Quality issues with PVR-500's

[TheraEdge]

I'm having this same problem mainly on SciFi for some reason right now, and it really seems to steam directly from the quality of the channel comming in on the cable for the channel. I tried to compare what it looked like in my computer to what it looked like on my TV just normally doing the tuning, and the image on the TV was terrible. I remembered I think I have this trouble because of the TV running on a passthrough of a TiVo I have hooked up in line...the problem really multiplies...it isn't as bad on the sage machine or on the TiVo when we use it. But if you change to other channels, since I have the largly increased problem with the passthrough on the TiVo I flipped around a little, and there are definatly channels that come in with a lot less problems than others. Since SciFi is one of my favorite channels I intend very much on contacting my cable company to see if they can do something about this quality issue. I mean new Friday episodes are comming up next week, gotta be ready. It has to stem from where they are putting the signal together or the quality they are recieving it at. Sometimes I think my cable company could do a much better job than they do of maintaining channel quality accross the board. I have to admit, since I have gone the multiple tuner route of Sage TV I have become a big fan of normal cable again though, as to run 4 tuners on digital cable or satalite with the boxes they need right now would suck. I hope in the future when we all go digital we will be able to just buy a tuner card that includes the part the digial boxes do right now too and integrate it into our sage systems.

[Todd33]

I just replaced my 250 with a 500 and am now getting the crosshatch pattern on about half of the channels (I assume it's channel dependent). I put it in the same slot in the same computer with the same cable, it must be the card or the drivers. I hope someone can figure this out, I'm surprised there is more talk about this.

[TheraEdge]

Well, I've been noticing it on more channels with the 500s tuners...does anyone know if there is a way to change the title of my turner cards so I can easliy figure out which tuners are which to try to figure out if there is a difference between the 150s and the 500s recording qualities on the same channels.

Also is there a way to force the use of a particular tuner to record shows? I suppose I could always remove that channel from the guide on all of the tuners I don't want to test.

[TheraEdge]

You guys are going to love this one. So I was working a little on the problem trying to figure out if it was just the 500 that was looking bad with the barber poling and wouldn't you know it, my system self destructed.

So what I was doing is simply removed the 2 tuners of the 500 from being set up in sage. They were still installed but just not registered for use with sage. So I hadn't quite gotten to really reviewing the playback because I only had the 500 unregistered for like a day. Then I realized I had to get it back in sage to get my wife's 3 shows today. So I set up the first tuner, and everything went fine. Then I set the second tuner up to work off the tuner and it pulled a video preview up. Then as I was hitting the accept button at the bottom to accept the tuner as the input source it froze and the screen went blank, and it all went downhill from there. For the full story and possibly to help me as I frantically try to fix it tonight after work, please see the following link: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...034#post136034

[White94Cobra]

Well I finally removed some channels from the cable lineup so that they won't record on the PVR-500's. It sucks because I now have conflicts even with 5 tuners. Does anyone know of a good dual-tuner card? Between the poor quality on some channels and the strange flashing/brightness issue, I think it's time to replace these pieces of crap.

[enthilzha]

I share your frustration. I recently bought the Sage/PVR-500/Streamzap bundle and the PVR-500 video quality is still horrible. I've had a support case open with SageTV for almost a month and the only thing I've received back is that they're working with Hauppage and don't have any ETA for a fix. For anyone considering a PVR-500 I'd STRONGLY urge you to avoid this card at all costs until there is a fix.

I'm annoyed because I really wanted a dual tuner card (I have a Shuttle XPC case with only 1 PCI slot) and the only other option I know of is the old nvidia dual tuner chipset, but quality on that is supposed to be bad. There were rumors over at htpcnews.com (http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php...ic=17325&st=15) that nvidia was going to announce a new dual tuner chipset but nothing so far.

I've already asked Sage to see if I can swap my PVR-500 for a plextor 402U and pay the difference but I didn't really want to have to go that route. Its also been almost 2 business days without a response from Sage...

Is anyone out there using a PVR-500 with an analog cable connection and getting good picture quality? I wonder what percentage of PVR-500 owners are seeing the poor quality?

[BobPhoenix]

I have 2 PVR-500 and 1 PVR-250 all recording analog cable just fine. The Composite input is used on the 2 PVR-500's as Digital Cable from DCT-1700 boxes. Of course you have to take this with a grain of salt since my analog signal is quite bad on the SciFi channel. I know this because the picture I get is actually better from the recordings off the PVR-500's then I get straight off the cable box itself. Lots of snow that way. It is better with a direct connection to the TV but the recordings from the 500's are still better - less snow. This may be due to the cables I have they are short with gold plaited ends where as the one to the cable box and TV is the one provided by my cable company. I used these by the way http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1051384699030

BobP.

P.S. I figure now that I've posted this I will start having problems. The same thing happened when I posted how well my PVR-350 worked with hardware playback.

[xxilikedirtxx]

I have just discovered that I have this issue as well. I t has always been there I just attributed it to the bad cable signal that I can't seem to boost. I think the problem has something to do with how the 500 handles poor signals because it only happens on certain channals.

