[mythtv-users] PVR-500 picture quality

[Joey Morris]

Paul Gardiner <lists at glidos.net> wrote on Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 09:26:59AM +0000:
> I'm sure there's some loss in the capture stage, but don't rule out
> loss also at the playback stage when dealing with SD under MythTv.
> My set up has dvb-t as source, so zero loss on the recording side,
> yet it took me ages (and 3 frontend builds) before I achieved
> image quality equal to commercial equipment. The trick at playback
> is to do as little processing as possible, so:
> 
> 1 Set up the x screen to match the content 720x480. Scaling from
> 720x480 to 800x600 will lose quality.
> 
> 2 Don't adjust the playback window to avoid overscan. Scaling from
> 720x480 to 71Xx47X will really notice.

I set the GUI width and height to 0x0 to force fullscreen. However, I
did adjust my overscan in X using the TVOverscan option. Could that
affect things? I'll play around with it.

> 3 Don't use bobdeint or linear deinterlacers.

I'll play around with the deinterlacers, too. Based on everyone's
helpful responses, though, I'm guessing it's pretty close to as good
as it can get. And that's probably going to be good enough for me --
well, at least with the S-Video input. If all I had were the coax
input I'd probably look for other options. Unfortunately that means I
can't get rid of the cable box and will instead need to pick up a
second one.