When I record shows or watch live tv the picture quality on the tv seems to be a bit blurry. I think it must be a configuration problem because people with similar hardware seem to have a clear picture. The picture looks sort of like watching and older vhs tape. When I record shows the sound sometimes skips and studders. The quality when I record is the same low quality that I see when watching live tv. I have messed around a little bit with the 'tv settings' and 'recording profiles' in the mythtv menu, trying different things such as upping the bit rate, or changing the different encodings. Nothing I do seems to make a difference, but then again I don't really know what to change. I don't know if there is an external config file I need to mess with or what is the best way to fix the quality.

if anyone could give me some ideas on how to improve the quality, or perhaps send me a link to with some setup files that provide optimal viewing. Also any ideas on how to make the sound not crackle on various parts of the recorded show.

Thank you in advance.

my system specs are
Pentium 1.5 ghz
Sound card integrated in the Motherboard
512 mb RAM
120 GB Western Digital Hard drive
Hauppauge PVR 250
geForce 5200 fx

I am running knoppmyth R5V30.1 (I have tried a previous version of it, then upgraded in hopes that it would fix some of these problems)

How do the recordings look if you watch them on another machine? If they look fine then it's the TV-out that is affecting the quality. In this case make sure your XF86Config-4 is set up correctly. There is a sample one for the Fx5200 on the wiki. Also, what are you using to connect to the TV, composite, SVideo, VGA?

If they still look bad on another box, then I would check the signal you're sending to the box. Are you splitting the cable, or going directly from the wall to the PVR250? Are you using high-quality coax cable? Make sure your splitter and coax are of high quality, and you could also try moving the PVR250 to a different PCI slot.

I have tried connecting the coaxial from the wall directly into the pvr 250, as well as feeding it through the tv. Either way the quality seems to be about the same. I have a svideo cable going from the tv-out on the geForce 5200 into the svideo input on the television. The sound is connected through a converter in the audio jack, which are fed into the appropriate channels on the tv. As for the quality of the coaxial cable, I am assuming it is high enough grade. It is the same one I have tested to connect the tv directly to the wall jack, and the picture quality on the tv came out crystal clear.
Thanks for the hint about the config file on the wiki, I went out there and copied that into XF86Config-4 file, but unfortunately it didn't seem to make any difference. In the config file I change the tv name and brand to match the one I have which is a Mitsubishi CF-35607 I am not sure if that really matters. The one thing that I thought of that might matter however is the refresh rate and resolution that are sent on the output.
Is there any site to check if the resolution is too high, or what to set the refresh rates to for my tv? Might that be causing the blurryness?

I am planning on trying to connect it to another tv to see how it works with another even though the current tv works great for everything else.

Also it was mentioned to try it in another pci slot, would I need to re-install to do that, or will it automatically detect that the card is in a new slot?

Anyways I appreciate any additional insites on ideas I may have overlooked or additional suggestions that may help me resolve this problem.

thanks in advance!

Try playing a recording put of the /myth/pretty folder on another computer over the network. If the picture looks significantly better on the monitor then it does on your TV it is the tv-out from your video card.

Have you tried turning on "bob deinterlacing" and tuning up the screen with the nvidia-settings utility?

BTW - Those are good search keywords to start with. Also try "video quality" or "playback quality".