[mythtv-users] Some general questions

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Sun Jun 4 10:49:23 UTC 2006


On Jun 4, 2006, at 1:45 AM, Des Dougan wrote:

> I recently upgraded my monitor from a 17" CRT (about 5 years old and
> fading) to a 20" LCD at 1680x1050 resolution. I also changed my  
> video to
> an eVGA nVidia 5500 (using the VGA interface at present).
>
> So, with this in mind (and apologies if these are obvious questions):
>
> 1. Should I make any configuration changes to reflect the change in
> monitor and video card?

Pretty much a personal preference issue IMHO. Some people who are  
using the nVidia drivers like to play with the sharpness and "digital  
vibrance" parameters, which will look much different on an LCD  
compared to a CRT.


>
> 2. Sports programs (from cable) don't seem sharp. Is this a factor of
> the LCD's reaction time (8 ms is the quoted response rate)? Or  
> could it
> be the cable signal? The cable is split off the connection which also
> provides my data service. It's on the first splitter (of two - this  
> was
> done by the cable company as they told me the data signal was too  
> strong
> (!)). Is the length of the coax likely to be a factor?

There are so many different ways of measuring response time (white-to- 
black, gray-to-gray etc.) as to make such specs almost meaningless  
unless you are sure you are comparing "apples-to-apples".

You say "sports programming", and I assume the difference between  
that and "normal programming" is the more common fast motion. If you  
are seeing the "lack of sharpness" only with fast motion then it may  
well be a response time artifact.

I have noticed that one of our local ATSC stations has severe  
"blockiness" on fast motion with programming that did not originate  
from the network as digital, leading me to believe that they are  
using a very cheap encoder, as network HD stuff (like Letterman)  
looks great. This is much different from "graininess" however.

If the problem was with signal level it would manifest itself on all  
programming and normally show up as "graininess" overall regardless  
of motion. Such noise also adds to the size of mpeg-compressed files  
as noise does not compress well due to its random nature.


> 3. Given the lower resolution of TV signals, do people normally  
> watch in
> a window rather than full screen on a PC? It seems to me that
> full-screen TV watching of analog cable programming doesn't lend  
> itself
> to a high-quality experience...

Can't speak for everyone but I've always used full-screen mode, but  
perhaps that's because of my 50-plus-year-old eyes.


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