Few questions from a newbie?

[jimk]

I have a new HTPC with Core2Duo e6420, Asus P5B deluxe/Wifi-ap, 2gb generic kingston ram, club3d nvidia 7900gs and samsung t166. I use Technotrend budget C-1500.

As codec I have ffdshow and haali splitter and also have cyberlink powerdvd ultra installed. My tv (sony kdl-32V2000 functions as the screen @ 1360x768 over vga)

 

 

Just got everything together and it seems to be working ok, but I have a few minor problems.

 

1. I get a minor studder/stop every 20-60 sec. Its as if the tv picture stop and then starts again. What can be the cause of this?

2. In the upper left edge of the screen there is 50-60% percent of the time a small few pixel wide white line that runs about 1/3 of the lenght of the upper edge. This is when i'm watching tv on fullscreen.

3. TV on fullscreen seems to have minor difficulties with the aspect ratios. No matter what I set it (auto, 16/9, none) it most of the time streches it to cover the whole screen, but sometimes it out of the blue switches to 4/3 (and leaves me with broad black edges). Is there any way to force it to use the whole width of the screen all the time?

 

Also, what would you guys recommend as a good combination of codecs (and the DVBViewer settings to with them) for watching tv, avis (xvid/divx), dvds plus some matroska hd-material?

 

Thanks for any help

[Moses]

1. that can have maaany origins... I would first try if cyberlink does a better job as decoder.

2. is this only in fullscreen or can you see that line if you switch to window mode? Maybe resize the window a bit... You could try to zoom it out, just right click onto the screen and select "Zoom..." (not View->Zoom) and stretch the image a little.

3. If you select "none" as AR DVBViewer will always stretch the whole image to the whole screen (or window). So if you get some black bars, they most certainly are part of the image the tv station is sending you! At the moment the only way to get rid of them is to use the "Zoom..." Feature from no.2 again. You can define up to 4 presets and define a button that toggles between them or select them directly!

 

codecs:

For TV I would recomend Cyberlink for video and audio or AC3 Filter for audio, but that has a lot of parameters... if cyberlink audio decoder works good for you, I would use it. For xvid/divx you should use the original xvid and divx codecs... DVD is the same as TV (basically), so use the same codecs.

[jimk]

1. that can have maaany origins... I would first try if cyberlink does a better job as decoder.

2. is this only in fullscreen or can you see that line if you switch to window mode? Maybe resize the window a bit... You could try to zoom it out, just right click onto the screen and select "Zoom..." (not View->Zoom) and stretch the image a little.

3. If you select "none" as AR DVBViewer will always stretch the whole image to the whole screen (or window). So if you get some black bars, they most certainly are part of the image the tv station is sending you! At the moment the only way to get rid of them is to use the "Zoom..." Feature from no.2 again. You can define up to 4 presets and define a button that toggles between them or select them directly!

 

codecs:

For TV I would recomend Cyberlink for video and audio or AC3 Filter for audio, but that has a lot of parameters... if cyberlink audio decoder works good for you, I would use it. For xvid/divx you should use the original xvid and divx codecs... DVD is the same as TV (basically), so use the same codecs.

 

1. Cyberlink codec did not help. But I also noticed the problem with radio. It does the same thing when listening to radio that is transmitted over cable. It doesn't seem to be using a lot of processor or memory, is the c-1500 to fault?

 

2. I did some experiments and I get the line in window mode too. It also moves with the picture when I zoom. I dont get it with normal television reception nor did I get it with media portal (when I tried it).

 

3. The aspect ratio problem went away. I think it had something to do with using the vmr9, with overlay mix its ok.

[Klaus_1250]

2: Do you get the "White Line" with all tv-stations? Is it 100% white or dotted in some way? It sounds like VBI-data (and is in the right place for it).

 

(See http://www.DVBViewer.info/forum/index.php?...ost&id=7598 for an single line example of VBI-data)

Edited June 14, 2007 by Klaus_1250

[jimk]

2: Do you get the "White Line" with all tv-stations? Is it 100% white or dotted in some way? It sounds like VBI-data (and is in the right place for it).

 

(See http://www.DVBViewer.info/forum/index.php?...ost&id=7598 for an single line example of VBI-data)

 

It looks exactly like that and I think it get it with almost all tv-stations. Is there anything that can be done or do I just have to live with it (or better can I utilize the data somehow)?

Edited June 14, 2007 by jimk

[Klaus_1250]

The data is not necessary. Videotext/teletext and Subtitles are usually send in the digital stream and other things that may be in there (WSS) are not necessary either. I was told it is being sent for compatibility reasons on older equipment and to allow analogue providers to use the digital streams.

 

Utilizing is not likely to give you anything extra. Certain tv software the option to remove the offending line and I posted a feature request for it (e.g. removing the top-line with the VBI-data), but it is not likely to be included :-(

 

See: http://www.DVBViewer.info/forum/index.php?showtopic=15145

Edited June 14, 2007 by Klaus_1250

[Moses]

just use the zoom sliders and stretch the image, till you can't see the line!

It's just what your normal reciever and your TV are doing! You won't see the whole image on any TV/reciever combination, only with PC...

 

Just switch arround your channels... I have many many channels with black bars arround the whole image. They are not that nasty, but the exists, too and are part of the image.

 

No1:

Keep a look at View->Filter->DVB Source ... what does the discontinueties counter say? If it counts up, DVBViewer get's broken Data.. that could be fault of the dvb-c card or of cables or so...

Edited June 14, 2007 by Moses

[Klaus_1250]

But doesn't that distort the picture? And how do you handle both 4:3 and 16:9 broadcasts with that? I tried to use the position sliders to see if I could nudge the line out of the picture, but it doesn't work on 16:9 broadcasts. And it looks rather odd.

 

IMHO the best option is to just cut away the top line of the image. Easy for users and it doubt it is difficult to implement (some DVB-software already does, and lots of analogue tv software too).

[Moses]

one or two lines of pixels... sure it's a bit of a distortion, but if you tell me that you see that, I won't believe you!

just try stretching...

 

and if it's not so dificult: implement it..

DVBViewer doesn't touch the image itself... so it would be dificult to implement!

 

One could try to add some post processing filters that have such an option... but I don't know if there are some... you could try ffdshow.

Edited June 14, 2007 by Moses

[jimk]

one or two lines of pixels... sure it's a bit of a distortion, but if you tell me that you see that, I won't believe you!

just try stretching...

 

and if it's not so dificult: implement it..

DVBViewer doesn't touch the image itself... so it would be dificult to implement!

 

One could try to add some post processing filters that have such an option... but I don't know if there are some... you could try ffdshow.

 

I'll try ffdshow and see if that helps. I will also send a request to technotrend and see if I could get them to implement this in the driver (doubtful, can it even be done there?).

 

I also think that I got rid of the studdering (I think, I only had time to test for a few mins). Seems that my motherboard had two kinds of SATA ports and by connnecting to different one it seems to have gone away (also got rid of an annoying message when starting up, it claimed I dont have any master hdd, even though the jumper was in place). Go me, wont change my career to building computers

 

ps. Is DVBViewer done with .net?

[Moses]

No, DVBViewer is done in delphi.

[aeris]

White lines: Zooming a widescreen picture is an option only if you have a widescreen TV/monitor. If it's 4:3, most of the picture is lost.

If you don't mind going back to an old version of DVBViewer, you could do what I do: edit myClock.xml (something like this), make a black png image and then enable the clock).

 

Stuttering: I've had that a couple of times with some Finnish channels. No hardware or software changes, it just comes and goes. Could be the reception...