Signal Strength - Hauppague HVR-1600/1800

[ryanlantzy]

Hi,

I have both a Hauppague HVR-1600 and HVR-1800. Both are fed off of a 4 way split.

My HVR-1800 shows 100% signal strength but my HVR-1600 shows 85% or less, the lowest is around 79%.

Running the cable directly into the 1600 will give about a 3-4% boost. This lower signal quality is resulting in errors and dropped frames in QAM streams from the 1600.

I know when I first got the 1600 the signal strength meter was in the 95% range. I'm guessing additional load on the cable system (or cable issues) has dropped the signal level, but the 1800 must be able to deal with a lower SNR.

Has anyone had similar issues that owned both of these tuner cards?

[ryanlantzy]

OK, I've done a little debugging.

I downloaded the Hauppauge Digital Signal Strength Indicator. I was able to use it to look at the SNR, Received Errors, and Uncorrectable Errors.

The SNR for most channels on the 1800 was 39-40 dB. On the 1600 it was down a round 32-33 dB (still acceptable but not "optimal"). The 1800's meter was in the green range while the 1600 was in the yellow. Switching cables on my splitter did not affect this. I picked a cable amplifier as well, it made zero difference.

According to Hauppauge if there are no unrecoverable errors it should not affect the quality of the received signal.

I did notice that the HVR-1600 had new drivers up (4.6A vs 4.2) so I grabbed those and installed them. The dropped frames seem to be less of a problem now. I might grab another 1600 from Circuit City to see what kind of results I get (onsale for $69 right now).

[Humanzee]

Do you have a link to the hauppauge signal strength meter?


Edit: never mind, I found it on the support page.

[ryanlantzy]

Originally Posted by ryanlantzy

I might grab another 1600 from Circuit City to see what kind of results I get (onsale for $69 right now).

Ok, I got another brand new HVR-1600. The signal quality results are roughly the same ~85%. It's so weird because the 1800 shows 100%.

That said, the recorded stream problems have since vanished (pretty much). I'm guessing it was a temporary problem with my cable system. Weird though, because the 1800 never really suffered (from what I could tell).