MVP Antenna Strength Problem?

[Wood636]

Long time reader, first time poster:

I recently bought a SageTV HTPC from pcalchemy.com and a SageTV Wireless Media Extender. This is my first experience with HTPC and I chose SageTV after seeing the great support in these forums and the cool add-ons available. I finally have the MVP working after a lot of headaches and problems and wanted to share my experiences:

Take 1: MVP WiFi

After reading a few of the other posts in this forum, I too noticed the strange boot cycle/software loading the MVP does. It seems the MVP has a unique boot cycle: first it boots into the Hauppauge software with a dummy MAC address, then it finds and load the SageTV client and restarts with the SageTV inteface, using a different MAC Address. (Neither of these MAC addresses matched the MAC address printed on the label of the MVP.)

What's interesting is that my HTPC is plugged into a Linksys WRT54G running the dd-wrt firmware, which lets me monitor the signal strength of my remote clients from the built-in webpage on the WRT54G. During the first part of the boot process (with the Hauppauge dummy MAC address) the signal strength was great- in the mid 30's SNR. During the SageTV part of the boot process, the signal strength had dropped into the mid-teen SNR db range. Live TV and Recorded Shows were very choppy and unwatchable.

Main complaints: The antenna (or SageTV software?) on the MVP is very crappy and you can't replace it with an extension cable or alternate antenna- it's built-in.

Take 2: Wired Ethernet + Bridge Mode WRT54G

Before I gave up and mailed back the MVP, I eBay'ed another WRT54G router to run in WDS-mode as an ethernet->WiFi bridge. The benefit of using a dd-wrt WRT54G router as an ethernet->WiFi adapter is that you can attach high-power antennas, antenna extension cables, and you can boost the output power up to 251 db! (Not so important on the receiving end, but I can boost the output power on the HTPC end so that it reaches my bedroom.)

So anyways, I set up the MVP to use Ethernet, plugged it into the WRT54G, set up the cable extender and 7db antenna, and it works flawlessly. The reception strength is approximately equal to the db rating I saw during the Hauppauge software part of the bootup. Hmm.

This leads me to conclude:

1) The antenna on the MVP is horrible and can't be replaced.
OR
2) The SageTV software causes a huge db dip in reception for some reason, which causes poor video playback.

I'm leaning towards conclusion #2 after reading some of the posts that report normal playback using the Hauppauge video server but poor performance with the SageTV software.

Is there something in the SageTV code that causes such a dip in reception strength? Would such a bug cause most of the problems people here are reporting? Do most people's problems go away when they use an ethernet->wifi bridge or antenna?

Hope this is helpful,

-Steve

[_Demo_]

The latest alpha mvp.bin at download.sagetv.com/~jeanfrancois/alpha/mvp.bin should fix both the wireless signal and the mac address issue. Do you know what was the first mac address? With the alpha it should use this one twice but I find it strange that you didn't get the one printed on the unit.

Thanks

_Demo_

[Wood636]

Here's all the MAC Addresses I've seen related to my MVP:

The label on the MVP says:
MAC WIRED 00:0D:FE:07:E1:E6
MAC WIRELESS 00:0D:FE:07:E1:E7

The actual Wired MAC address is:
00:50:C2:24:5F:FF

The actual Wireless MAC address is:
00:50:C2:24:5F:00 (When it boots the Hauppauge software)
00:02:78:F1:3D:71 (Once MVP loads)

Hope this helps,

Steve

[_Demo_]

From what I understand those MAC address should only be in hardware sample and not in retail products. The current version of SageTV doesn't support them.

_Demo_

[Wood636]

My MVP came from the SageTV online store, should I return it for a new one?

-Steve