[mythtv-users] Video Quality

K.R. Foley kr at cybsft.com
Thu Mar 11 15:59:07 EST 2004


Damon Haas wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2004-03-11 at 12:28, Alan Snyder wrote:
> 
> 
>>With a dirt-cheap bt878 capture card, generic
>>GEForce-2 video card, and mid-90's 27" TV, with myth doing
>>MPEG-4 at 640x480, 2200kbps, the difference between live TV
>>through myth and live TV off the cable is noticable but
>>not bothersome.  The CNN "crawl" is a little jumpy.  There's
>>some loss of detail in the highlights (I think that might
>>be a bt878 chipset issue).  Up close (closer than I watch),
>>some blockiness is present (replacing the less noticable noise
>>in an analog picture).  Football can seem harder to follow,
>>probably because of the limitations of the compression settings
>>to handle the frame-to-frame changes in content.  But overall,
>>the difference is similar to the difference between a good cable
>>signal and an "OK" cable signal.  I do notice that for certain
>>channels where the cable signal is weaker, the noise in the 
>>original results in more artifacts in the processed video.
>>This is most likely because the compression scheme needs to
>>deal with all that extra "information."
> 
> 
> Before I go through and do this I need to be clear on this one- is
> watching sports not very good through mythtv?  If I am watching hockey
> or football on a large TV, having the ability to pause live TV would
> cause large amounts of distortion?  How noticeable is the difference
> between a recording and live TV when watching sports?  Thanks for any
> information.
> 

Whoa!! This is entirely dependent on your hardware and setup. I have pvr 
350 in a measly little PII 300 connected to a 32" Sony Trinitron and 
there is absolutely no difference between the S-video output from my 
satelite box and the S-video output from my PC, whether watching live tv 
or recordings. No artifacts, jumpiness, bad color quality, nothing. 
Excellent quality. There are still some issues playing DVD's and other 
non 350 native video formats but not with recording and watching input 
into the 350 capture.

kr

-- 
K.R. Foley
kr at cybsft.com
www.cybsft.com


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