*sigh* PVR-500 and BeyondTV 4 Problems

Was very excited about building this HTPC, and have heard great things about Hauppauge, but this just isn't going smoothly at all.

I have a PVR-500, I purchased the PVR-500 MCE pack from Snapstream.com , it came with BeyondTV 4.8, install the board, install the drivers, set it up yada yada, everything is functioning properly.


My problem is the poor picture quality! It's sub-par for my regular cable, I have read posts at Snapstream's Forums of people with this issue and I've downloaded the latest drivers from hauppauge, but still the quality is just not there.


I just don't know what to do, I really don't mind just sending this card back if you guys have a better idea as to what to use.

I just want good quality, and the ability to record.. is that asking for so much :[

I've heard about the 500 not having great video quality, as in the Analog to Digital capture isnt as good as thier more recent cards, but it souldnt be horrible.

What capture settings are you using? Too low would cause any capture card to look horrible.

I have the PVR-150 and beyond TV 4.8 and my quality is pretty meh too. Basic cable scaled up to a high resolution will NOT give you a better picture either (I run my TV feed on an 800x600 resolution and it's about the same as a picture tube set), the signal is just analog and bad, that's kind of all there is to it.

If you really want good picture quality you want HDMI / Digital cable or Satelite + a good TV (LCD / plasma or a TV capable of over a 1280x1024 resolution) and a hauppage card that can decode a digital signal (higher models like the 1800)

The bottom line is that standard co-ax cable will never look that good, especially after you see blueray quality =D

The thing is, I have Digital Cable (Motrolla 2244 box) , and a 42" 1080p LCD, the playback and recording are set to high, the graphics card is 8600GTS and i've got it connected via HDMI..

I just know I've got to be missing something here ! I read this forum (the HTPC one) and I just can't see you guys being so into this if the picture quality was only "meh" , as in worse then just my normal cablebox set up..

I just want it AS good


Should i ditch the card? any other card choices you guys like?

I've been using the PVR500 for years, it's doing a fine job. (not the best, but no where near bad) as far as I know, the later PVR500 has changed the onboard chip to a different company and PQ isn't as good as the older chip!

I would recommend you go to snapstream's forum for more technical help.

I dunno, but I think your expecting HD quality from your 500 just because you have digital cable(?). Although digital cable is capable of feeding you a HD signal for numerous channels, the 500 cannot decode any digital signals (the digital signal is just a MPEG2 encoded stream). Even if it supported HD signals, the best you would be able to manage is to decode only those channels which are in Clear QAM, no others.

If you know all this, and know that the best you'll ever get is SD, then I'll ask again, what is your recording profile set to? I use BTV as well, but the standard recording profiles were too poor quality for my taste. I upped the bitrate to the max supported by my card, and get the same PQ as if I fed the cable directly to my screen. No macroblocks at all, unless the original signal already had them.

Just tried playing around with it again, and double checked my btv settings,


For Recording Quality : Best , Filetype : Mpeg-2 (was the only option)

For Playback , the Mpeg-2 Decoder was set as : SnapStream Decoder/SP (something something..hehe)



If there are other quality relavent options I don't know where to find em ;/

TO make custom Recording Profiles, you'll need to use the BTV Web Admin. Its accessible from the BTV Icon near the clock in your Start Bar with a right click.

Right-click "Open Web Admin" -> Choose "Settings" > "Advanced Settings" -> "Video Qualities" -> Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Create New Quality"

On the new page:

"Name" = anything you want to call this new profile
"Type" = MPEG2 as that is the format outputted by the PVR500
"Dimensions (pixels)" = 720x480
Skip "Average Video Bitrate", instead Check Off Enable for "Variable Bitrate Encoding"
"Base Bitrate" = 9000
"Peak Bitrate" = 12000

Then Save New Quality.

When you go back to the BTV shell, you'll have that new profile you just created now show up as a option for recording settings. This profile will result in very large files (average 4GiB per hour), but because of the high bitrates being used, sould result in little to no macroblocks (none the average person would ever notice) and the quality sould be equal to whatever the capture card is capable of. Nothing can be done for a poor Analog to Digital conversion, but at least whatever the conversion outputs, wont become worse by using high compression rates, which can lead to even worse colors, blooming of colors, and macroblocking (especially in fast moving scenes or animations).

Speaking of blooming and poor PQ, ditch the Snapstream Video decoder, it's horrible. Reds bloom and bleed like crazy and the PQ is just plain terrible compared to any decent MPEG2 decompressor. If you have WinDVD installed, you can use that decoder for the video. I think even if you install the free time limited version, you can still use the playback codec long after the WinDVD app stops working. The best codec, imo, would be the Nvidia PureVideo codec. It has the best deinterlacing I've seen (full 60p frames recreated from 30fps interlaced video) as well as the best PQ. There are some free MPEG2 codec that would work as well, but more or less any other MPEG2 codec would be better then the built in BTV one.

Other then that, again, the PQ will be limited by the capture hardware, but at least these settings sould help improve the end result.

Thanks a ton Mpegger, that helped imensley, I upgraded to the PureVideo codec for the streaming tv, and did the bitrate changes you suggested and it looks extremely close to the normal feed.

Thanks so much for helpin a noob get it together, really appreciated.