Poor video/audio with PVR 500

[zookie]

I've spent hours now in this forum following links and suggestions that slightly resemble the problems I am having and I just haven't hit the magic one yet I guess.

If I watch a DVD through sage or an imported video, the quality is perfect, just like you would expect. So is the audio. Everything works great!

However, if I watch live tv through my PVR 500MCE, the quality is poor. It isn't that the channel is snowy or black and white as I saw noted in another post. It just looks very low res. If anyone has had satellite tv and during a thunderstorm when the signal is all but lost, you can see that the picture quality gets very bad and a little blocky just before it completely goes out. That is sort of what this looks like.

My PVR 500 uses the Phillips tuners on both so the LNA solution posted didn't work, unfortunately. I am using the NVIDIA Video Decoder setting in Sage.

This ties in with an audio problem I am also having, but I assumed I would create a different thread for that one as I have a workaround at the moment. But, basically, if I play audio via imported MP3 and I turn up the windows volume control, it cuts out a lot. Exactly like if you stream an audio file on the internet and the bandwidth is too slow and you run out of buffer, it pauses for a moment while it buffers more. That is how this sounds when I play an MP3.

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Z

[tomfisk]

If nothing's worked then I'd obtain an RMA and send it back to Hauppauge. I hear they are replacing boards with Philips tuners with the Samsung. I'm doing that as soon as the holidays are over.

[blade]

Originally Posted by tomfisk

I hear they are replacing boards with Philips tuners with the Samsung. I'm doing that as soon as the holidays are over.

You've got that backwards, the Phillips tuners are the good ones and the Samsung are the ones giving problems.

[zookie]

From what I read, the Phillips tuners are the good ones.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&highlight=lna

If anyone has the Samsung tuners and has any problems, I would try the above link. A friend of mine has the Samsung tuners and he said LNA worked for him.

But, since I have the Phillips tuners, the above post isn't for me. The checkbox for LNA isn't even there.

Just an update, I did the upgrade that was released last night to 6.0.18.

I've been working with the audio problem more today and watching task manager at the same time. I'm having trouble even guessing what the problem is because my system runs at a solid 301MB of RAM and if I play an MP3 through Sage, the processor never goes over 4%.

[Opus4]

Have you tried using the card with the Hauppauge software to see how recordings look that way?

Also, double check the recording quality setting in Detailed Setup -> Multimedia -> Recording Quality. No matter what the setting it, try changing it & starting a new recording to see what happens.

- Andy

[zookie]

OPus4,

Thanks for the suggestion. As soon as I went to test what you said, I started having other problems with my system. I was already frustrated with MCE and their 2nd rollup, so in the end, I reloaded the system with Windows XP Pro.

After this reinstall, I noticed that regardless of driver version, I had audio stuttering problems before I even installed Sage. After spending quite a bit of time on this, it ended up that my onboard audio card (mobo: Intel DG965WH) was receiving feedback on different outputs/inputs using its built in auto port detection and each time it would do this, the audio would stutter. I found that my front panel audio pinouts were using AC97, but the "sense" pin for HD Audio was incorrectly setup. My bad. -=O)

After fixing this issue, I no longer have any audio problems what-so-ever. I am currently testing the video quality difference between coax direct to the TV and running Live TV through Sage.

It looks like there is a reduction in quality when I Watch Live TV through Sage. Well, at least in high movement channels like ESPN. I'll be testing more today and will post another reply with the results.

Thanks!

[blade]

Originally Posted by zookie

I am currently testing the video quality difference between coax direct to the TV and running Live TV through Sage.

It looks like there is a reduction in quality when I Watch Live TV through Sage. Well, at least in high movement channels like ESPN. I'll be testing more today and will post another reply with the results.

If you haven't already you probably need to use the Hauppauge Tweak tool to reduce the spatial and temporal settings for your card. The default settings made high motion scenes blurry and I had ghosting. If you do a search of the forums you should find plenty of threads on how to do it and probably what settings others are using.

Also I don't know what capture rate you're using, but I've found I need to use at least 3GB/hr.