Freeview HD quality retained on HTPC?

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turb

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Topic # 112516 11-Dec-2012 16:18

There's a thread on the Sky forum (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=112444) where I'm having a bit of a whine about how Freeview HD looks better on the screen than Sky HDi.

There's some ongoing discussion about why/if that's true.

My question is this: if I build an HTPC based on an HVR-2210 tv card and A4-3400 chip, will I lose any picture quality?

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Reply # 730607 11-Dec-2012 16:26

Since it's digital, so long as you have a good signal level then the resulting output will be identical. Some software can do post-processing on the resulting stream so it may actually end up slightly better on your PC.

sbiddle

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Reply # 730653 11-Dec-2012 17:06

Picture quality will depend entirely on how well your video card works with your TV.

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turb

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Reply # 730711 11-Dec-2012 18:20

sbiddle: Picture quality will depend entirely on how well your video card works with your TV.

Eek!

What can I do?

Wracked with FUD....

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mm1352000

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Reply # 730712 11-Dec-2012 18:22

"Normal" processing like deinterlacing also has an effect.

mm1352000

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Reply # 730750 11-Dec-2012 19:03

turb: There's a thread on the Sky forum (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=112444) where I'm having a bit of a whine about how Freeview HD looks better on the screen than Sky HDi.

There's some ongoing discussion about why/if that's true.

My question is this: if I build an HTPC based on an HVR-2210 tv card and A4-3400 chip, will I lose any picture quality?

Could you clarify just a little...

You start by talking about a comparison of the picture quality of Sky HD and Freeview HD... which I think is is a reasonable debate because as far as I'm aware the encoding parameters for the two sources are not necessarily identical. In other words, there is no guarantee that the picture quality you get from Sky will be identical to the picture quality that you get from Freeview.

What I don't get is the connection between that first thought and the topic "...quality retained on HTPC..." and question "...will I lose any picture quality".

In what way were you thinking picture quality could be lost?

You could think of an HTPC as a much more general purpose STB.

There is no loss in quality in the signal reception stage. In other words, assuming reasonable signal quality, the stream that is transmitted is exactly what the video/audio decoders in the STB and HTPC get to work with.

As far as I understand it, the video and audio decoding is also completely deterministic. In other words, there should be no variation between the STB and HTPC in terms of the decoded video and audio.

Beyond that there is post-processing - deinterlacing, colour space conversion, frame rate conversion, scaling - and display. For a digital signal, this is the only stage where variation could be introduced, and your TV can probably introduce just as much variation as an STB or HTPC.

turb

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Reply # 730806 11-Dec-2012 21:06

My plan is to ditch Sky and build my first HTPC.

I've been assuming the FV picture will look just as great after its been though my HTPC as it does on my FV enabled TV.

Just want to check with the experts that this assumption is correct. Given that the whole rationale is to save money, I'm nervous about spending that much money and then someone saying "Of course everyone knows you were never going to get the same quality from an HTPC".

I'm only going to get one shot at this, so don't want to jump out of an expensive frying pan into a poor quality fire.

(not looking for guarantees, just reassurance!)

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Reply # 730882 11-Dec-2012 22:05

turb: My plan is to ditch Sky and build my first HTPC.

Right, okay.

I've been assuming the FV picture will look just as great after its been though my HTPC as it does on my FV enabled TV.

Just want to check with the experts that this assumption is correct. Given that the whole rationale is to save money, I'm nervous about spending that much money and then someone saying "Of course everyone knows you were never going to get the same quality from an HTPC".

I'm only going to get one shot at this, so don't want to jump out of an expensive frying pan into a poor quality fire.

(not looking for guarantees, just reassurance!)

Well my opinion is that as long as you pick a reasonable GPU and tuner you shouldn't have too many problems on that front. Such a machine should be capable of delivering equivalent picture quality to your TV.

In general, HTPC software solutions are relatively mature these days. It can be more time consuming to configure an HTPC, and there is always the temptation to tweak.