PVR150 weird blur solved

[EAO]

Installed the card today.

I can't tell if I have two capturing problems or one.

1. The worst example was of a cap of a lady in a checkerboard patterened sweater. Big two inch checks. Background sweater color was red. Checks were black. She was sitting on a couch. When she moved a bit on the couch - adjusting her seating position - the red sweater moved, but the black checks reacted slower, so the image looked like it had one checked pattern superimposed over a different background. Sort like a bad cut and paste photoshop job. It also looked like this was an issue with high contrast shadows, but it was had to tell.

2. I saw very minor - but noticeable - blurring in quick short movements. Sudden jerk of the head,etc.

When I adjusted the Primary setting from 'allow overlay' to 'allow vmr...' the bad 'cut and paste' almost went away - but it's still there.

I am capping from TV - Dish Network -SVideo output to the SVideo input on the card.

I do not have an image to cut an paste. Otherwise images look really good either still or in full motion.

I'm using Windows XP Pro SP2, A64 3500+, 2 x512mb ram, My Via chipset is using the latest 4 in 1 drivers.

Any clues (esp about #1)? I'd like to avoid going back to transcoding on my WinFast card.

[jdizzy40]

Checked Happenhauge's site for any newer drivers? Could be related to their first release and "Video Crossbar" driver. Download their driver un-install utility if you find updated drivers on the site. I run the PVR 250's on two of my machines and have "Three PVR 250s in one machine". Haven't seen this problem as you relate to your PVR 150. Also what video card are you running on the machine with the new Win PVR card? When all else fails un-install Service Pack 2 and re-install everything else. And don't rule out a bad tuner card from the factory.

[EAO]

Video card is a 256mb BFG 6800GT OC.

Really don't want to uninstall SP2. It works with everything else in the PC.

I'll check out the Hauppauge site again, but I think I'm up to date.

[EAO]

Turns out the blur was VBR related. As soon as I switched to cbr, all the blurring went away.

Not sure I'm keeping it. Got an audio issue.

1. All audio settings greyed out.

2. I don't like the delay from 'real time' broadcast from the TV behind me vs the WinPVR on my monitor. Sometimes someone will want to watch the TV(in the same room) and the audio/video on the monitor is buffered slower than the TV. I don't see any way to turn it off.

3. To me the video quality is still a little less than transcoding an avi file, but it is very very close.

[junkmalle]

Are you sure you don't have interlace issues? If I remember correctly the default setting for the MPEG decoder (for playback on the monitor) does a blend deinterlace. This results in a blurred or double exposure look.

There is a registry patch to reduce the video lag but you'll run into stuttering problems. Better to just mute the audio (the little green button under the volume slider).

If you don't need to monitor the audio and video at all use one of the third party capture apps (like WinTVCap) that doesn't playback as it captures. This has the additional benefit of taking almost NO cpu time (about 3 percent on my 2.8 GHz P4).

Check out the tips/tricks section at:

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

Lots of useful information there...

[EAO]

Not too sure of anything. But the checkerboard effect I explained was AFTER I had burned the file to DVD. It may have been in the original capture but I never looked. I tried two different authoring programs to eliminate that possibility and the 'cut and paste' effect was there.

[EAO]

I upgraded my video card drivers from 61.77 to 66.93. And now... VBR is working real nice at standard dvd (vbr) settings.

Pretty good picture too.

I think I may keep it

[junkmalle]

It's hard to tell from your description -- but it sounds like you may have had a field order problem. In all likely hood the DVD mastering software judged the field order of the source MPG files wrong. After selecting the files look to see what the programs judged the source field order to be. I'm pretty sure the Hauppauge cards always capture the same field order but I don't remember which it is.