17.1 – PVR video processing quality – ATI GPU

Hi guys,

Got Kodi 17.1, installed on Win 8.1 x64.

I’ve been trying to sort out my PVR setup within Kodi for months… if not years. In the past, it was all down to how unstable it was so I never really followed it through – especially in the XBMC days – chance at a stable Windows backend was non-existent it seemed.

However now, PVR within Kodi is working amazingly. Because of that, I want to begin phasing out WMC so I can get rid of all my scripts that make it so either WMC or Kodi is up on the screen (to make it wife + remote control friendly…).

One thing that is holding me back though is the picture quality. I have an ATI HD 5770 vapor-x edition GPU, and I’ve been using the latest video drivers, and tested all the way down to previous versions from mid 2014.
Currently, ATI Catalyst Control Center allows me to apply video settings for enhancements such as brightness, gamma, etc… but more importantly, sharpness and other parameters. These settings take effect within WMC, but not live TV within Kodi. Nothing has any effect within Kodi PVR.

I’m currently using DVBViewer as a backend as I find this the most stable. But, I’ve tested WMC and Mediaportal backends and it doesn’t make a difference.

I have hardware decoding enabled, and this works when watching any other media within Kodi and but I’ve noticed that pvr uses SW decoding… I don’t know if this is the reason why I can’t adjust any video settings from ATI CCC… I was working on the presumption that this was the case and tried to get HW decoding in live tv working but nothing I do works.

I tried dabbling with Kodi DSPlayer but this made no difference. PVR still even uses SW decoding.

Are there any suggestions I could try please? Sorry if SW/HW decoding has nothing to do with what I am ultimately trying to achieve which is use ATI CCC to apply video quality settings.

Searched for months online for an answer, but no joy – probably mostly because I don’t know the terminology I’m searching for in regards to what needs addressings.

Thanks a lot for any help..
Antony