HVR-1600 versus HDHR

[OttoNP]

Anyone switch from the HVR-1600 to the HDHR? I am so



With the HVR1600



I played around with different antennas, cable runs, boosters, etc... to get my signal pretty good. My HDTV never has a problem on the same line, but every now and then with the 1600, I would say for every 2-3 hours of HDTV I get some kind of very minor quirk. Always at same spot in recording, so I'm positive it is recording issue.

I got into Sage HDTV pretty early, before a lot of reviews and picked the hvr-1600 over the HDHR because I liked the PCI aspect. After that investment, I didn't want to switch. Enough time has gone by now and I'm thinking about getting the HDHR if it will make my recording perfect.

Currently it is pretty good, most of the time my wife doesn't notice, just me. But it is getting on my last nerve....

Someone tell me you've switch from hvr-1600 to HDHR?

Also, what about the AVer 180 card sold on Sage's site? can it record two shows at once, it sounds like it can. I may like it better if it can...

Thanks!

[dgeezer]

I have switched from the 1600 to the HDHR and really like the change. I actually still have the 1600 installed but only use the analogue side for my regular analogue cable and use the HDHR to tune clear QAM.

This has been a very stable setup for me since I added the HDHR. With the new tuning support in 6.4.8 the HDHR was very easy to setup on QAM (well easier....)

The HDHR does seem to have a better tuner.

[OttoNP]

I think i'm going to pick up a hdhr on the way home from work, if it isn't any better, I'll just take it back..

[Clift]

In that case, you won't be taking it back. The HD homerun lives up to its name, a "Homerun."

[OttoNP]

I finally got around to doing this, I bought the HD homerun and so far it appears that the 1600 has better reception. I'm really disappointed, I really wanted to solve the problem with a simple switch. I will say that the HD homerun setup was faster and they have much better support. Also, by giving me more than just signal strength I think it will help me fully resolve my issue.

I'm doing OTA HD in detroit, I'm only 7 or so miles from the source. What still bothers me is my TV gets perfect reception. I have used the same feed with both the 1600 and HD homerun and neither compare to my TV's tuner, it's a Sony.


The signal strength is very high on all channels, but the signal quality jumps around a lot. I'm going to focus on making that better, so far I have tried rotating the antenna with no major improvement. I will try an attenuator next and then a different antenna. I'm using a SR15 from www.antennasdirect.com, which is supposedly good for close location with multipath issues...

any suggestions would be appreciated...

[kevine]

I too have the 1600 and now use it for analog only because of it's unreliability. I am hoping one day there will be new drivers to make it as good as the HDHR. It should be said I use them for QAM tuning.

With regard to your signal. This is from the HDHR troublshooting guide for digital antenna:
○ Check that the signal strength is above 50% minimum (75% recommended).
○ Check that the signal quality is above 50% minimum.
○ Check that the symbol quality is 100%.

I will add that I had a problem with QAM tuning very badly and it was a signal problem. Signal strength and signal quality were not the problem it was the symbol quality. The symbol quality must stay at 100%. It should not deviate from that AT ALL. I would watch it and every time it went off 100, I got video corruption. It was attributed to bad cabling. Copper strands in the cable end were touching the core on my main connection.

FYI, the signal quality will jump around a lot. This is not unusual. Good luck

[Polypro]

Edit

[SWKerr]

I have a AVerTV PCIe card which I assume is the same basic tuner as the PCI version and I also have a HVR-1600. I just bought the HDHR and installed it this past weekend.

I use the SVideo connection from a DirecTV HD receiver on the AVerTV card and the picture looks great. I have used the HVR-1600 in the past and the picture looks just as good, much better than on the old non-HD receivers. I have since added a HD-PVR that captures the true HD resolution and I will probably add another one soon and retire the AVerTV card unless I can get the OTA of the HDHR to work perfectly.

