artifacts in windows media centre

marc2003

marc2003

marc2003

Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2004
Posts
20,861
Location
England
i recently bought a usb tv tuner and i'm using windows media centre to watch live tv. at the moment i'm pretty happy with the overall picture quality but last night i was watching something with very bright colours and in some shots there were very obvious artifacts to be seen. i'm just wondering if this is a limitation of the tv card or if it's something that can improved by installing other codecs. as i use mpc-hc to play all other video, i've not installed anything else in years.

setup: pctv nanostick, windows 7 x64, onboard intel GPU (celeron G530)
 
You haven't said whether it's a HD tuner, or whether you're seeing artifacting on HD or SD material, or both - SD Freeview is going to be pretty rubbish whatever you do with it. You could try playing back some recorded TV in MPC-HC or VLC player (they'll both handle .wtv files, although not entirely smoothly in some cases) and see if the artifacts are still there.

External codecs aren't really an option with WMC, as it will ignore them in favour of the built-in Media Foundation framework - you can force it to use third-party DirectShow filters, but doing so will probably break live/recorded TV, which is presumably not what you want.

I doubt if the tuner itself is at fault; all it does (or should do) is dump the bitstream onto the HDD, and unless the picture is breaking up (which might indicate a signal strength issue), the problem's more likely to be somewhere in the playback chain.

Personally if I were you I'd switch to MediaPortal - it has many more options and capabilities, and all the signs are that WMC is pretty much abandonware these days in any case.
 
it's only standard freeview. i don't watch enough tv to warrant the cost of a HD tuner.

it was only the one program so far. it was 10oclock live on channel4. it was only on certain shots. when they were showing clips or wide angle studio shots it was fine. but when doing a close up, there are bright backgrounds behind the presenters head and this is where it all went to ****.

obviously i can't illustrate it now but i've just grabbed a screenshot off 4od to demonstrate the sort of picture that caused the issue

10.png


when watching this in WMC, the bright parts were blocky as hell. i'm pretty tolerant of most things but it really was so appalling that it prompted me to start this thread.

having said that, everything i've watched since has been fine. i guess nothing else has been quite so colourful. :p

i'll certainly take a look at media portal. all i want is basic tv functionality. i use mpc-hc to playback all my other video.
 
If it only happens occasionally and you don't watch much TV anyway, it's probably not really worth messing with. MediaPortal can be a bit of a faff to set up, although it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

Having said that, MediaPortal does have some useful advantages over WMC such as allowing you to record multiple streams using a single tuner, provided they're on the same mux (DVB-T) or transponder (DVB-S) - all the Freeview HD channels are currently on the same mux if you ever feel like upgrading. :)
 
i might not bother then. the only reason i got this is because my old freeview box was playing up. plus it means i can ditch my old CRT tv as well.

i'm so cheap i might not even bother getting a remote. i've got a (wired :D) 360 controller so i can control it from bed. good thing the cables are so long. :p
 
Also some channels have more bandwidth/higher bitrates than others, the lower, the poorer/blockier the picture is likely to become. Ch4 isn't great, the satellite channels such as CBS action are terrible. The BBC tends to be the best.
 
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