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I just set this up but I'm terribly surprised at how awful the video quality is and that I can't seem to get the picture size to fill the screen. Could I possibly be missing something? This picture quality is just too low res to even consider getting rid of my stb.
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2014-02-27, 00:16
(This post was last modified: 2014-02-27, 00:29 by scarecrow420.)
Im assuming you are on a 1080i broadcast so you need to set the interlacing setting in XBMC
While watching a channel, bring up the OSD (press OK on your remote) then go to the video settings (film reel icon). At the top change De-interlace Video to "Auto" and De-interlace Method to "Auto Select" then go to the bottom of the list and choose "Set as default for all videos". That should take care of your picture quality issue.
Not sure what you mean by picture size to fill the screen though? Can you post a screenshot? Do you just mean that you have the live content showing in that smaller window to the top right and still have the channel list frame down the left? There is a FullScreen button you can hit in XBMC (backslash is the keyboard command for it) that you can use, but also in the Settings -> LiveTV -> Playback area is a setting called "start playback minimised" which if you turn that off will mean once you select a channel it automatically goes full screen.
If you are referring to something more general eg that you cant get XBMC application itself to correctly fill your TV screen (eg overscan problems etc) then make sure your TV is set to 1:1 pixel mapping mode (typically called "Just Scan" or "PC" mode etc... sometimes only available on designated HDMI inputs).
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Awesome! I'll give that a try a little later. The picture not filling the screen is from WMC. When setting it up, it seems to do a 16x9 square in the center of the screen, but with no options to resize it.
As far as picture quality, should I be able to get something similar to what I would see on my Motorola STB?
My build is an Intel i3 3225 hd4000 graphics and 8 gigs of ram. Xbmc is on an ssd as well.
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Well i cant speak for your motorola box but i think once you set the de-interlacing settings in XBMC you wont have an issue with the picture quality
Im still confused what you are talking about regarding the picture not filling the screen. When you say it's WMC what do you mean by that? Windows Media Center is weird but not windows desktop or XBMC? Or is it all video output from the HTPC is doing this? Post a screenshot maybe?
You should just be able to set windows (and XBMC) to fullscreen 1920x1080 resolution (assuming your screen is 1080p of course) and then enable 1:1 pixel mapping mode (often called Just Scan) on your TV and you shouldnt have any weird problems or overscan etc. What TV model is it?
My setups are quite similar to yours, socket 1155 boards with sandy bridge pentiums (G620 etc) 4GB RAM and SSD drive
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JazJon
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I didn't realize de-interlacing was off by default thanks for the tip.
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The display is a Samsung un60f7100 and video is passed through an Onkyo TSX-R607.
All my videos (Mkv, avi) play perfectly in the native Xbmc player but live TV, through Wmc (Windows media center) are still awful.
With all video settings set to auto, it's still grainy and like the screen is zoomed out. I get black bars on all sides. I won't be able to post a screen shot until this weekend. But it seems to be more of a WMC problem.
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when you say WMC do you mean the WMC application (windows media center) or do you mean XBMC using the pvr.wmc PVR AddOn to talk to our ServerWMC backend (which then uses the WMC database/services to do it's job) ?
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By WMC I mean Windows media center, the app.
I'm running win7 with a Ceton infinitv4 tuner with Verizon fios.
Everything I play that is streamed from my NAS is fine, but with the same settings on live TV it's shoddy.
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this is an XBMC forum so Im getting confused by the references to WMC. The only place WMC has here, is as a recording/tuning source, for our addon to provide liveTV to XBMC. Is XBMC working for you? If so, you should really seek help in a more general place (or possibly a WMC forum rather than XBMC one)
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I appreciate the help but we unsure if this was something with the per add on or with Windows media center itself. At this point I'm pretty sure it's not Xbmc, since that runs flawlessly for me.
I'll give thegreenbutton.tv a shot.
Thanks again.