I primarily bought the HDHR for OTA reception only. (I can not get cable so QAM is not something I care about.) I have always had a bad multi-path problem at my house and was hoping the HDHR would improve on it. (Multi-path is when the signal bounces off of objects like buildings or trees. The reflected signal will then show up a fraction of a second after the real signal and confuse the tuner. In the old days it was bad picture quality but with digital you just get the signal dropping in and out. This can be an issue in urban areas where the signal bounces off tall buildings or like in my case a wooded lot surrounded by tall trees.) I live about 25 miles from most of the towers and use multiple roof antennas with pre-amps and signal strength is not an issue for me.

I am just a week in on the HDHR but so far for ATSC\OTA reception the HDHR is just as good if not marginally better than the AVerTV card. The AVerTV has always been somewhat better than the HVR-1600. The HDHR still seems to drop in and out occasionally for those stations that have always been a problem so it has not by itself solved the problem with Multi-path.

I wanted the HDHR in hopes that it would solve the Multi-path issue but also because it had dual tuners. One fix for multi-path is to have highly directional antennas so that the reflected signal is not caught by the antenna at all. For me this means I need more than one antenna to capture signals from more than one direction. To make this work in SageTV I ended up having to setup two different guides. One from Raleigh where I live, and one from Greensboro, a nearby metro area. I assigned one guide to each tuner. (Sage does not appear to let me use the same guide and activate channels for just one tuner. It was awkward to setup but seems to work fine.)

Overall I like the idea of the HDHR since you don’t have to put it in a particular machine just somewhere on the network. This would be a great design for the HD-PVR capture device. That way I could easily hook them up to the DirecTV receiver upstairs and downstairs and just put the SageTV server in the closet. The setup was fairly painless although I found the documentation about what each tool does to be a little lacking.

Note: I did have one issue on the Client machine with the ATI 3450 using a HDMI connection to the TV. I had to change the sound setup to use the Cyberlink audio codec. I could hear sound but certain audio was very quite. Watch the PBS news hour was fine but for CSI Miami I could hardly hear voices while background noises were loud. It was actually kind of cool watching the world series game like this because you could hear all the stuff on the field great but the announcers were almost muted. It sounded almost like it would if you were there. For whatever reason this was not an issue on the other client machines that use the SageTV default. I think is the way the machine handles 5.1 stereo feeds.

Multi-Path Antenna Issue:
I have really approached this as more of a science project and have put more time and money in it that makes logical sense at this point. I got the best results with horizontally stacked antennas like in the link below. Mine uses PVC at this point with two relatively inexpensive Yagi style antennas. The tilt part looks nice but at $300 I think I’ll pass.
http://atechfabrication.com/tests/02...cking_test.htm

From what I have read, if you have a consist problem then you can often turn the antenna to the reflected signal and get it to work fine but if you have a inconsistent signal (Like trees swaying in the wind) then moving the antenna will not necessarily solve it. Mine actually gets much better in the winter after the leaves fall.

[OttoNP]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

From what I have read, if you have a consist problem then you can often turn the antenna to the reflected signal and get it to work fine but if you have a inconsistent signal (Like trees swaying in the wind) then moving the antenna will not necessarily solve it. Mine actually gets much better in the winter after the leaves fall.

Exactly what I have, stupid trees...

Thanks for all the help, will try a bunch and post back. need to get my testing done before the leaves fall and both work great...

[OttoNP]

Here are my conclusions...your results may vary...

The Hauppauge 1600 seems to be better at over the air and worse at QAM than the HD Homerun. The HD Homerun setup time is much faster in both though, but especially QAM. QAM channel scan is painful with the 1600s. The HD Homerun support seems to be better as well, easy to enable logging and write a ticket, although you can call Hauppuage immediately.

My basis for this was with my antenna setup I would get minor issues on HD playback with the 1600s, but with the same coax plugged in to the HD Homerun, the shows would be unwatchable. I then tried my cable with QAM, WOW in Detroit, and with the HDHR I got very minor issues, less than the 1600's on the antenna. Using the 1600's I found all the same stations, but many of them are unwatchable. So currently, my best setup is with HDHR and QAM cable with WOW. I tried Comcast and they seem to have a much higher signal strength, so I'm switching to comcast today and will try my 1600's. If they don't work, Comcast and the HD homerun will be my final configuration....which I hope will end my issues....

Hope this helps...