[MANowell]

I have a Sony Trinitron 36" CRT, only has SVideo inputs. (Planning on flat screen in a few months, but not yet.)


I'm looking to ditch my ReplayTV for a HTPC, like the looks of BeyondTV. Have been playing with the trial edition, it receives and records just fine. I can pull of the MPEG files and make DVDs that look very nice on my set.


HOWEVER: Playing back shows on the set is a problem. I've tried several video cards up to the nVidia 6800GT, they all have PQ problems of some sort. I've read threads here, tried different drivers, etc. Have NOT played with third party utilities, just nVidia drivers out the SVideo port on the card.


Current card is Albatron Trinity PCX5750 (PCI-Express interface) with 128MB RAM. It works at LEAST as well as the 6800 GT did. Get strange faint "cross-hatching" pattern on the screen, REALLY obvious when solid colors, (red, green, yellow, blue) boxes are on screen. Also a little dark and fuzzy. Dark can be fixed with nVidia drivers, but not fuzzy. As fas as I can tell.


PC is a 2.8 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM, Windows Server 2003, nothing else running on it.


I've jacked with this thing in multiple configurations for four days now, thought it's time to ask for guidance. Or just serve as a warning.


Any pointers or gotchas?


Thanks!

 

[MANowell]

And an add-on question: Sould I be trying to drive the CRT TV at the HIGHEST (1024x768) or LOWEST (640x480) resolution?

 

[MANowell]

Wow! Three days and NO comments.....



I've started looking beyond BeyondTV, programs like SageTV and MythTV.


The issue still seems to be output, though. I've dropped screen resolution to 640x480, seemed to help a little, but PQ is still subpar.


ANYONE have ANYTHING helpful to say about sending S-Video to a CRT? Thanks!

 

[Axatax]

You are *never* going to get acceptable computer desktop output from a PC to a TV via S-Video, period, regardless of which card you use. You need an HD capable set with a high-bandwidth progressive input.

 

[Chriš2]

I have something to say, you will have a hard time finding any video card that has an s-video output that will equal the ReplayTV's output. The problem is the crappy output on video cards, not really the software. This has been brough up here a few times.


I was using the s-video on a Radeon 9600 and could never get the picture as sharp as my ReplayTV. It's like there was no dynamic range with the picture. I tweaked this for days and got a decent picture, but nothing great. Since my TV has component inputs, I got the ATI dongle which converts the DVI output to component. This made all the difference, picture is great now.


Here's another thread about this http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=459279



About the resolution, you can use whatever you want. Your video card is going to scale it to 480i on the s-video output though, so that's all your TV will ever see. If you make the PC res 1024X768, that image will be scaled down to 480i over s-video. So you'll see all of your 1024X768 desktop, but it will be a 480i picture (if that makes any sense). The component output on the other hand needs to be driven at whatever resolution your TV will accept.

 

[u02sgb]

Having said that, your problem may be a "ground loop". It's caused by two different Earth's being used on the TV and the computer. The different Earth may be coming from your TV aerial (disconnect everything except your Svideo input to try it) or different Earth's on the plugs (try doing something to defeat the Earths *temporarily*).


Stu.

 

[MANowell]

Quote:

Originally posted by Axatax You are *never* going to get acceptable computer desktop output from a PC to a TV via S-Video, period, regardless of which card you use. You need an HD capable set with a high-bandwidth progressive input.

I was starting to suspect this was the case. There's plans for a large flat panel in my life hopefully in the next four months, not sure what it'll be yet. Looking at the Pioneer 50" plasma right now.


I'm willing to spend some time and $$ to fix the problem now, but waiting it out might be the only answer. Unfortunately, I like the features of the PVR on HTPC so much that I don't want to go back to the ReplayTV unit.


Thanks!

 

[stanger89]

You could go with SageTV and the Xcard, although you'll get no OSD/UI on the TV out.

 

[DJRobX]

Quote:

About the resolution, you can use whatever you want.

