NVidia DualTV - Only Seeing 1 tuner

[mike1961]

I'm not sure why but I installed two Dual TV cards and I only see one tuner on one capture card. The other tuner on the capture card shows a black picture with no sound or nothing. Both tuners on the other card give capture errors which I think from other threads is saying it's a driver problem.

But, I can't even get the second tuner on the first card to work.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

[blade]

You can't use 2 Nvidia Tuner cards together in a system right now with Sage. It has been discussed at length in a thread here on the forums. Pull one of them out and see what happens.

[mike1961]

Can I use one NVidia card with a Win TV 500 Hauppauge card or will there be issues?

By the way the clarity on the NVidia is certainly much better than the WinTV 500 and I can post screen shots if anyone wants. But, I must say this as my first impressions:

1. Depending on the DirecTV channel I'm on some programs are still not all that clear. Maybe it is the signal going to the box or maybe they are hard to encode. Yet sometimes it's amazingly clear. I cannot explain it. Looks better than the WinTV card and hopefully I won't have to worry about that "crosshatchet" problem with the WinTV 500 cards.

2. (this goes back to another thread) When I encode my dvd's to mpeg 4 the video clarity is still better than both the Hauppauge or NVidia. Naturally, dvd by itself will almost always be more clear but it's just amazing that I can get better clarity in mpeg 4 at 4 megs / minute. I can post screen shots if anyone wants to see (again, it depends on the station for the nvidia but my dvd's converted to mpeg 4 are always very clear).

3. I think NVidia made a few minor blunders.

First, the fact that you cannot put two cards in the system makes me think they pushed the card out quicker than perhaps they should have. Hopefully they will correct this problem soon with some updated drivers but I'm going to be pretty disappointed if I pull out one of my NVidia cards and I still cannot capture from two tuners on the other.

Second, why they only gave me one RCA converter cable for my sound with a dual tuner card escapes me. This converter cable is only a few inches and instead they give us one and then throw in a bunch of worthless cables that we have tons of already like an RCA cable, an svideo cable and a coax cable (one of everything). I would have preferred two of those RCA to mini plug sound cables over the RCA video, svideo and coax (I have tons of those, you get them with everything including a cable box, dvd players, TVs, etc).

Last - I am optimistic that this will solve my long standing problems with video quality.

Edited: Pulled the second card out and I can now use both tuners on the one card. I'm going to contact NVidia to find out what's the deal on this second card not working and an eta on a fix and if there is no ETA then I have to consider an RMA for one of the cards.

Mike

[ben_gb]

Originally Posted by mike1961

1. Depending on the DirecTV channel I'm on some programs are still not all that clear. Maybe it is the signal going to the box or maybe they are hard to encode. Yet sometimes it's amazingly clear. I cannot explain it. Looks better than the WinTV card and hopefully I won't have to worry about that "crosshatchet" problem with the WinTV 500 cards.

2. (this goes back to another thread) When I encode my dvd's to mpeg 4 the video clarity is still better than both the Hauppauge or NVidia. Naturally, dvd by itself will almost always be more clear but it's just amazing that I can get better clarity in mpeg 4 at 4 megs / minute. I can post screen shots if anyone wants to see (again, it depends on the station for the nvidia but my dvd's converted to mpeg 4 are always very clear).

Just some comments on your quality comments. Firstly, which DirecTV channels are poor? I usually find the 'local' ones are fairly bad compared to things like HBO and SHO...but I see this even when watching the channels directly from the DTV box. I guess that the original signals for the local channels are poor or the bit-rate is lower for these channels.

On the issue of conversion of DVDs to MPEG-4 compared to recording/conversion off DirecTV using a Nvidia or Hauppauge card:

The DVD conversion is always going to be much more efficient than conversion of a live stream. Firstly the original signal from a DVD is much higher quality in the first place. DirecTV signals have already been compressed down to a relatively low level (compared to DVDs) and this compression introduces artifacts and noise into the picture (as does outputing the signal on s-video).

Noisier pictures are more difficult to compress further and the quality will be lower for a given compression rate. Also you have to bear in mind that MPEG-4 is a better algorithm for compression than MPEG-2 used on the various TV cards, and so is able to produce a better picture at a given rate (but it might need more CPU power to do the conversion).

Lastly, when recording and compressing a live feed, you cannot have multi-pass compression, which always produces a better end result. The card has to basically do what it can with the signal as it comes in, and send it out to the PC in real time (or watching 'Live TV' would be horrid). A DVD conversion program does not need to worry about varying the playback rate - it can buffer more data, slow down on difficult bits and speed up on easy bits, as well as passing over the files multiple times, all of which improves the quality and reduces the size of the resulting file.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Can I use one NVidia card with a Win TV 500 Hauppauge card or will there be issues?Mike

As you found out there are no issues. Actually I had 2 x PVR500 plus my nVidia DualTV with no issues.

I had registered my DualTV with nVidia and submitted a support request to them the other day. They commit to having some sort of answer within 24 hours so I expect to see something today. I'll let you know the news.

Gerry

[mike1961]

GPlasky - Yes I would be interested to hear what nvidia has to say since I'm stuck right now with only two tuners and I need to decide what to do. But, the quality is certainly better than the WinTV 500's.

Ben - I understand all that. What I'm saying is that my mp4 compressed dvd's look better than my Sage mpeg 2 nvidia or WinTV 500. The point is simply that others on another thread were saying that mp4 quality is not good at 500 kbps (250 mb/min) and there is too much macroblocks, etc, etc. My point is that if it is not good then Sage TV at mpeg 2 which everyone watches would not be good either or in other words it's amazing to me how efficient mp4 is at compressing dvd's.

