[mythtv-users] Re: Questionable capture quality from a PVR-250

[brentfisher at shaw.ca]

Well, the more that Cory writes, the more it sounds like we are kindred spirits - or at least our cards are:

Cory wrote:

> I thought about the noise issue, and played with the dnr_* settings on
> mine. The best description I can come up with to describe the difference
> between the TV tuner and the PVR-250 is that the TV has slightly more noise,
> but a sharper picture. The PVR-250's filters out the noise, but loses
> luminance sharpness (even tried this in B&W BTW). It's almost exactly like the
> dnr_spatial is set to some midrange value (even when it's set to zero or
> dnr_mod off).

That's a pretty accurate description of what I'm seeing.

To answer a few questions:

dnr_* settings - I have tweaked and re-tweaked these but haven't been able to improve the output.

firmware revisions - I've tried several different versions starting with the one that came with my card, to those available on the hauppauge site to those on the shspvr ftp server.  Again no discernable difference.

I tried a couple of suggestions:

1) I captured some MPEG and played it back through xine - and it looks about the same as the MythTV playback.  My buddy Cory tried this too.

2) I actually moved my PVR card into my desktop machine (which has a windows xp partition on it), downloaded the latest drivers and software from hauppauge and dragged the machine out to my TV.  (drum roll...)  It was a bitter-sweet discovery to see that the output in windows was of the same calibre as linux.  This would indicate that the linux drivers aren't lacking when compared to windows - but for me, it also means that my card is most likely the problem.

I am going to try a few more things tonight:

1) Grounding has been mentioned several times and I do know that there is no ground wire attached to the splitter where the cable comes into my house - so I'll hook something up and try it.  Thoughts?

2) I'm going to try connecting a dvd player to the s-video in on my PVR card and capture some video from a dvd - this may help to implicate / mitigate signal problems on my cable input.  Thoughts?

3) I'll try to post a snippit of video for anyone interested to have a look at.

-Brent