[Harry Cadders]

Please can someone help me. Mediaportal is great, I love everything about it... except that when you compare the TV picture next to JRiver, Mediaportal is awful. I have been trailing JRiver for 3 weeks and in my opinion it doesn't touch mediaportal for skins, fan art or useability but the quality of tv on JRiver is awesome. I can put up with Mediaportal resizing itself on restart to two thirds of the size it should be (apparently this is windows issue when using a hdmi connection through an amp) or hanging on restart occasionally but the fact that the Jriver tv picture is sooo much better (and I haven't done anything to it - its the out of the box settings, I haven't even had to tinker). So how do i recreate the crisp and bright picture I get from Jriver on Mediaportal. Or how do I get the fan art, tv logos and neat layout I get from Mediaportal on Jriver?

[andy1249]

Some mediaplayer front ends ( Plex , XBMC etc. ) have pretty good "out of the box settings" for upscaling and picture accuracy, some dont.

Mediaplayer does not , you have to set all that up yourself. See this for a basic guide linked at the bottom.

Upscaling SD video, but NOT HD video? | MediaPortal Forum

Be warned , its one hell of a lot of tinkering and you should expect to spend days if not weeks at it. Put the time in however , and the results are pretty damned good.

As well as the scaling , you should do some kind of calibration , without pro gear the best you can hope for is to use some kind of set up disc , such as Avia or Spears and Muncil.

[jameson_uk]

Is the issue that TV looks washed out and dull?
If so the chances are this is a colour space issue (0-255 vs 16-235).
You can play with codecs / filters to address some of these issues.

Or is the actual pin-sharpness of the picture?

[Trollslayer]

I looked at JRiver before.
For a commercial package the support relies on users producing a Twiki.

[WheresMyArtisan]

When I tried JRiver it wasn't "awesome". It didn't work at all, despite their attempts (couldn't find my Hauppauge tuner, works fine with MC7). It looks pretty amateurish to me.

Get some proper HTPC software, just set it up right!

Have you got Media Center? That works great without any messing, if you want to get a third picture quality comparison.

Do JRiver pay people to say it's "awesome" on this forum?

[robbo100]

It is our bi-annual "JRiver is better than NASA" thread!

[spyder viewer]

The OP has clearly asked for MP support here so please stay on thread. Do not let this slide into a kick JRiver campaign.

[jameson_uk]

It would not surprise me if the PQ was much better in JRiver. I have only ever tried the music side of it and that has always been built for quality rather than usability. This is possibly using madVR as a renderer and other tweaks for PQ.

MP is designed for a fairly low common denominator (old XP systems) but from the JRiver Wiki I can see

Video

MC uses Red October, JRiver's DirectShow management system to automatically download, install and configure the DirectShow filters you need. Under Tools/Options/Video, choose Red October Standard. Once you're sure that works well, you can try Red October HQ. ROHQ requires a fairly powerful PC.

ROHQ sounds like it might be applying upscaling, de-interlacing, madVR ......

(indeed ....

Red October Standard -- MC16 automatically downloads, installs, and configures known good versions of LAV Splitter, and ffdshow. We build the graph and don't allow anything else. This results in video playback that just works.
Red October HQ -- Same as above, but adding madVR as the renderer. This is more processor intensive, so it only works well on pretty good CPU's -- i5 or above.

LAV and FFDShow are fine inside MP so I would experiment there.

madVR however is not madVR does handle some of the colour space issues that using EVR you need to intervene with as well as being built for total quality.

Advice would be to set audio and video codecs to LAV and add FFDShow as post-processing filter as starting point.

After that I would look at the colourspace settings in LAV, FFDShow and GPU control panel

[Harry Cadders]

Thanks for your support. As a matter of note I have also tried WMC but one day I can watch a channel the next is says no signal. There is no doubt that MP is easy to use and looks great but I as I primarily watch TV I wish the PQ was better. Like everyone on here I have spent lots of time getting MP to do what I want, Chanel logos, online vids, ripped my DVD's and blu rays and nothing comes close for functionality or usability. Robbo, I am not knocking MP and often refer to your excellent user guide. It is well written and has gotten me out of a hole a couple of times.

I will have a look at colour space but my question is about pin sharp quality. MP looks like I am watching TV online and JRiver looks like I am watching it through my old Humax freesat box which for HD was "awesome".

I will also have a look at Media Center, thanks for the tip.

[Harry Cadders]

Opps , just re read the thread from Wheresmyartisan. Yes, I have tried media center but I have similar problems with my tuner on mediacenter as you have with Jriver. The channel is there then it isn't, the tuner is there then it isn't. Its a TBS 6981 tuner. When it worked PQ was better than MP but even I was getting fustrated with the tuner problems.

