[mythtv-users] What to do for better TV-out

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Sat Jan 13 17:53:35 UTC 2007


On Jan 13, 2007, at 3:31 AM, Bart Coninckx wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been building a MythTV 0.20 box for a good friend of mine, who  
> recently
> purchased a huge Pioneer plasma TV.
>
> Since the plasma TV has a VGA input, I decided to use that for  
> sending the
> signal to the TV. Good idea it seems, because the MythTV menus show
> splendidly.
>
> After a lot of browsing and reading, I decided to use a PVR-350  
> card for TV
> reception. Unfortunately, when we watch TV, the picture provided by  
> the
> Mythbox is about half the quality of the normal TV picture on the  
> plasma TV.
>
> Obviously this is a big turn-off for my mate as far as using MythTV is
> concerned.
>
> Now I would like to check with you guys if there's any way to  
> improve the
> picture quality drastically. One thing I was thinking of, is using the
> PVR-350's S-video out. Is there any way I could get close to the  
> normal
> picture quality of the plasma TV? I'm even prepared to buy another  
> card ...

The problem is with the capture, not the playback. Are you capturing  
over coax? If so, using svideo IN will help. You can also check your  
capture rate settings in Utilities/Setup>Setup>TV Settings>Recording  
Profiles. Bump up your bitrate to something insanely high and then  
bring it down until you have a nice balance of "acceptable" quality  
and "manageable" file sizes. What those settings are varies from  
person to person. If you are transcoding, check the transcoder  
settings there, too. Note that on the Quality sliders on the  
transcode settings, lower numbers mean better quality. I've been  
burned by that before. ("I keep raising the "Quality" and it still  
looks like crap!")


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