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[relgin]

I have been using the ATI HDTV Wonder with ATI's latest drivers and software without any problems.
I installed Media Center 11.0.314 and it also runs fine.

What I did notice after switching back and forth between ATI DTV and MC11 HDTV the HDTV channels show up much clearer and crisper with the ATI software.

Is the MC11 using different encoders to display the HDTV channels. The MC11 looks good but the ATI DTV looks much better. I like the MC11 interface much better and it doesn't have Time-Shift running all the time like ATI does.

Any hints on this picture quality problem ?

Rich

[JimH]

Display resolution?

Try right clicking on the screen to get the options.

[relgin]

Jim,

Yes, I have been through all of the options but can't find any adjustment in MC11 that  will make the screen quality as good as the ATI DTV software.

It's not a Brightness, Contrast, or Color problem. The display is just more VIVID with the ATI software.

I'm just trying to find out what MC11 is doing different. It's almost like MC11 has reduced the quality to prevent picture and or sound drop outs. The ATI software does have more drop outs than the MC11 software.

Does anyone know if Media Center support people read and or reply on this Forum ?

Thanks,
Rich

[JimH]

We use the same DirectShow filters (ATI's) that ATI is using so it's hard to understand how it could be different.

[Yaobing]

Have you tried "Advanced Properties"? Maybe you can find an item there which would bring up ATI's property pages and tweak them.

[relgin]

When I go to Advanced Properties I get these items but they are ALL grayed out so I can't select any of them.

Audio Capture Filter...
Video Capture Filter...
Video Preview Pin...
Video Crossbar...
TV Tuner...
TV Audio...
Deinterlacing...

Is there a setting some place to enable these Advanced Properties ?

Or is there something wrong in my configuration to keep me from changing these settings ?

Thanks,
Rich

[Yaobing]

Sorry, I spoke incorrectly. The Advanced Properties page is for analog TV only. I can not think of anything else to adjust for the moment.

[relgin]

JimH & Yaobing,

I found an interesting twist to this quality problem within MC11. What I found was that while watching a live HDTV broadcast I started a "TV Recording" and after stopping the recording and viewing the recorded file the quality was equal to a live ATI DTV broadcast.

I tried this with both HDTV and just DTV channels. In both cases the recorded files where a much higher quality than the Live broadcast.

I hope this makes sense to you guy's and hope you can come up with a solution to fix the Live broadcast display quality.

I also have screen captures of both MC11 and ATI DTV during the baseball playoffs to show the quality difference. They are JPEG files but I can't find a way to attach them to this post.

If I can be of any more help please let me know. I want to be able to use Media Center for my
HDTV Wonder and the other MC11 features.

Thanks,
Rich

[Yaobing]

Interesting. Have you tried using time-shifting?

[relgin]

Yaobing,

I have not tried time-shifting yet but I did come across with a solution. I was looking at other settings in TV Configuration and found a tab "Digital TV" and under "Video Mixing Renderer" all three boxes were checked.
 x  Use YUV Mixing Mode
 x  Dynamic Decimation
 x  Dynamic Switch to BOB

I found that when I un-checked "Dynamic Decimation" the quality of live HDTV increased to the quality that the ATI DTV software has. I tried the other Mixing mode combinations and they didn't seem to change anthing.

I tried the Help with the link to microsoft to try a get an idea what "Dynamic Decimation" is but there does not seem to be a good discription of what this setting affects. Did a search on the WEB and most
links talked about CD Audio and not Video. If you know what "Dynamic Decimation" does I would like to know.

I would recomend that all users of the ATI HDTV Wonder check this setting. They might be very suprised
with the increased HDTV quality. Not sure what the default settings were.

  Looks like problem is solved.

Thanks,
Rich



   

[Yaobing]

Thanks for reporting back. Glad you found a solution.

Dynamic Decimation means dynamically reducing the output size of the video when the display resolution is too low. It saves CPU power by not trying to output high resolution video when display resolution is lower (actually by cutting the video resolution in half). It seems that your display resolution maybe slightly below the HDTV resolution. I guess tweaking you display resolution a bit higher may also solve this problem.

This option is on by default in order for the program to work on most systems, especially those with lower CPU power.

[relgin]

Yaobing,

Thanks for the description of "Dynamic Decimation". I use 19" LCD's which have a native resolution of 1280x1024. I don't know of any LCD that goes to the HDTV resolution of 1920x1080. Even the wide screen LCD's you can buy for a PC are only 1280x786. Thats the question with the ATI drivers. Can't find out what the resolution of the HDTV Wonder card is in HD mode.

You are right about killing the resolution. That explains why the the default display was so poor.
May I suggest that you guy's add your description about "Dynamic Decimation" to the Help documentation. I'm willing to bet that there are users of MC11 and the ATI HDTV Wonder not getting the best display performance.

Thanks,
Rich