[robbo100]

Originally Posted by Harry Cadders

Robbo, I am not knocking MP and often refer to your excellent user guide. It is well written and has gotten me out of a hole a couple of times.

Don't worry mate. I was just joking, It brought back old memories of a very strange thread about a year ago which prompted the generation of the Software Comparison Sticky thread.

I can send you my FFDShow setting when I get home. I haven't posted then yet because I wanted to make sure they were how I like them before I posted them (and I want to experiment with Jameson's LAV with FFDShow post processing suggestion (since I don't use LAV at the moment, just directly use FFDShow).

Robbo

[djcla]

did not realise you could do post processing on the TV side of things? I had my FFDShow setup as per Tutorial ffdshow Video - Profiles / Preset settings - HomeCinema-HD along time ago but i dont bother with FFDshow these days. I may revisit and see how i can integrate with Lav.

[Harry Cadders]

Thanks, much appreciated

[robbo100]

Originally Posted by djcla

did not realise you could do post processing on the TV side of things? I had my FFDShow setup as per Tutorial ffdshow Video - Profiles / Preset settings - HomeCinema-HD along time ago but i dont bother with FFDshow these days. I may revisit and see how i can integrate with Lav.

TV Postprocessing - MediaPortal Wiki

Just find FFDShow video decoder from the list at the bottom and then double click on it (I think) to add it to the top window. You then need to make sure you have set your upscaling settings within the FFDShow video filter config GUI.

Robbo

[richardb70]

Originally Posted by robbo100

I can send you my FFDShow setting when I get home. I haven't posted then yet because I wanted to make sure they were how I like them before I posted them (and I want to experiment with Jameson's LAV with FFDShow post processing suggestion (since I don't use LAV at the moment, just directly use FFDShow).

I'd be interested in this too. Primary use of MePo is HD video from MKVs (which look great), but I have to agree that SD Freeview doesn't look very impressive. I'm using the LAV Filters, my GPU is a GT440, and my CPU is a lowly Sandybridge Celeron G530 so I'm not expecting miracles obviously!

I tried the ffdshow post processing on the wiki and ended up with my TV picture in a smaller window. Bringing up the OSD showed ffdshow was being used, but if I channel hopped things went back to normal and ffdshow wasn't mentioned again.

[WheresMyArtisan]

Right, I've got my anti-JRiver spewing out of the way now!

If you're having problems with reception then to me it sounds like a more fundamental issue than one software app vs another.

It sounds like JRiver may (possibly) be better at recovering a dodgy, error-filled signal than MP. My recommendation would be (regardless of software) to not have a dodgy signal!

What type of aerial are you using, and how ancient is it and the cabling?

EDIT: Just noticed you're using satellite. In that case get your dish and/or cable renewed or aligned. If the card itself is vanishing/appearing then you've got much, much more fundamental issues still.

In my opinion the JRiver vs MP thing is a red herring - you've got bigger issues to solve before you can compare software.

[MrRiver]

Originally Posted by WheresMyArtisan

Right, I've got my anti-JRiver spewing out of the way now!

If you're having problems with reception then to me it sounds like a more fundamental issue than one software app vs another.

It sounds like JRiver may (possibly) be better at recovering a dodgy, error-filled signal than MP. My recommendation would be (regardless of software) to not have a dodgy signal!

The difference wouldn't be related to the signal. JRiver Media Center won't enhance it in any way. It is the renderer, if Harry is using Red October HQ. ROHQ uses madVR.

[Harry Cadders]

thanks for everyones comments on this. My sat signal is strong, the card is always visible to MP and JRiver if not to MP. The cabling is sound too. I have been tinkering with some settings and will have another go tonight. I can't seem to get away from "to me" mp looks like watching tv online ( a little soft and picture panning looks a little smeared) while JRiver looks like watching tv from HD a freesat set top box.

[WheresMyArtisan]

I only use Media Center, not MP or Jriver. But I can say that mine looks better than any set top box I've ever seen, on both SD and HD. This uses the AMD/ATI codec together with the GPU's decoding. No juddering, everything smooth, and no smears on panning (other than an amount that is inevitable with a compressed source).

The only customising I've done is to switch off all the processing - I've never seen any sharpening, noise reduction, colour enhancement etc that actually improves a picture. If the source is good then in my (strong) opinion it's best left un-messed with.

I still think that if your tuner won't work in Media Center then you've got other problems - either with the signal or the tuner card itself. Personally I'd find out what's stopping it working in MC before going further, just as a good baseline test.