Hi,

I've got a couple questions relating to HDTV, that doesn't seem to be covered
in the wiki.. I have a 26HF84 Toshiba (26 Widescreen, HDTV, Tube 540i,1080i).. On the backend, i still have pvr150/250. i'm using the very latest stable nvidia drivers (the one dated 22 Dec 05). Right now, I'm using Svideo Out. The picture quality seems to be "ok" other then hockey.. Hockey looks horrible and pixilated no mater what i do.


1)Under the recording properties of each of the tuners, should i leave the recording at 4:3 or switch it to 16:9 for SDTV? I have already forced the frontend to display everything in "Full", to size it.. and i told x that i have a widescreen..

2)I forced Mplayer to display 16:9, and tried to do the same with XINE, but i still get the annyoing black bars on widescreen movies, unless i use the moded that zooms in past it. When I do this, it doesn't seem to be perfect. is that normal? or is there a "trick" to display widecreen movies on a widescreen tv, and to get ride of the black borders (I have 26'.. i want as much picture as possible)

3)I'm still confused over the "xvmc" issue. Every time i turn it on, the picture becomes unwatchable.. i didn't see a lot of cpu usauge. I guess this is the nvidia bug that everybody is talking about?. Will it get worse when i hookup up the dvi cable and push 1080i? is there some X86 Setting that i have to use to enable xvmc ?

4)Using SDTV recordings from my pvr150 or 250, on a HDTV, do i enable interlacing? I can't seem to get a clear grasp on wheather HDTV's still interlace or not..

Thanks, (happy new year)

prosonik

OK, point by point:

* S-video out will never be able to send a HDTV signal to your HDTV from your PC. Your TV appears to only have an HDMI input, so if you really want to view an HD signal from your PC, you'll have to get a DVI to HDMI cable and a good modeline.

* Picture quality will also be dependent on your settings for your MPEG2 recordings with your 150/250. Sports like hockey or swimming will definitely get pixellated if you are recording with a low bitrate. You might want to record stuff like that with a "high quality" profile that bumps the bitrate up to 6 or 8 Mbps.

1) For regular analog cable, you are ONLY getting a 4:3 signal. Only HD broadcasts can go out as 16:9. So you should still record at 4:3.

2) If you mean those annoying black bars are at the top and bottom instead of left and right, that is normal. Some movies are even "wider" than 16:9 (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars Episode Any) and are still letterboxed even on a 16:9 TV--it's just less so than on a 4:3 TV. You can zoom to fit (but that will crop off picture left and right) or you can stretch to fit (but that will distort the film).

3) Since you're not trying to play back HDTV recordings, you shouldn't need XvMC, so don't turn it on. Depending on how fast your system is, you might not need it even if you get a HDTV tuner.

4) If you're talking about enabling interlacing on your modeline, if you wanted to run 1080i then yes, you'd turn it on. Or you could run a 540p modeline and turn it off. All that is once you are running DVI to HDMI.

If you're talking about turning on DEinterlacing for playback, you would want to do this for your SD recordings regardless of DVI or continuing with S-video.

an addition to the deinterlace issue. From my experience if you are running anything other than 1080i to your tv you will need to turn deinterlace on, but with 1080i I've never needed it.

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