Why does 720 X 480 look so pixelated? Is there a better way to capture?

I just bought an ATI AIW 9600 Pro so I could capture some programs and set up a PVR. I have noticed on my 65" TV some significant pixelation. I can see the horizonal resolution. I have been told that 720 X 480 is the same as the resolution coming from a commercfially made DVD, but I can notice a significant difference in picture quality. Does anyone know why this is? Does anyone have any suggestion for a better way of capturing video? Any suggestions would be welcomed and appreciated.
Mario

 

Well Pixelation Is usually due to a few things one is Crappy Encodeing or too Low of a Bitrate used to compress the said File, The other is When resizeing a Low Resolution to a High Resolution Like when Viewing Crappilly encoded Shows on a 65in TV set...My Brother has a HDTV Set and all of the non HD TV chanells Look a bit Pixeleated because the TV Transmition is being resized by over 400% to View on HDTV set and even Big screen Non-HD TV"s because the Resolution is Being spread over a Larger area, Even Commercial DVD"s Don"t look as good on his TV as they do on my 36in TV....
You Might Get Better Quality if you used a Better Capture Program Like "WinDVR 3.0" and used a High Bitrate to Capture to..If you have a LOT of Drive Space you can Capture to a Low compression AVI format (Like the ATI YV12 Codec) and then use a High Quality Mpeg encoder to Compress the File to Mpeg2 for DVD, that would Produce the Best Quality but is also more Complex and Time consumeing...well good Luck

 

Thanks Minion, I will experiment with your suggestions. I am at the point of returning this card (ati AIW 9600 pro) and going to the sony dvdr for capturing, but would rather not. ATI's capturing is flawed. The audio and video go out of synch and/or crashes my system:
(Atholon XP 2200 on a MSI KT6V-LSR with 512 MB of 400 mhz memory (pc 2600?) with a WD 40 gig AA series HDD for the main operating saystem and a WD120BB for capturing. I am using windows 2000)
It is just too unreliable. I am going to get a 160G serial ata drive and give that a shot to see if it improves the performance, and maybe a XP2600 with the L2 Chache. Do you think that should be enough to capture uncompressed avi? What capturing sofware is the best? Hoping keep my computer capturing system dream alive. Also what program is the best to create dvds that play on commercial players?
Thanks,
Mario

 

Hi ,Uncompressed AVI would Give the best quality and there are Lots of Freeware Capture Programs that can capture to Uncompressed AVI(Virtual-Dub ,Virtual-VCR, IU_VCR), you can even use the MMC software that comes with ATI Capture Cards, Actually the ATI software installs a Few Low Compression AVI Codecs that will Produce Very good Quality and give a slightly Smaller File Size than Uncompressed AVI, I think they are Called something like "ATI YV12, ATI YUY2" or you can use the Only Lossless Codec available to capture AVI which is HuffYUV, it will Produce Quality the same as Uncompressed but with half the File size....
Sync Problems with captured Files is usually due to the Fact that your Capture Card and your Sound card both Capture useing different Time Clocks, so over a period of time your Audio and Video will slowly Drift apart and there isn"t much you can do about it accept to get a Sound Card that has a More stable Time Clock or to use a Capture software that can compensate for this Time Lag ,One program that properly Compensates for Time Drift is "Intervideo WinDVR 3.0", It captures Directly to Mpeg2 but you need a Very fast PC to capture with WinDVR at Full DVD Resolution and your CPU is Just on the Line between Fast enough and not fast enough.....
One thing that would Solve your Problems with Quality and Audio/Video sync would be to get a High Quality Analoge/Digital Converter device like the "Canopus ACEDVio" or the "Canopus ADVC-100"...These are Probably the Highest Quality capture devices you can get For under $1000 and they have a Locked audio Feature that Locks the audio and Video Streams together at the Time of Capture so there is Never a Chance of Audio/Video sync Problems, These Decoces Capture the Audio and Video and compress the Video signal to DV AVI format useing a High Quality DV encoder Chip so the Quality is Very Good, the Only Problem I could forsee is that these devices do not have a TV Tuner on them so if you wanted to record TV shows you would have to use a External TV Tuner or Cable Box to Tune in the Chanells and output the TV Signal to the Capture Device...You can get the "Canopus ACEDVio" for about $169 On ebay and the "Canopus ADVC-100" is about $250 but I would Prefer the ACEDVio because it is an internal PCI card and the ADVC-100 is an external Firewire device....
Well Good Luck....Cheers