[mythtv-users] v4l Framegrabber Video Quality

[James Crow]

Hello all,

I recently lost my PVR-500 encoder and rather than purchase a new analog 
recorder I am falling back to the framegrabbers built into my Pinnacle 
800i QAM/ATSC cards.

With the PVR-500 bitrate cranked up to 6000-9000 the video was as good 
as the cable fed directly into the TV. With the mpeg4 settings on 5000 
the quality is still well below the PVR recordings.

I think I have enough CPU for mpeg4 (Athlon 64 x2 3800+ 2.0GHz). I have 
searched the archives and played with the Recording Profile options, but 
am still not able to get decent quality from the framegrabbers. Does 
anyone have some pointers or settings I should try to improve the quality?

I am willing to trade increased disk space for better quality 
recordings. I do not store any shows on external media and only watch 
shows from a Myth FE.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
James