[mythtv-users] Like an old movie!

[John Danner]

I've got a G400 and it looks great. You might want to try changing your TV out
settings using the matrox tool (do a google search for it - I think I found it
with mplayer)

here are my settings:

/usr/local/bin/matrox 0x1e 0xc0
/usr/local/bin/matrox 0x20 0xaf
/usr/local/bin/matrox 0x22 0x88

this adjusts the output's brightness, color, and contrast.

As for poor quality (blurry tv) you might want to try upping your resolution -
for livetv I can only get 352x400 - but when I record I set it at 480x480 and
it looks a lot better.

Here is my fbset -i for reference:
mode  "800x600-64"
   # D: 40.000 MHz, H: 44.743 kHz, V: 63.918 Hz
   geometry 800 600 800 600 16
   timings 25000 46 2 83 40 46 -23
   hsync high
   vsync high
   bcast true
   rgba 5/11,6/5,5/0,0/0
endmode

Frame buffer device information:
   Name        : MATROX
   Address     : 0xc4000000
   Size        : 8384512
   Type        : PACKED PIXELS
   Visual      : TRUECOLOR
   XPanStep    : 8
   YPanStep    : 1
   YWrapStep   : 0
   LineLength  : 1600
   MMIO Address: 0xcfefc000
   MMIO Size   : 16384
   Accelerator : Matrox G400

-John

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 02:31:27 -0500, JC wrote
> So, the big day has come, and I finally take the "mysterious" MythTV 
> machine from the office and haul it downstairs into the family room, 
> and hook it up to the TV and cable box, fire it up, and say, "Tada!" 
> and start to show off all the great things this cool new box can do, 
> and justify why I've been locked in my office for the last few weeks 
> working on it, and I can just imagine the "ooo's and aahs" I'll hear,
>  and the wife says...
> 
> "Howcome the picture's so faded and blury and it looks like.. like 
> an old movie?"
> 
> Aargh!  Can't she appreciate the cool menus, and time-shifting, and the
> weather, and the picture gallery?  Nope... just complains about the picture
> quality and says, "can't you fix it?" and screws up her face.  <sigh>
> 
> So, I spent a couple hours playing with everything I could think of,
> including of course, the JKL/jkl keys to tweak the brightness and 
> contrast, etc. but that doesn't do much (although it helps a bit). 
>  Then I play around with the myth setup and capture settings, but I 
> already had those as high as they would go without stuttering.  Next,
>  I ran xawtv and realize that it really does look quite a bit better 
> than Myth does (and still not as bright or sharp as live TV, but 
> much closer).  I even played with the right/left arrow keys to "fine 
> tune" the stations and it turns out that it appears a bit sharper if 
> I change to about 4 or 5 right arrow key jumps but not a great deal -
>  maybe 5% or so.  I realize I can set those with mythfilldatabase -
> -manual.  If I had to describe it in a sentence, I'd say it looks 
> like a _copy_ of a VHS tape.  Does anyone have any ideas how to 
> "tweak it up" to improve the quality?  Are other G200/400 people seeing
> "great" quality?  Here's my setup:
> 
> CVS as of about a week ago, XMLTV as of today
> Mandrake 9.0 / 2.4.19 kernel
> PIII-800, 512mb, 80gb
> Matrox G200 TV with the latest BIOS
> Cable In, composite out to TV (S-video not avail on TV)
> SB 64 (ENS1371) sound card
> Hardware MJPEG
> 640x480, Decimation 2,2, 70% quality
> 32k audio either compressed 9 or non compressed (no diff)
> 
> fbset -i shows:
> mode "800x600-60"
>     # D: 40.000 MHz, H: 44.150 kHz, V: 59.582 Hz
>     geometry 800 600 800 600 16
>     timings 25000 50 40 23 40 16 78
>     hsync high
>     vsync high
>     rgba 5/11,6/5,5/0,0/0
> endmode
> 
> Frame buffer device information:
>     Name        : MATROX
>     Address     : 0xf4000000
>     Size        : 16773120
>     Type        : PACKED PIXELS
>     Visual      : TRUECOLOR
>     XPanStep    : 8
>     YPanStep    : 1
>     YWrapStep   : 0
>     LineLength  : 1600
>     MMIO Address: 0xfeafc000
>     MMIO Size   : 16384
>     Accelerator : Matrox G200 (Millennium, Mystique)
> 
> Ideas anyone?  Tools to use?
> 
> Thanks!
> JC
> 
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