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

[Harley Peters]

James Satterfield wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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The deinterlacer blurs the picture a lot on my system.
I run the tv out at 640x480 and leave the deinterlacer off.
At 640x480 I have no interlacing artifacts like I have at 800x600 or 
1024x768. And it provides the best over all picture.

Harley