Thanks,
Mike

[blade]

Originally Posted by mike1961

What I'm saying is that my mp4 compressed dvd's look better than my Sage mpeg 2 nvidia or WinTV 500. The point is simply that others on another thread were saying that mp4 quality is not good at 500 kbps (250 mb/min) and there is too much macroblocks, etc, etc. My point is that if it is not good then Sage TV at mpeg 2 which everyone watches would not be good either or in other words it's amazing to me how efficient mp4 is at compressing dvd's.

Those are two different issues. Having a less than perfect signal gives a different appearance than macro blocking does. My captures aren't as sharp and defined as an mp4 compressed dvd, but still looks better to me than a dvd that has been compressed to the point where macro blocking is occuring. The capture and playback using my PVR-500 is every bit as good and in some cases better than straight cable to my TV. For one thing you've never calibrated your PVR-500's or your display, both of which can make a huge difference.

[mike1961]

Blade - I agree that if I give the PVR 500 another chance then I need to calibrate. But, that still does not resolve the annoying cross-hatches that appear with the PVR500.

How can it look better than straight cable to TV when mpeg 2 is lossy? Is it because of noise elimination?

I'm still not understanding what you mean by macroblocking. I've seen some screen shots you have posted but I'm still not understanding what you mean. I've posted a screen shot of an mp4 file I compressed from my dvd and perhaps you could explain what or where this macro blocking is. This screen shot came from a movie I compressed to 247 megs / minute. To me, the screen shot is clear enough where even the writing on the chalkboard is clear which is not always the case with either the pvr 500 or the nvidia but again I can contribute a lot of that to the signal and not the card itself. In any event, to me the compression at 250 megs/min for DVD works well. There are options to retain many of the dolby sound features from what I saw but it doesn't interest me.

Interesting topic we have going here. If anything, the video compression I'm getting for mp4 to me is quite impressive at these kbps rates.

Mike

[gplasky]

See my sad update here:

Bad News

Gerry

[blade]

Originally Posted by mike1961

How can it look better than straight cable to TV when mpeg 2 is lossy? Is it because of noise elimination?

Because my HTPC does a much better job of deinterlacing/scaling than my TV does.

I'm still not understanding what you mean by macroblocking.

In another thread, Stanger has already posted some very good shots for you showing how the compression degrades the quality of the video. If you couldn't tell by those screenshots then there's not much else I could add that would make it anymore obvious.

[mike1961]

Blade - thanks I'll check it out.

gplasky - yea, that's bad, really bad. Wow....In other words, NVidia is saying, "let's make our hardware inferior because Micro$oft does not support it in MCE." As if MCE is all there is. Even Micro$oft is backward compatible.

Well, time for an RMA on one of the boards. Maybe I should soon take on the tedious task of the R5000 HD card and cable box for a third tuner. I suppose for now, I should just pop one of the WinTV 500 cards back in for tuners 3 and 4 and use encoder_merit.

Thanks,
Mike

[idvsego]

When my cards get here, I am going to try installing one of them as a network encoder. If it truly is a driver issue, placing the dual views in seperate PCs should resolve the problem. Of course, this is a relatively expensive temp fix, but it could be a temp fix.

[mike1961]

Does anyone know when Sage will support two NVidia Dual TV cards? Sage does not work with 2 Nvidia Dual TV cards and it seems to be a bug in Sage and not the NVidia drivers.

Has anyone gotten this to work and also has anyone figured out how to tweak the volume when recording?

Thanks,
Mike

[blade]

Has Nvidia released new drivers that support running two cards? Last I heard Nvidia said they didn't include support for multiple cards. If that's still the case then it isn't a problem with Sage, but lack of support by Nvidia. I would provide a link to the thread, but I'm too lazy to search for it. You replied in it so I'm sure you've seen it anyway.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Does anyone know when Sage will support two NVidia Dual TV cards? Sage does not work with 2 Nvidia Dual TV cards and it seems to be a bug in Sage and not the NVidia drivers.

Here you go -- I merged this question with the thread where you asked the same question last time & were told that the nvidia's driver doesn't allow 2 cards in one system yet.

If they've released new drivers since then & if SageTV needs to modify their suport for the card, then it is a matter of time for it to get done.

- Andy

[mike1961]

Okay - I guess I kind of assumed it was a problem with Sage because the NVidia drivers do install and in the Device Manager it does show two cards. I looked at the sage properties file and I was thinking that maybe the "encoder names" were either similar or the fact that in Sage the second card uses a pound sign as NVidia Capture #2 that maybe the pound sign and the number 2 is confusing Sage in the properties and was a problem which would make it Sage.

Sage sees card #2. The problem is I get the famous Sage rendering exception error when trying to view the picture. That's really the only problem.

Mike

[mike1961]

Any word on when 2 NVidia dualTV tuner cards will be compatible with SageTV?

Thanks,
Mike

[mlbdude]

Has nVidia released a driver to support this yet?

[blade]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Any word on when 2 NVidia dualTV tuner cards will be compatible with SageTV?

Thanks,
Mike

As soon as it's "compatible" with MCE, Beyond, or any other PVR package I'm sure it will be with Sage as well. As you've been told numerous times, it's not a matter of Sage being compatible. Until Nvidia releases a driver that supports it there's nothing Sage can do.

If you want to keep track of any possible progress you need to be checking with Nvidia to see if they have any beta drivers out.

[mike1961]

Blade - I agree with you there. I was just wondering if anyone has heard anything from NVidia. It seems when I contact NVidia I get Level I support and then they give me a long distance number to call for Level 2 support along with a case number and I sit on hold forever. I left my callback number and they never called me back.

Regarding compatibility with MCE - as you know that now becomes a Microsoft issue because unlike SageTV, MCE only supports 2 tuner regardless of brand.

Mike