Hello all,

I'm having horrible picture quality problems with R5D1 and my Directv. Here's the hardware I'm working with:

Happauge PVR-150
nvidia 5500
P4 1.7GHz
256 MB RAM
Myblaster IR serial blaster to control set top box

The install went pretty smoothly and after some tinkering I got everything to work. Watching and recording TV, scheduling recordings and watching recorded programs all work just fine.

I've tried searching the forums here but haven't found anyone with the same problem. No matter what combination of filters, deinterlacers, and recording bitrates I use, there is terrible banding, especially across neutral and dark color gradients. My nvidia drivers and ivtv are the latest versions. I read somewhere (I forget where) that the problem may be the multiple digital -> analog conversions that take place before the image finally gets to my TV screen. I'm pretty much out of ideas, so any help would be appreciated.

I am having a problem with white lines (probably better described as dashes ) flickering randomly over my screen with the latest or any recent nvidia drivers. Not sure if this is the same as your banding. If I drop back to 7174 and before the picture is clear but overly large with the same xf86Config?
So I guess that you might want to try some of the older drivers.

Does this banding occur for live tv, recordings, video etc?

My understanding of pixilisation is that it is a signal problem, check the cables from your antenna/ cable connection to the mythbox.

_________________
R8.1 combined backend/frontend
ASUS P7H55-M Pro
Intel i3-550, 4Gb Ram
Seagate 500GB (Sata)
2x Dvico DVB-T Lite & Sony PlayTV (usb twin tuner)
TP-Link TL-WN881ND PCIe wifi card (not working)
Logitech Harmony One remote, CoolerMaster ATC-S case

The banding I'm describing is a jagged gradation of color. For example, if the background color is dark grey on the left and light grey on the right, you'd want to see a smooth transition across the screen from dark to light. What I see is a series of clearly defined steps from dark to light. This is present whether I'm watching live or recorded television.

My guess is that if it is an issue with the signal from Directv that other subscribers would have noticed it. I don't think it's my television as there's no problem with watching the Directv straight to the TV, nor do I see the problem with DVDs.

Check your X config files and logs to see what bitdepth it is using. It may be running in 16bit colour instead of 24 or 32bit.

_________________
Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Possibly "tearing", if you're seeing a pixelated horizontal line across the screen where the image "breaks up" into coarse blocks of color or B&W. This could be your box, or it could be the capture card.

There was a long standing DMA bug in the IVTV drivers which would cause this and which has only recently been fixed. I strongly recommend upgrading your IVTV drivers to the latest appropriate version for your kernel. With R5D1 this is currently ivtv 0.7.3. http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=CompileIvtv

Turpie, that was one of the first things I looked into and I'm running 24 bit. I even tried 32 but that was not supported by my TV.

tjc, thanks, I'll look into upgrading my ivtv drivers, I think I'm using 0.7.1 which was the latest at the time.

Turpie, that was one of the first things I looked into and I'm running 24 bit. I even tried 32 but that was not supported by my TV.

tjc, thanks, I'll look into upgrading my ivtv drivers, I think I'm using 0.7.1 which was the latest at the time.

Thanks for the input everyone. After some digging on DirecTV's forums, it looks like it's a problem with either my coax cable or the compression in the signal from DirecTV itself.