I'll deviate a bit from the post and say that you should be using 640x480 resolution if you want a crisp picture. If you use something like 1024x768 your computer will be unable to directly replace the lines of video that it recorded. Instead it will upscale the video to 768p and then have to scale it again back down to 480i, introducing softness and errors. Also disable the "anti-flicker" mode of the card. Doing so will make small fonts painful to look at, but it eliminates some of the softness. What anti-flicker does is "average" out the differences between the two interlaced frames. It's effectively reducing the resolution to 240p.


Interlacing, in general, is a big gotchya for this configuration. The PVR records the interlaced frames correctly, but a PC display card isn't generally designed to play them back out exactly as they were received. The computer winds up deinterlacing the video (which, with the exception of DScaler and perhaps the new NVidia DVD codec, has always been atrocious for video-material like TV) and then your computer re-interlaces them, using a scheme optimized to make text and graphics reasonably useful. That's why cards like the PVR-350 have a dedicated TV out for this purpose, to bypass all of that unnecessary mangling.

 

[MANowell]

Quote:

Originally posted by Chriš I have something to say, you will have a hard time finding any video card that has an s-video output that will equal the ReplayTV's output. The problem is the crappy output on video cards, not really the software. This has been brough up here a few times.

I remember reading about the video output section of the ReplayTV when it came out, apparently it was where they put quite a bit of the engineering $$$. The output on mine is just about as good as the straight line.

Quote:

I was using the s-video on a Radeon 9600 and could never get the picture as sharp as my ReplayTV. It's like there was no dynamic range with the picture. I tweaked this for days and got a decent picture, but nothing great. Since my TV has component inputs, I got the ATI dongle which converts the DVI output to component. This made all the difference, picture is great now.

I've heard of s-Video to component dongles and DVI to component dongles. Are these card-specific things? I'm planning on a screen in the next 4-5 months that WILL have all manner of better inputs. Do I need to be getting a specific video card now (all that i've looked at have VGA, S-Video, and DVI. Will a generic splitter work?

Quote:

Here's another thread about this http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=459279 About the resolution, you can use whatever you want. Your video card is going to scale it to 480i on the s-video output though, so that's all your TV will ever see. If you make the PC res 1024X768, that image will be scaled down to 480i over s-video. So you'll see all of your 1024X768 desktop, but it will be a 480i picture (if that makes any sense). The component output on the other hand needs to be driven at whatever resolution your TV will accept.

I've generally thought this as well. It was suggested (by a tech @ SnapStream) that I make the resolution as close to 640x480 as I could, and it did improve the picture somewhat.


Some of these playback programs can run in either overlay or accelerated mode. Any conventional wisdom on which is "better" to use?


Thanks for the thread pointer, as well.

 

[MANowell]

Quote:

Originally posted by stanger89 You could go with SageTV and the Xcard, although you'll get no OSD/UI on the TV out.

Hadn't heard of Xcard yet, but with Google I'm now more informed. It seems like EVERYBODY would like OSD support with this board for [insert pvr name here].


A guy {New Zealand, I think?} has a package called GB-PVR that claims to have OSD support with the Xcard. Anybody play with that?


And the Xcard is

 

[Chriš2]

Quote:

Originally posted by MANowell I've heard of s-Video to component dongles and DVI to component dongles. Are these card-specific things? I'm planning on a screen in the next 4-5 months that WILL have all manner of better inputs. Do I need to be getting a specific video card now (all that i've looked at have VGA, S-Video, and DVI. Will a generic splitter work?

I've never heard of s-video to component (you wouldn't want to do that). You may be thinking of s-video to composite, which is different. Both s-video and composite are for SD (480i material) by design.


If your HDTV will have a DVI input, get a video card with DVI output. This would be ideal. The TV will most likely have component inputs, which gives you a few options. Get a card with component outputs (not really necessary though). Get VGA to component transcoder (all video cards will have a VGA output). ATI also make a DVI to component adapter for their Radeon cards (also called a "dongle" here, even though it's not really a "dongle" but looks more like a plastic adapter).


