[mythtv-users] Bitrate/quality on PVR-150

[Nick Bright]

Scott Traurig wrote:
>>> I have done extensive testing of PVR-150 et al settings in the
>>> interests 
>>> of
>>> better quality. I can confidently say that you should run it at 6MBPS
>>> avg/8MBPS peak for 720x480 capture. Any less and motion artifact
>>> gets bad. 
>>> Any more and no improvement can be noted. The best way to test this
>>> is to 
>>> watch the crawl line on CNN et al followed by some sports like
>>> basketball. 
>>>
>>> Quite frankly encoder quality for Myth sucks compared to Tivo or STB
>>> DVR 
>>> appliances. It is Myth's biggest weakness (after the fact that mere
>>> mortals
>>> need not try to set it up!) Decoder quality is awesome as anyone can
>>> see 
>>> from playing DVDs, but the PVR series of tuners and encoders are
>>> terrible. 
>>> It's bad with straight video in from a STB (composite or s-video) and
>>> worse
>>> with the tuner. You might not notice if you've never owned a
>>> commercial 
>>> DVR
>>> or DVD recorder but I have and the difference is dramatic.
>>>
>>> Do we have any better choices for tuner/encoders yet?
>> I'd recommend DVB-T or DVB-S - across a room you won't see the
>> difference 
>> between them and a DVD.
> 
> My source is U.S. cable so not an option.
> 
>>> Quite frankly encoder quality for Myth sucks compared to Tivo or STB
>>> DVR 
>>> appliances. It is Myth's biggest weakness (after the fact that mere
>>> mortals 
>>> need not try to set it up!)
>> Is this due to the state of Free Software not being able to implement
>> patented or otherwise encumbered algorithms or due to the consumer
>> grade hardware we have access to?
> 
> It's a consumer grade hardware problem.

I presume by that what you mean is that it's difficult to implement 
software on consumer grade hardware that is going to match the quality 
and performance of custom engineered ASIC's that are on devices like a 
TiVo or a commercial STB.

This is of course a completely reasonable statement, in my opinion.

  - Nick

> 
>>> Do we have any better choices for tuner/encoders yet?
>> How does Myth do with processing content from an HDMI port?
> 
> Not sure!
> 
> Scott
> 
> 
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