Quality issues

[pelewis2]

I am using a hauppauge 150, beyond tv, Asus GeForce 7600 GT, E6300, etc. And using the outputting to a dell 19in monitor via dvi and to a tv using a s vid cable.

Is there some way to increase the quality to the tv while watching tv or recorded shows? Is the hauppauge 150 not cutting it or do I need a second video card just for the tv? Ideally I would like to be able to play cs source and watch tv(at a higher quality) at the same time, but now if I do that the tv will flash intermittently.

 

[pelewis2]

Well I already can watch live tv while playing on the computer, I wanted to be able to play games while watching recorded tv.

Also, that's not my main question, I am most curious on how to improve the recording or live picture quality.

 

[nobly]

Ok, so your main question is how to improve the quality of your recording.

Nothing to do with the playing game at the same time, right?

You have to change your capture settings to either a higher bitrate, larger capture size, different format, etc, etc. There are many variables in video capture. Experiment with them. You'll probably have to go through alot of trial and error unless you google your capture card and look for someone else who had the same question.

I have a ATI All in wonder and I usually capture at max settings to get the best quality picture I can.

 

[s4fun]

NTSC is just awful. There is no hope. You best bet is to get some sort of digital tuner box with s-video out and run that into the PVR. Some cable or satellite set-top boxes have s-video out and if you got the digital content you can get pretty decent recording off of those. BTW, a PVR-250 would get you significantly better results than the 150.

 

[pelewis2]

why is the PVR-250 better than the 150

 

[nobly]

NTSC is just awful. There is no hope. You best bet is to get some sort of digital tuner box with s-video out and run that into the PVR. Some cable or satellite set-top boxes have s-video out and if you got the digital content you can get pretty decent recording off of those. BTW, a PVR-250 would get you significantly better results than the 150.

Why is NTSC so awful? And why is there 'no hope'?
Please back these up with some substantial facts.

 

[bacis]

hi
to get the maximun quality for your recording shows
you must record indvd format (720x576)and a bit rate at 6.0mbit/s
or if there is a custom setting put the bitrate at maximun.
but keep in mind that if you record at 6.0mbit/s
it will produce a file af about 4.0gb/hour.
is that what you want?
the ntsc standart is 480x576
thats why the picture is more poor.

 

[thelvyn]

Its better because it supports hardware compression so your cpu does a lot less work. Quite a bit actually.

 

[pelewis2]

The 150 has hardware compression....or did someone trick me?

 

[thelvyn]

Sorry I was wrong it does indeed have hardware compression.
Seems that the 250 has video and audio outputs and the 150 only has inputs ? Could be wrong.

 

[nobly]

hi
to get the maximun quality for your recording shows
you must record indvd format (720x576)and a bit rate at 6.0mbit/s
or if there is a custom setting put the bitrate at maximun.
but keep in mind that if you record at 6.0mbit/s
it will produce a file af about 4.0gb/hour.
is that what you want?
the ntsc standart is 480x576
thats why the picture is more poor.

I was questioning why s4fun made those statements. We've had NTSC for decades, and its only now with the advent of HD, etc, that we're changing.
Doesn't make it awful or whatever, just old. I guess compared to HD its awful. There's always hope, right??

Yeah, bitrates are interesting for MPEG2. Its spec'd up to 15Mbps, but no one can really tell after 9Mbps. If you mess with your capture settings enough, you can get it to the point where its just as good as the original 480i. You can capture in a number of different formats (not sure about what formats the 150/250 can do).

 

[s4fun]

Hey Nobly, you just like to argue for arguings sake?

Why else do you want to improve quality if it wasn't bad to start with?

It is awful from day one, HD not withstanding. HD as it is currently available is pretty bad too but that is another discussion for another time.

I'm done lots of NTSC recording with more than a dozen boards and such and the consumer level stuff putting off the NTSC off the cable network is what is it is, awful. But that is just stating the obvious. I don't get to work with PAL in the U.S., but I doubt it would be much better.

BTW hardware encoders can only so so far to clean up a dirty RF signal. So if you can get the content delivered digitally and then encode the clean s-video source you'll be much better off, even if it was 480i or 480p.

You can search for some mpeg post processing software to clean-up noise reduce etc., and let me know what you find to work well.

 

[nobly]

Hey Nobly, you just like to argue for arguings sake?

No, I just wanted a more fleshed out answer and your thoughts on the matter.

I like to hear different opinions that actually have some substance behind them.

Do you think NTSC is bad because of the quality of the picture (# of lines) or just the whole RF/coax transmission part, frames per second, etc?

So what would you consider as 'good'? 1080p or something? Or something totally different than the current standards?

I'm not arguing with you, I'm just trying to figure out why specifically you don't like it.