[mythtv-users] Video Quality

[Tor Hovland]

From: "Chris Petersen" <lists at forevermore.net>

> Up until recently, I was recording at 640 x 480, 5400 kbps mpeg4 with
> all of the extras enabled, and although people told me that this was
> overkill, it still doesn't FEEL quite like the original.  I don't know
> if there is a framerate difference on playback, the fact that the source
> is now digital instead of analog, or maybe it's just the slight color
> differences, but it's there.  I've turned my recording quality down
> considerably since then and haven't noticed a difference, so whatever
> "it" is, it's not related to the quality of the recording, but to the
> fact that it's a recording.

Rest assured that you are not alone. Having spent the last week setting up
my own Myth box, I have eventually ironed out just about all problems (the
whole thing was very unstable with the stock gentoo sources, but following
the advice of switching to vanilla sources certainly solved it). The picture
is very good and I'm quite happy with the system now. However, I can still
feel (yeah, that's the term that describes it best) the difference between
analog and Myth/PVR-250, simply because the analog video is much smoother.
It seems to me that the capture frame rate is just a little too low, and
when contrasting things move quickly you can actually see how they jump from
one discrete position to the next, i.e. not the virtually continuous
movement that we expect from live tv.

-- 
Tor