Quote:

I've generally thought this as well. It was suggested (by a tech @ SnapStream) that I make the resolution as close to 640x480 as I could, and it did improve the picture somewhat. Some of these playback programs can run in either overlay or accelerated mode. Any conventional wisdom on which is "better" to use? Thanks for the thread pointer, as well.

I had best results with 800 X 600. This gave me a little more desktop area to play around with in MyHTPC, and I also like the way the fonts looked. You just have to play around with a couple resolutions and see what looks best to you. Also like DJRobX said, set flicker control to off or the lowest setting. This was enabled by default and made a big difference.

 

[RobDMB]

It is possible OSD with sagetv could soon work with the xcard. I think someone is looking into making a plugin that would make this work but nothing is actually done yet so no guarentees.

 

[foofighter]

Have you tried enableing the new Video mode? Its located in the same place you enable Overscan. I'm not sure when this feature first appeared, but I'm using the lastest Omega drivers (xp version). I have a 36" Sony Wega using ati 9200>S-video cable>B&K preamp>tv, the picture is great. On a short cable run the picture quality appears as good as anything else using S-video. I use a 40ft cable so I introduce a bit a noise with that. The Video mode is best used for just video b/c with text and thin lines I get a little shimmer. Compared to Overscan mode the picture has more resolution and dynamtic range. I couldn't find an offical description of what Video mode is, but I think it probably has something to do with interlacing. I can post comparison pictures if anyone is interested.

 

[MANowell]

Quote:

Originally posted by foofighter Have you tried enableing the new Video mode? Its located in the same place you enable Overscan. I'm not sure when this feature first appeared, but I'm using the lastest Omega drivers (xp version). I have a 36" Sony Wega using ati 9200>S-video cable>B&K preamp>tv, the picture is great. On a short cable run the picture quality appears as good as anything else using S-video. I use a 40ft cable so I introduce a bit a noise with that. The Video mode is best used for just video b/c with text and thin lines I get a little shimmer. Compared to Overscan mode the picture has more resolution and dynamtic range. I couldn't find an offical description of what Video mode is, but I think it probably has something to do with interlacing. I can post comparison pictures if anyone is interested.

Can you give me some more pointers on where to find this? I downloaded and installed the latest nVidia Omega drivers that I saw posted nvidia_wxp_omega_16177_7z.exe), they don't seem to be any better than what I was running. I can't find a "Video" option, but do the the "Overscan" option....

 

[foofighter]

Sorry, this is an ATI setting. From what I've seen ATI offers higher quality s-video output. Have you tried an ATI cards?

 

[wingtipz]

So by getting the purple "dongle" from ATI you can connect to a television with component video inputs. Does it make a difference if the TV is able to accept progressive inputs or not? I have an older Sony WEGA that has component inputs but I don't believe it's progressive compatible. I'm hoping to see some image quality improvement by going to component connections.

 

[foofighter]

I can't speak to this directly, b/c I haven't used the component dongle. But general, the difference between component and s-video is small. I don't know if the cost of the dongle would be worth the difference. If you want something significant you need to go all digital with a tv that has DVI input.

 

[Chriš2]

Quote:

Originally posted by foofighter I can't speak to this directly, b/c I haven't used the component dongle. But general, the difference between component and s-video is small.

Absolutely not in my case!! This may be true for DVD players that have nice s-video outputs, s-video out on my Radeon 9600 is a piece of garbage (along with most other video cards!) There was a big difference when I switched the the purple dongle and used component.


wingtipz- You don't need progressive inputs. Interlaced is fine, you just set your video card to 30hz (interlaced) instead of 60hz, and set the pins to 480i on the dongle. The dongle didn't work for me until I installed the latest drivers (4.11 I think, not sure). The picture was slightly squished using standard resolutions (720X480 or 640X480), but I installed powerstrip and tweaked it so it looks great. I have a little overscan (6% maybe?) but I'm very happy now.