Analog ghosting

I'm new to building my HTPC here the last couple of months. It started with building a video box to hold my
DVD collection as MPEG4 and turned into adding a tuner card recently for a better DVR experience than I was
getting from my local cable company. My htpc specs are listed below
Sempron 2.1GHz
2GB Ram
1 Terabyte HDD space (2x 500gb hdd's and a 40gb hdd for OS install)
LiteOn DL DVD burner
Vista w/MCE
Radeon HD2400 (DVI to HDMI)
Avermedia M780 combo card (ATSC/NTSC)
LG 32" LCD HDTV 720p
I get great results with OTA HD and digital channels, but the analog channels we get from our cable provider look
like theres to much noise reduction and ghosting. I did reduce the noise reduction issue by making sure it was
disabled on my tv. The problem I can't figure out is the ghosting on analog statons, the digital/HD stations look
beautiful. If anyone has any experience with this card or had advice on how I can fine tune/eliminate this please
help me.
Also would I get better results with SageTV or GBPVR with this card or is MCE fine enough?
Thanks

Did you get the ghosting when the TV was connected directly to the cable?
It is a common problem with analog signals being fed into a HD TV.
I have a 50" Sony HD TV that does the ghosting thing with normal Dish network channels and they are supposedly a full digital signal.
HD signals do show excellent though.

Nope, no problem what so ever. Watching older shows that i recorded years ago with an ATI AIW card show no signs of ghosting, just the analog signal being fed into the avermedia card. I even tried plugging the analog signal into the tv directly and there is no sign of ghosting there. I'm assuming that the problem is in the card or software.

Most likely its a deinterlacing issue. The software your using may be doing a simple Blend deinterlacing instead of Bob or Weave. Blend does exactly what it says, it blends the odd and even frame of a interlaced signal together, and depending on the content, it may appear as if you having ghosting.

Solutions to that problem is to configure the codec your using to deinterlace the signal differently, or use a different codec with better deinterlacing/options that allow you to fix that.

I'm using the standard Microsoft codec that comes with media center. Any
suggestions on better ones I should use? I did install the avermedia center and
while there is no new codec being used the image quality seems improved,
although I wouldn't say its a permanent solution. This morning I started up the
pc and no tuner was found, I fired up avermedia, and the picture looked fine,
opened MCE and the ghosting was back. Then I went back to avermedia and it
was good, then back to MCE and it was good???

have you tried DScaler? http://www.dscaler.org/about.htm

I do notice that stations with higher noise levels (requiring more noise filtering)
suffer more from the ghosting. Is there a way to reduce the noise reduction?
Besides on those channels they look to platic-like.

Ahhhhh, THAT type of ghosting. That type of ghosting you speak of is caused by too much Noise Filtering. Noise Filtering basically works by comparing the next frame to the current frame, and seeing the differences in the pixels. Too much of a difference, as in going over the threshold, and the filter will fade to that difference between that frame and the next. The stronger the noise filtering, the longer the duration of the fade. Hence, the ghosting you see, especially in very noisy pictures, and very noticeable in animations.

Only way to get rid of that type of ghosting is to turn the filtering down to a level that its not noticeable, or just turn it off completely. I know my video card has built in noise filtering, and various codec may have noise filters as well. Dunno the exact setup you have, so cant say what to do, other then play around with the noise filtering till you find a setting you like. Me, I normally leave it very low/off. I hate ghosting more then I hate the screen noise.

I'm not sure where to play with that in my system (total htpc newb).
Avermedia only installed the driver and the only additional software I
found available was the Media Center software. I tried looking in there
and found no information on configuring the card like that.
I may try to google around and find an answer, but if anyone has any good advice please feel free to pass it on.

AND THE ANSWER IS!!!
My Radeon 2400 was the culprit. I installed the Catalyst Control Center and disabled noise reduction in the AVIVO section.