Major Noise on PVR500

[ravenray]

Ok, so I finally got a chance to finish building my sage server. I have pvr250 and a pvr500 in my server. My pvr250 is pretty crystal clear, but my pvr500's are producing so much noise that it's driving me nuts!

This is what the image looks like in my pvr250.


This is what the same channel, but on the pvr500 first tuner.


This what it looks like on the second tuner of the pvr500


It's as if the noise is increasing through each tuner. I already had eliminate as much cable splitting and the results are still the same. Are any of you having this problem? Did I happend to get a defective product?

[Opus4]

There is an internal splitter on the 500, so that split could be causing more signal drop. What happens if you eliminate the split that goes to the 250 & 500 & connect only the 500?

- Andy

[ravenray]

Opus4, Tried that too. Still the same result. I made sure I was using RG-6 cable also, but alas, still the same result.

[Polypro]

Have you tried different driver versions? Send the screen shots to Hauppauge...the one time I dealt with them, support was awsesome.

P

[bcjenkins]

They have a driver that is beta which solved this for me. Prior to that I was using the drivers from 2-22-05. I found those on shspvr.com

B

[ravenray]

Well, I shot an email to tech support. Hopefully they can help. I also tried the new drivers off of shspvr.com also. Still the same result with no change. My last attempt will be to pull the card out of the server and put it in my system and see if there's any difference. If not, off to ebay it goes and I'll just pick up two seperate cards.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by ravenray

Well, I shot an email to tech support. Hopefully they can help. I also tried the new drivers off of shspvr.com also. Still the same result with no change. My last attempt will be to pull the card out of the server and put it in my system and see if there's any difference. If not, off to ebay it goes and I'll just pick up two seperate cards.

Did you try the drivers dated 2-22-2005 on shspvr or the newest ones? If your problem is the same as mine, you need the 2-22-2005 versions, quite old.

B

[ravenray]

bcjenkins, I used the most current drivers which was the pvr_2.0.43.24073_prerelease.zip from the downoad on shspvr.com for the pvr500. I'm not seeing any 2-22-05 drivers on shspvr.com. Do you have the driver version number handy so I can match it up on shspvr.com and give that a go?

[zoundz]

What I'm seeing in your pix looks a lot more like mpeg artifacts than any sort of analog signal noise. I wonder if you might be inadvertently recording at a very low bit rate on the 500. You might take a quick look at the file sizes to make sure that you get the same GB/hr on the 250 and the 500.

[ravenray]

zoundz, that's what I thought at first when I first put in the card. I increased the recording all the way up to dvd standard and it's still the same. Quality of the recording is really bad for every channel. What's even more strange is that the pvr250 comes out clean, but once I look at the pvr500 on the first tuner, it's like I'm getting bad reception with OTA broadcast and it's worst on the second tuner. And no, it's not OTA broadcast, this is all regular cable.

[bcjenkins]

ftp://ftp.shspvr.com/download/media_...23053_whql.zip

[ravenray]

bcjenkins, I'll give a whirl tonight and see what kind of results I pull.

[SHS]

Look like there some kind of problem with the broad it self being the pvr500 first tuner looks about 2/3 bad which may have some thing to do with the internal splitter on the 500 and second tuner of the pvr500 just get worst.

[ravenray]

SHS, That's exactly what the problem is, just not fully sure if it's the board or not.

[ravenray]

Well, I ran a pretty extensive test yesterday to see what was going on. I took the pvr500 out of the server and stuck it in my system. Wouldn't you believe it, no noise what's so ever. I put it back into my server, grabbed a spare drive and build everything from scratch just for testing purposes. This time, I took the pvr250 out and load up the drivers from the cd for the pvr500. It would seem like everything is clean, but now I’m seeing this cross hachet everyone is talking about. Has anyone found a fix for this?

Also, just for sh!ts and giggles, I put back the pvr250 and loaded up the drivers for it from the pvr500 cd. You wouldn’t believe, Noise all over the place like those images. So, my conclusion is that either 1) my motherboard is just really bad and can’t handle both these tuners together or 2) the pvr250 is emitting either too much emi/rf that is wreaking havoc on the pvr500.

I order and just received a pvr150 from newegg.com and will be trying out how well it can play with pvr500 or the pvr250. What ever my result is, I might either return the pvr150 or end up selling the pvr500. Would any body be interested in the pvr500 before it goes to ebay if this is the case?

Oh, I also had test everything with the newest drivers also, same results as above.

[SHS]

what motherbroad where they make amd model?

[ravenray]

SHS, I have a ecs NFORCE3-A and yes, it's AMD. Would this be majority of the problem?

[SHS]

is that the server motherboard?.
what about the one that did have the noise problem?.

[ravenray]

SHS, that's the server board and that's the one that had the problems. I'm currently using a Asus P4P800 Deluxe and it did not have any of the problems with the pq (well, maybe a little of that the cross hatchet, but not as bad as the pvr server).

[ravenray]

Got a chance to test out the pvr150 in my pvr server last night. It is definitely apparent that my board does not like either one of these cards. I tested out the pvr150, pvr500, and pvr250 with clean drivers from the newest to the oldest. In my test, I put all these cards in the same slot and my pvr250 definitely outperformed these cards. The pvr150 generated these cross hatchet just like the pvr500. Only difference is that the pvr500 (since it has two tuners in one) will generate the cross hatchet on one tuner and totally generate more noise on the second tuner. So in conclusion, I’m going to return the pvr150 and selling off the pvr500. I just need to look for someone that is selling a pvr250 or willing to some trading.