I have terrible picture quality, please help!

afrowoman

Hi everyone,
I'm using ProgDVB with a VisionPlus sat card and I'm getting terrrrrible picture quality - very annoying. When I use the software that came with the sat card the pic quality is fine, so I'm assuming everything is fine with my dish etc setup. Am I missing something? Are there codecs or any software I need to improve pic quality? Please bear in mind I'm new to all this and I need very simplified laymen's explanations . Thanks in advance for any help!

prof

Hi afrowoman
Although not familiar with the visionplus, it would help to know what is wrong with the picture. Is it breaking up, or lots of lines and looks jagged, if the latter it could possibly be a codec problem.

afrowoman

Thanks for your reply Prof, the picture is breaking up into little squares sort of thing, and the audio is choppy - I don't quite know how to describe it. Everything sort of "cuts up". Sometimes the audio is out of sync with the picture. If I do need codecs, which do I need? Thanks very much indeed...

prof

The only prob I had with codecs caused lines and jagged edges.
You could try altering the time shift buffer.
Go into settings>audiovideo>timeshiftbuffer and increase memory size.

gameboy

This looks like a compression problem - when pictures are compressed using mpeg they are broken into ever smaller squares.

The card is not decoding fast enough, increase the memory and see if it makes a difference.

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

afrowoman

Hi guys, thanks again for the responses. What do you mean by increasing memory? I tried changing the timeshift buffer values but there was no change in picture quality...another thing: under audio/video I can't change the values for "direct draw" it's grey and unclickable - is that normal? This is so exasperating

gameboy

I am sure someone will answer this ASAP - sorry i am a Mac user.

Love to learn more about PCs and I have learned a lot here - they are a great bunch and I'm sure someone else will jump in and help.

Hope it all works out for you.

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

BGonaSTICK

Try some or all of these tips :-

http://www.satellites.co.uk/php-bin/...0&postcount=28

3aFaReet

I've the same card,,, and the same problem with ProgDVB...
what I noticed that,, ProgDVB requires lots of processing power.
I've P IV 1.6 GHz but i have the same problem if I try to watch a channel and work with some thing else like browsing a websie..

I recommend for you to use MyTheatre which is good enough to resolve all these problems

BGonaSTICK

Yes, I think MyTheatre V2.76 is better and more stable, but I've had ProgDVB working fine on various boxes, including a PIII 800 using the tuning tips above.

STICK

kalamar

Sounds like your computer is having problems handling the load,do you have a separate video card or is it built into the MOBO?

afrowoman

Thanks again everyone. I tried all the tips you gave me BgonaSTICK, and it does seem a bit better, so thanks for that I guess I'm going to have to give My Theatre a go. My video card is seperate Kalamar. Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your feedback.

BGonaSTICK

Good. Don't forget to up the priority of MyTheatre if you switch over, and make sure you only use V2.76. Later versions are rubbish.

afrowoman

Thanks again BGonaSTICK! Oops I downloaded MT 3.20 - I'll get the version you recommend and give it a try. Will let you know how it goes

s*t*a*r*m*a*n

Hi afrowoman
the directdraw in progdvb never worked for me either, i spent months trying to figure out how to boost the brightness in the picture and it is in file/property then choose the codec you are using probably the elecard mpeg 2 one and click it then go to settings tab and there you will find the brightness level adjuster, just adjust it for brightness then click apply to save settings. should give a better picture if you decide to go back to using it.
It should run ok on free tv channels on a pentium 3 800 mhz upwards i think, any less ythan this and you MAY get blocky picture breakup caused by the processor bottleneck which means it is not processing the picture information fast enough and so the picture is broken as happens with progdvb if it lacks system resources. Particularly bad if watching ppv channels as it requires more system resources, some more ram can sometimes help but the processor speed seems to be more important with this software as regards the skystar 2 card anyway.

afrowoman

hi starman what you're saying makes a lot of sense, it *does* work better with the FTA channels.. the strange thing is the original software that came with my satellite card - VisionPlus, works fine with no deterioration in picture quality. Anyway I've given up on ProgDVB and I'm going to try My Theatre. Will let everyone know how it all goes. Thanks very much indeed for your imput!

afrowoman

Ok- here's the latest update - My Theatre verion 2.76 crashes on start up - lots of error msgs - version 3.20 didn't but then it's not free. Oh well, back to square one it is for me...

BGonaSTICK

You must get rid of all traces of the later version before you install V2.76. Especially the MyTheatre directory under "Program Files".

afrowoman

Hi BG - I uninstalled everything before installing it. The ironic thing is the My Theatre version 3.20 picture quality is excellent (I installed and uninstalled both versions many times), how exhasperating is that?! I can now honestly say I do not like ProgDVB, that I love My Theatre! Picture quality is excellent! Now all I need is the $40 and a cc to register it hehe! Somehow I feel I'm back in *nix land - everytime you fix one problem you find yourself face to face with another *sigh*. Thanks all for helping

BGonaSTICK

I'll be interested to see how it behaves itself. I don't know anybody that didn't dump that version and go back to V2.76.

Most folks find that it crashes and/or screws up regularly, but I don't have any personal experience. Just that of helping a bunch of folks having probs.

I found that the uninstall didn't work properly (with 2.76 at least) and I had to delete folders manually. I also found that if you then re-installed, it would NOT overwrite the existing files that it should have deleted when you uninstalled!

Anyway, let us know how you get on with it. All feedback is usefull.

Good luck.

kalamar

Ahhhhmen 2.76 lives!
By the way RitzDVB is working nice now too.

BGonaSTICK

HALLELUJAH, praise the Lord!

Can I get a witness?!?!?!



"By the way RitzDVB is working nice now too"

What version be that brother?

afrowoman

Hi again everyone. My Theatre is working like a charm however I couldn't get verion 2.76 to work, it just kept crashing on start up - I deleted everything before instlaling it yet it continued to crash. Version 3.19 is working very well, however, some channels are not working such as XXL and I tried using Satdude's frequencies to watch FreeTV but it wouldn't work. I think I don't know how to get s2emu working - because when I open it, it's blank with no entries. I used MD wrapper. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

BGonaSTICK

I posted a really simple blow-by-blow account here a few days ago. Have a search.

afrowoman

Hi again BG I searched all your posts but didn't find anything related to installing plugins for MT? My plugins worked fine in PrgoDVB - this is extremely frustrating. I made an MD directory and basically put everything everywhere - sort of trial and error thingie. MT is "seeing" Yankse and Fenrir as plugins but s2emu isn't working I think coz when I open MD wrapper it's blank - no entries. I feel stupid and I feel I've already taken too much of your time - sorry