[mythtv-users] PVR 150 Quality Issues

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 23 December 2009 09:01:53 am James Thorpe wrote:
> On 23/12/2009 15:50, Johnny wrote:
> >> One more thing to add that I don't know if it's related or not - the
> >> OSDs always seem "fuzzy" rather than being sharp as I'd expect (and
> >> actually are within DVD playback) - again is this down to the quality of
> >> the picture in some way, or is there something else going on here?
> >
> > This would indicate that your quality issues are with your playback
> > not to do with your recordings. As others have said, my PVR-150
> > recordings are excellent (as good as can be from the SD source). For
> > me when I switched to VDPAU doing the rendering and deinterlacing, the
> > picture is actually higher quality than if I watch it straight from
> > the cable. What hardware are you using? CPU/GPU? What playback profile
> > are you using? These will greatly affect the image quality you see.
> 
> I'd not considered my playback profile.  It's currently set to CPU+.
> Unfortunately I wasn't thinking about Myth as a priority when I built
> this box, but it's using an Asus M2A74-AM motherboard with onboard GPU
> (ATI, unfortunately) - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177201 - with an
> AM2 2.4 Ghz CPU and 2GB of ram.  Not sure if I mentioned before or not,
> but DVD playback is perfectly acceptable (in VLC at least, in myth I
> seem to be suffering from the stuttering bug though I understand a fix
> for that is imminent?).
> 
> Any tips appreciated, even if they're "get an nvidia PCI-E card", but
> cheaper options (ie should I use something other than CPU+) are better
> at this stage!

I'd start by trying the Slim profile. It may not produce the best results, but 
it makes minimal demands on the hardware and should produce acceptable, if not 
optimum, results. It will give you a good baseline to work from.

Obviously a VDPAU-capable video card would be nice, they are relatively 
inexpensive (at least to me), and probably the best investment you can make in 
a Myth system today.