[mythtv-users] Re: pvr-150 image looks "soft"

Steve Adeff adeffs at gmail.com
Thu Dec 8 10:03:31 EST 2005


On Thursday 08 December 2005 01:26, Paul Andreassen wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 11:58 am, Mike Frisch wrote:
> > On 7-Dec-05, at 7:13 PM, Steve Hodge wrote:
> > > On 12/8/05, Steve Adeff <adeffs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> like a smoothing filter is being used. it looks just a tad softer
> > >> than the
> > >> source. I also notice that during scenes with movement it looks as
> > >> though the
> > >> frame rate was dropping by 5-10.
> > >>
> > >> so are there any "secret" settings I can look for or anything?
> > >
> > > A friend of mine had some success using the nvidia-settings sharpness
> > > adjustment. So if you've got a nVidia card that might be worth a try.
> >
> > What if I'm using an ATI card?  :)
> >
> > I also mentioned the softness of the picture with the PVR-250.  I
> > turned off the DNR which seems to have made a noticeable improvement
> > in picture quality but did nothing for the sharpness.  There are some
> > MPEG-2 tuning parameters left but I am unsure what they do.
> >
> > Mike.
>
> Have you tried increasing the bitrate?  Go nuts and see if it makes a
> difference.  I use 6400/8000 which is much better than the analog signal
> out of a digital satellite set top box.
>
> Use 720x576 and Stream Type: 'DVD-Special 2' in case you ever what to put
> it on a dvd.
>
> On every boot do a 'ivtvctl -c dnr_temporal=0' to turn off temporal
> filtering.
>
> One other thing I did was turn up the contrast and colour by 5%.  While
> using Live TV on the PVR-x50, press 'g' for the recording controls.
>
> Paul

well, I've got my bitrate at 6000000/8000000 already. I'm using stream type 
DVD-Special 2 already. I used the temporal setting from the previous person 
that posted it.

BUT your comment about contrast and colour got me thinking. so I searched 
google and found:
http://ivtvdriver.org/index.php/Ivtvctl

which is nice for us to have.

then I noticed the brightness was all the way up. well, every stereophile 
knows the first thing you do when you go tv shopping at a store is go into 
the menu and turn the brightness and contrast down on the display TV's. 
Stores always turn them all the way up to make the TV look brighter, and in 
the eyes of those that don't know, "better". What it actually does is destroy 
the image quality. the picture will get blury amongst other things. so 
changing the brightness down to 63 seems to have fixed the softness problem I 
had. Its not perfect, but now I can play with it.

I do like being able to see the image all of a sudden shift brightness when I 
do this though, kinda cool.

anyway. I'm gunna play around with the settings ivtvctl allows to change. I'll 
post my results for others to compare/argue with.

-- 
Steve


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list