Hauppauge WinPvr 250 and videcard driver relationship?

[EAO]

First...

I think the 250 is fantastic. the quality of capture is very good - but like everything in my PC I wouldn't mind if it was better.

Question 1. Do Video Card drivers impact the quality of the cature? I say yes.

I have a 256mb BFG 6800 GT OC in my PC. I noticed that when I was using nvidea drivers 61.77 I had some interesting issues with the captures where it looked like one image was super imposed on another. When someone in a checked shirt moved, the lighter coler check stayed in place for a second and created a weird after image that made me sick to watch.

When I upgraded the video card drivers to 66.93 this problem went away and the captures are nice. I can't believe it was a coincidence because I tried everything to correct this issue for 2 days wthout success before upgrading these drivers. Will someone confirm that video card drivers can impact capture quality?

Question 2. Does the NVIDIA PureVideo Technology have any impact on capture quality?

NVidea has released what they call NVIDIA PureVideo Technology to compete with the output quality of ATI cards. I'm curious if anyone has installed it and seen an additonal benefit with capture?

[mats.hogberg]

1. I say no.
2. I say no again. AFAIK, video cards only affect playback.

/Mats

[EAO]

How would you explain why my capture problem disappeared after a driver upgrade?

I had tried EVERYTHING for two days earlier. Meaning all tweaks at SHS site, graphedit settings, VIA 4 in 1 update, etc. Nothing worked until I finally updated my video card driver.

[junkmalle]

I've had a PVR-250 for a while and am quite familiar with it. What comes out of the PVR-250 is already encoded as MPEG, audio and video. The quality of your display card will make absolutely no difference to what's in the file. Upgrading your graphics card might make it look better (or worse) on your computer monitor, or TV out from the computer might look better (or worse), but what is captured in the MPEG file will be exactly the same.

The reason updating your video card fixed the problem you were having has to do with the fact that, as the PVR-250 is capturing the MPEG stream, it is decoding it in software and displaying the picture on the monitor. There may have been some conflict in the way it was doing that that was fixed by updating you display drivers.

edit:

There is one other possibility that I can think of: The Hauppauge PVR series has a registry setting that controls temporal smoothing. If that value is set too high you get symptoms something like the ones described. Hauppauge doesn't give you any way to adjust this setting but this application does:

http://www.shspvr.com/download/hcwpp2ut.zip

If I remember correctly, the default value for that setting is 7. If you turn it up to 15 or 20 or more you'll start seeing ghostly trails.

[SHS]

what junkmalle say is kind ture unless your run a REAL Hardware Decoder like Xcard.
61.77 I had some interesting issues
EAO are using S/Video input?.
I just wonder are sure what your really seeing look more like Motion Blur?. If YES then go to
HKLM,"System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Globespan\ Parameters\ivac15\Driver
Find
FltDnrTempFltLevel change 8 to 4 and try it or change 0 to disable it.

[junkmalle]

Oh, another thing occured to me. When I first installed my PVR-250 the MPEG decoder was using a blend deinterlace for display on the monitor. This can look like a double exposure or motion blur. I prefer to leave the picture interlaced because my graphics card's TV out handles interlaced video perfectly. There's a registry setting to control the interlace/deinterlace mode. Too bad Hauppauge's software doesn't let you control all these things!

In case you haven't seen it, this web site has lots of good information about the PVR series:

http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/htpc.html

Be sure to check out the Tips and Tricks section.

[EAO]

I'm sorry it took this long to respond. Just as I transmitted my last reply the ice knocked out my power. It was really weird sitting in the dark, but having the PC working...it took a couple seconds to realise what happened and then I shut everything down. Power's back after about a day.

I wasn't clear on one point. I was having this problem whether I watched the mpeg2 file on the PC or when I burned it to DVD and watched it on the TV.

I was capturing (still am) using S-Video input. SHS what kind of issues did you have? And I'm curious what drivers are you using now?

I'm familiar with both those other sites. They have been very helpful.