[mythtv-users] Improving picture quality. (A newb's struggle with Myth)

[James Satterfield]

After receiving lots of help from folks on IRC (thanks Ashlar, Iggy, Jams, 
and Cesman!) I've got a fully functioning MythTV box. I've spent a lot of 
time trying to tweak everything to improve the picture quality. I'm trying 
to get the image on par with Tivo and ReplayTV. I've come a long way so 
far. Got rid of almost all of the twitchyness I was seeing by kicking the 
bitrate up to 8000-10000. Now I just want to sharpen up the tv picture a 
bit. DVD playback looks perfect.
I'm running a pvr350 for capture and using a gf4 4000MX for tvout. 
Composite into pvr, svideo to tv. Capturing at 720x480 with a bitrate of 
8000 - 10000. X resolution of 800x600. Running nvidia 4363 drivers. Using 
deinterlace, jitter correction, A/V sync. No XvMC decoding. This setup has 
given me an okay picture but it's still got a lot of room for improvement.
I know I could get a much better picture by using tvout on the pvr350 
(which is why I got that one), but I've had zero luck getting a stable box 
running with it.
So with that, what are some recommendations for improving the picture 
quality on this thing? There's so many people saying they have a perfect 
picture from myth, I must be doing something wrong.

Hardware:
Soyo SY-P4X400 Dragon Ultra - VIA P4X400 Chipset
1.7Ghz P4
512MB PC2100
160GB WD
GF4 4000MX video
PVR350

Software:
Gentoo
2.6.5 kernel
ivtv 0.1.10pre2-ck65b
nvidia 4363
mythtv 0.15.1

I can provide some samples of captured video later tonight if asked. Any 
help you could provide would be great. Even some pointers on getting the 
pvr350 out working okay would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
James.