[mythtv-users] Bad picture quality on an HDTV
Matt Grommes
matt at mattorama.net
Thu Jan 20 11:59:29 EST 2005
(sorry if this message comes through twice; mail server issues)
Hi, I'm new to myth and thanks to Jarod's guide I've almost got
everything set up, except for the main use of the system: regular TV.
I've got a Toshiba HDTV that says its native modes are 720p and 1080i.
After _much_ tweaking I finally got a useable desktop on 720p where I
can see everything in KDE and in MythTV but my TV picture quality is
terrible. I have a wintv 250 and digital cable through Comcast. When I
plug the same svideo cable from the cable box into my TV, it's perfect.
The picture in myth seems very pixellated and there's a lot of "banding"
where colors touch each other. It's similar to a badly encoded mpeg or a
small video clip stretched to full screen. Is the 1136x670 resolution of
my desktop causing the TV to stretch or something? I've tried a lower
800x480 540p resolution and it seems the same. I'm recording in 720x480
with (I think) 4500 bit rate of encoding. I'm almost totally ignorant
when it comes to X modelines and things so just getting the useable
desktop at 720p was a feat. When I try a smaller 540p resolution a lot
of the screen goes off the edges of the TV until I run nvidia-settings,
then it shrinks the screen until it's like a 20" picture in the middle
of my 32" TV. The nvidia-settings was how I finally got the 720p
resolution to fit on the desktop. When I play a video or a DVD, it looks
great. It's only TV that looks bad. Sorry for the rambling but I'm at
the limits of my knowledge.
Any help would be _greatly_ apprecited. Thanks.
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