[mythtv-users] TV Out quality problems (nvidia)

[John Goerzen]

Hello,

I finally got my TV out working (turned out I had defective hardware
before.)  It's working, but I have two main problems: color and motion.

First, on color.  The picture on the TV appears washed-out -- not enough
contrast or color, perhaps.  However, the reds are extremely vibrant in
some instances, so turnnig up the color level control on the TV only
makes things worse.  I've played with both the TV color controls and the
color options in the TV and Xv panels of nvidia-settings, but just can't
seem to get it right.  When I look at the same recordings on a VGA
monitor or a laptop LCD, they look just fine, so I don't believe my
PVR-250 capture card is to blame.  (Though I could be wrong.)

Secondly, on motion.  When there is motion -- a panning camera, for
instance -- things look bad on the TV.  I have tried things without the
deinterlace or jitter reduction turned on.  When I have those off, I see
interlacing effects on the TV -- horizontal lines offset from each
other, like I would expect to see on a VGA screen.  But I do not see
those effects when watching a signal hooked up directly to the TV.

If I turn on deinterlace and jitter reduction, then a panning camera
results in an image that is, well, jittery.

Either way, it's hard to watch.

I live in the US and have an NTSC setup.  My TV is a 29" Sony and I've
using SVIDEO to hook it up.  It is not an HDTV unit or anything like
that, and AFAIK, cannot do progressive scan.

I have a nforce2 motherboard with an intergrated GeForce4 MX (NV18) GPU,
which features integrated TV out.  I'm running nvidia's drivers, version
6106.  I have Debian unstable on this box and X 4.3.0.dfsg.1-5.

Here are some snippets from my XF86Config:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Generic Video Card"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        Option          "TVStandard" "NTSC-M"
        Option          "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
        Option          "ConnectedMonitor" "TV"
        Option          "NoLogo" "true"
        Option          "HWCursor" "true"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Generic Monitor"
        HorizSync       30-50
        VertRefresh     60
        #Option         "dpms"
EndSection

I'm running at 800x600.

Also, one other weird problem: whenever MythTV is generating a screen
that is black or mostly black, my TV thinks that it's lost the SVIDEO
signal.  As soon as the output brightens up, the TV is back to normal.

Thanks for any suggestions.

-- John