[SHS]

One possable to help get rid of diagonally line it is an Isolator

[enthilzha]

Okay I finally got my issue resolved! ......... by replacing my PVR-500 with a Plextor 402U. Sage was really cool about letting me RMA the PVR-500 and pay the difference to get a 402U. The 402U picture quality rocks on the same cable connection I was feeding the PVR-500. Bottom line - despite the fact Hauppage support insisted the problem was my analog cable signal quality the problem was clearly the PVR-500.

[bcjenkins]

I have found the best way to remove the crosshatch is to use the driver version in my signature. I got it from shspvr's site. It has audio issues with certain channels on my 150 though. I am replacing the card, so I am not overly concerned.

HIH

B

[joe123]

Originally Posted by White94Cobra

Well I finally removed some channels from the cable lineup so that they won't record on the PVR-500's. It sucks because I now have conflicts even with 5 tuners. Does anyone know of a good dual-tuner card? Between the poor quality on some channels and the strange flashing/brightness issue, I think it's time to replace these pieces of crap.

For what ever it is worth, I have 1 WinTV-150 PVR (with IR blaster bought from SageTV) and it looks pretty bad - dark image, image was also blurry and shows like that of low quality images. This card has the IR blaster combo but not in use.

Then I bought a cheap WinTV-150 PVR card from PCAlchemy for $50 bucks and it looks GREAT & BRIGHT and sharp compared to the other one - the difference is amazing! So there is definietely a qaulity difference with these cards. I posted a question about this very same thing and got 0 responses, so I thougth it was just me.

[deliverer]

I have a PVR-500 and have always thought the quality was not that great. However, I didn't have any experience with any other capture boards.

Can anyone confirm the driver above fixes the issue?

I'm currently running version 2.0.30.23074

[joe123]

I tried various WinTV drivers from web site and local cdrom and nothing fixed the bad images.

Again, the cheapo WinTV-150 PVR from PCAlchemy for $50 has been EXCELLENT in picture quality and clarity. There is definitely differences in quality with different WinTV cards in my opinion.

[stevech]

Cross-hatch - can someone post a screen grab?
If interference is the traditional cross-hatch, it is RF intermod. If it is absent when viewing on a TV on the same cable, then the problem is within the PVR500. And on this line of reasoning, since this is a two-tuner card, perhaps when Tuner 1 and 2 are on just the right channels, the local oscillators cause the cross-hatching - i.e., signals from #1 are getting into #2 at a low level. Changing channels on the one you are not viewing would be informative. Also, unplug the RF feed to tuner #2 while watching the picture from #1 while cross-hatched. There isn't much of a cure for these, other than a better-designed board.

A second likely source of RF interference is the massive amount of RF noise generated by the PC's motherboard. A radio receiver inside a PC is a real challenge for them to adequately shield. A USB based tuner has less of a problem, however the USB2 serial data signal is RF-rich too., if not properly shielded.

[joe123]

For my testing, which included two WinTV-150 PVR's tuners (one with IR blaster, other without), I did everthing from swapping the tuners PCI slots, to testing each one seperately, to every possible combination.

In all my tests, I found a great difference in picture quality from one WinTV tuner card over the other. The one WinTV tuner card without the IR blaster had consitantly better picture image and quality.

[Polypro]

Originally Posted by stevech

Cross-hatch - can someone post a screen grab?

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[mruseless]

I found this thread when searching for answers to the poor TV picture quality from my PVR-500. I have to agree with Kattman. I've tried nearly everything that he has tried, and I finally ordered a PowerColor T55E for comparison purposes. It should arrive today. Then I'll know more.

I should add that I am comparing the signal from my Mitsubishi TV and the PVR-500. I swapped cables to ensure that it was not signal quality on a particular cable or a splitter degrading the signal. The Mits picture still blows the PVR-500 out of the water.

Eric in Denver

Originally Posted by kattman

I've recently purchased the 500 and I am not impressed at all. The picture that my cable box provides is FAR superior to the picture quality of the tuner card. The tuner card provides a more blurry picture and lines that are at a slight angle to the horizon appear very jagged and I've also seen the barber shop lines too. I've tried different video decoders (Sage's, nVIDIA's, CyberLink's); I've tried different PVR programs (SageTV, Meedio, BeyondTV); I've tried maxing out every quality setting on my video graphics card; I've tried putting the tuner card in different computers; I've tried eliminating splitters; I've tried S-Video, Composite and Coaxial; I've emailed Hauppauge and tried their suggestions. The simple fact is that this TV tuner card will NEVER provide the superior picture quality of my cable box. What a hunk of cr@p!!! I spent $1500 building a PVR computer only to be completly let down by the most important part of a PVR...the tuner card.

[aperry]

Unfortunately, I'm kind of stuck with the PVR-500. I need the dual-tuners (I have three cards for a total of six tuners). Eventually, I believe Hauppauge will come up with a fix to this.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by aperry

Unfortunately, I'm kind of stuck with the PVR-500. I need the dual-tuners (I have three cards for a total of six tuners). Eventually, I believe Hauppauge will come up with a fix to this.

Hi Perry. I am telling you that I found some pretty huge differences in image quality from these WinTV tuners. The WinTV drivers sometimes cause more problems than they solve.