Poor SDTV quality with Hauppauge

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dtpnz

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#69581 11-Oct-2010 20:08

Unlike some on here, I seem to have a MCPC which is utterly reliable and does everything it should, when it should and when I want it to.

BUT (and theres always a BUT) Im getting to the point of giving up on a PC based Media Centre solution because of the quality of the SD TV picture. I live in Gisborne and while we do have great beaches, wine and lifestyle, we don't have HD Freeview!

The basic components of my MCPC are:
AMD Athlon 64 processor 5200 2.7 GHz
2.0 B RAM
1.5 TB WD Green drives (and that's another story)
Win 7 64 Bit
MS Media centre
Hauppauge Win TV DVB-S
NVidia G Force 9800 GT Video 512MB
HDMI connected to a Samsung LA40N8 1080P LCD TV

I also have an SD DVD player connected via S-Video and a Blu Ray DVD player connected via HDMI.
The Blu Ray picture is superb so I don't have an issue with the TV.

The SD DVD player picture is very acceptable. If I play SD DVDs via the MCPC they're pretty much as good as when sourced from the SD DVD player. HD downloads at 1080P are also extremely good.
This tends to suggest that the Video card in the MCPC is doing it's thing OK.

When i first set up my system, I used the motherboard's on-board ATI video. I was appalled by the SD TV image then but it was suggested that a move to NVidia would improve things. Not the case.

The TV picture is a sea of artefacts - especially on large areas of one colour. Movement is jerky and edges enhanced unpleasantly. Skin tones are muddy (even pink skin tones).

Am i being unreasonable in expecting TV 1 and 2 local content like news etc to be at least as good as SD DVD? They are if I watch them via a standard Sky decoder.

I blame the Hauppauge card. Given that I'm using the latest drivers can anyone suggest anything I can do to improve the situation? I wonder if there are better CODECs etc I could be using?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.

richms

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#390629 11-Oct-2010 20:17

You are watching dvb-s - it is low bitrate crap. There are some that will say it looks great and it must be your setup, but every setup I have seen on it has looked bad, similar badness to discovery on sky most of the time but with the odd really bad frame chucked in for good measure, particually on panning shots.

tv1 and 2 seem to be worse for weird occasional glitches, even on a freeview approved sat box you will see things pixelate occasionally that are not even moving.

From my brief try of a sat tuner on a USB tuner it did seem that some codecs would have a massive glitch on occasion, but that was back when I was trying to use media portal.

you cant make acceptable video in 2-3 megabits, if you could, then there would be no need for a dual layer dvd for most movies.

Richard rich.ms

Oblivian

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#390634 11-Oct-2010 20:33

Freeview Sat is now regional for ads, well. Has been for some time. Theres up to 6 copies of each TVNZ station.

To manage this they lowered the bitrates across them all. If you are unfortunate enough to live outside a HD UHF coverage zone. I feel sorry for you.

Sky however uses the freeview|HD feeds so expect better :)

richms

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#390642 11-Oct-2010 20:51

6?! each?! All I see is 4 TV ones, and one TV2. Still crap regardless.

Richard rich.ms

ZollyMonsta

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#390652 11-Oct-2010 21:13

Something funky going on with field interpolation too.

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

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Oblivian

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#390653 11-Oct-2010 21:15

richms: 6?! each?! All I see is 4 TV ones, and one TV2. Still crap regardless.

So there is. I never took hard notice. Once HD come around I jumped off the bandwagon. Didn't need a -S to get widescreen anymore :)

http://www.lyngsat.com/optusd1.html

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#390723 12-Oct-2010 07:10

dtpnz: I blame the Hauppauge card.? Given that I'm using the latest drivers can anyone suggest anything I can do to improve the situation?? I wonder if there are better CODECs etc I could be using?

It wont be anything to do with your Hauppauge card. When it comes to DVB-S, the cards just deliver to broadcaster's digital transport streams to the software?using the card, and it's up to the software to extract the channel data, pass it to the decoders to turn it back into a picture, and pass it to the video renderer and video card for display. ie, the DVB-S device delivers the exact sample data stream to the software (bit for bit), that a tuner from a Freeview set top box would deliver, and it's entirely up to the software to decode the channels and display them.

If what you're seeing on the screen isnt as good as a set top box, then it'll come down to components responsible for producing the picture and displaying it - ie, either the decoder, the videocard, the tv, or some combination of these.

Nety

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#390763 12-Oct-2010 09:22

sub:
[snip]

If what you're seeing on the screen isnt as good as a set top box, then it'll come down to components responsible for producing the picture and displaying it - ie, either the decoder, the videocard, the tv, or some combination of these.

As already mentioned though providing that STB is not a sky decoder as these get a sky SD feed sourced from Freeview|HD and not compressed to death.

It was a sad say when regional streams were introduced. Freeview DVB-S went from great SD picture to worse then the old analogue (but still wide-screen at least) overnight

Thankfully I live in an area covered by Freeview|HD so could switch.

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#391041 12-Oct-2010 17:29

Nety:
sub:
[snip]

If what you're seeing on the screen isnt as good as a set top box, then it'll come down to components responsible for producing the picture and displaying it - ie, either the decoder, the videocard, the tv, or some combination of these.

As already mentioned though providing that STB is not a sky decoder as these get a sky SD feed sourced from Freeview|HD and not compressed to death

To be fair, I did explicitly mention "Freeview STB" in the paragraph before. The point being - the output of the Hauppauge DVB-S tuner would be no different to any other tuner for the same digital bitstream, and his problem is more likely related to other things in his setup.

dtpnz

25 posts

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#391175 13-Oct-2010 09:00

Thanks to all for the information. If nothing else I feel mollified that the problem is beyond my control.

On freeview.co.nz one of the advantages touted for Freeview is 'Digital Quality Pictures' As we see, that means nothing really, you can have bad digital quality pictures. All it takes is for the bean counters to have more clout than the engineers.

I guess the role of satellite Freeview is to provide some sort of FTA TV to geographically isolated areas but not necessarily to give users a good TV experience. I'll wait for HD.

ZollyMonsta

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#391200 13-Oct-2010 09:59

dtpnz: Thanks to all for the information. If nothing else I feel mollified that the problem is beyond my control.

On freeview.co.nz one of the advantages touted for Freeview is 'Digital Quality Pictures' As we see, that means nothing really, you can have bad digital quality pictures. All it takes is for the bean counters to have more clout than the engineers.

I guess the role of satellite Freeview is to provide some sort of FTA TV to geographically isolated areas but not necessarily to give users a good TV experience. I'll wait for HD.

Well it's certainly digital.. but instead of analogue noise, welcome to the world of digital noise (aka Pixellation / MPEG blocking).

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

As per the usual std disclaimer.. "All thoughts typed here are my own."

Rollux

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#391793 14-Oct-2010 13:00

I started getting bad artifacts and pixelation from my Hauppauge Nova S and HVR3000 with DVB-S before they died completely. Can you try another card?
Also, I found when I was running an nVidia 7600GS that some driver versions caused poor picture quality for viewing TV with 7 x64. The best one was I think an old version developed for the beta (93.6 or something around there) Some updated versions just caused visual problems and the occasional crash.

Just my $0.02

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