressed with it and it's really responsive, so hopefully it'll be an easy transition for me and the gf. Can you explain to me how you mark the commercials for skipping?

Thanks again,
Adrian
 
please look into swapping your cabling from rca (composite) to svideo, the quality is much better.
 
2) yes, they use the same cable from the set top box, but the quality of the original signal is much cleaner on a digital source. Say you have 2 cups that are exactly the same. one has purified water in it, one has horse urine. the cups are the same, but I would much rather drink water than piss. as for financial reasons, I have 4 tv's in the house. I was using basic cable on 3 and digital on the other. Now I have digital tuners for all with the dush and my bill is aobut $15 more a month. drop in the bucket. pack you lunch one day a week and you have saved enough money to get a better signal.

swapping the cable from composite to svideo won't do much, especially if you don't have svideo inputs on the TV.
 
IDversusEGO said:
swapping the cable from composite to svideo won't do much, especially if you don't have svideo inputs on the TV.
Click to expand...
Outputting from the STB via svideo to the MCE box would help with maintaining some of the quality loss by using analog outs. I've noticed this with one of my TVs that doesn't have svideo in (it's got coax so I have to use one of those switchers for RCA and svideo inputs to run a console on it) and using it with a PC there is a noticable difference between RCA and Svideo outputted from my video card.
 
After some more testing, I've found out that the majority of the image quality problems stem from the output of my Radeon 9700pro, and have nothing to do with my TV card.

I recorded some shows and played them back on my desktop PC, and they looked a lot better. No skipped frames resulting in a jumpy image. There were still issues with motion blurring, but this is much less annoying than the skipped frames cause those make sports almost unwatchable. And the colours were undoubtedly better. So is anyone else running an ATI 9xxx series card on their HTPCs and noticing this type of problem?

My TV is very limited in its inputs, it only has 1 set of RCA inputs and a coax input. So there isn't really anything else I can try with this card.

I'm going to try a friend's Nvidia 5200 AGP and see how that compares later this week.

Adrian
 
huh. I use a 9600 and it's fine. but it is a true 9600, not se le or whatever.
 
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