Hi, I'm fairly new to MythTV and Linux in general (but I like them both a lot so far). I'll give the specs on my system first, then ask my question:

AMD Athlon XP 2200, 512 MB PC2100 RAM, Hauppauge PVR-150, nVidia 5200, Live in US (so NTSC), standard analog cable, using S-video tv output from 5200 to non-HD TV

I used the latest release of Knoppmyth (R5D1) and have played around with it for a couple weeks. Everything seems to be working properly, except my LiveTV and Video playback doesn't look as good as I hoped.

So my main question is...will video playback ever look as good (clean, crisp) as actually watching TV?

From what I understand Tivo's look as good as normal TV, so it seems it would be possible. The other thing I noticed is that if I burn a recorded video to DVD and then play it on my DVD player, it looks a lot better than when played back through my MythTV box. Basically, I'm wondering if there's a component or possibly a setting that is causing my video to look degrading (a little blurry...it's tough to describe...overall just not crisp).

I've tried the various deinterlacing settings, made sure that I'm using 640x480 resolution...but nothing seems to make it as good as I want. Am I expecting too much?

My other thoughts are that I need one of those VGA to component converters. Will those improve analog cable signal? I've also heard good things about the picture quality of the PVR-350. Or is this something as simple as upgrading my processor or adding more RAM?

I just want to get the most out of my box (and impress people that come over to show them how much they're wasting on Tivo - but that won't happen unless the video playback is improved). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bill

I'm not in the US, (UK and using PAL-I) but with the corect modeline, bob deinterlace and the hard drive optimisations TV is as good as 'regular' TV.
Search for XFConfig-4 modelines. I think this will be your besty bet.

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Version:R8
Intel C2D 7400, Nvidia 5600 via HDMI to Samsung B37B650TW (PAL), Asus P5QL-E mobo, 4Gb PC6400 DDR2 ram, Samsung Spinpoint 500 Gb & 1Tb drive, Nova-HD-S2 (x2)

See the recently updated PictureQualityIssues page on the wiki - http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=PictureQualityIssues for some more suggestions. With a little effort it's entirely possible to make the output look as good as the direct feed to the TV.

First off, you've got your computer hooked up to your tv via s-video? That should provide a very good connection. Component video is better, I heard, but dvd directly to tv via coax isn't as good. Converting your vga out to component isn't likely the solution.

Second, if you've already recorded something via the tuner card, burned it to disk, and played it on your dvd player with excellent results, you know for sure that the tuner card isn't the problem either.

It sounds like the problem here is in the playing of the recording on the mythbox. If it's playing and coming out lower quality than it did burned to dvd, it's probably in the signal going to the tv. Not the cable but the signal itself. Well, it could be a loose cable but an s-video cable should be pretty good.

Could it be a driver problem for the video card? Or the settings of the video card?

Btw, I'm still a relative noob to this stuff too so don't take anything I say as gospel.