HD-PVR artifacts and choppy video

[jblaty]

I am running an HD-PVR with the latest drivers v1.053 on a Windows Home Server (WHS) with SageTV beta v6.5.5. I have tested this with TME and also SageTV in watching live TV. The machine I'm running this on is an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ (dual core), with 2GB of RAM. I also have a Sony BD-ROM drive.

I'm having 2 issues:

1. Whenever I am getting video from the HD-PVR, there is a line or two of "artifacts" at the bottom of the screen in the recorded video. It's almost like a sync issue.

2. I have tried playing around with different settings in Sage, but I'm getting choppy video when watching live TV via the HD-PVR.

Any ideas on how to resolve these issues?

Regards,
Joe

[waynedunham]

You don't mention specifically, but are you seeing this watching on the computer or a TV?

I just helped someone get a new SageTv installation set up on a machine running WHS. Since this was just going to be a server we did not get a high end video card and when watching the videos via TME, or VLC the videos were FAR from crisp and especially with VLC you could see "garbage" at the very top few lines (the VBI?). Also the video was "blotchy" in many areas.
However if we viewed those same exact videos via an HD extender on one of his TV's they were beautiful, very crisp, no "blotchiness", and you couldn't see the VBI/garbage in the very top few lines.
They also looked fine on the server when we fired up the full SageTV interface and watched them within SageTV(normally only going to run the service on the server machine).

[jblaty]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

You don't mention specifically, but are you seeing this watching on the computer or a TV?

I just helped someone get a new SageTv installation set up on a machine running WHS. Since this was just going to be a server we did not get a high end video card and when watching the videos via TME, or VLC the videos were FAR from crisp and especially with VLC you could see "garbage" at the very top few lines (the VBI?). Also the video was "blotchy" in many areas.
However if we viewed those same exact videos via an HD extender on one of his TV's they were beautiful, very crisp, no "blotchiness", and you couldn't see the VBI/garbage in the very top few lines.
They also looked fine on the server when we fired up the full SageTV interface and watched them within SageTV(normally only going to run the service on the server machine).

Thanks for the reply. I am watching this on the computer attached to a 46" Samsung LCD monitor. The video card is:

HIS Hightech H260XTP512DDN-R Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported iSilence III Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161203

I'm using the HDMI output from the card for both video and audio. I could possibly use the onboard audio instead of the HDMI (Digital Coax).

[waynedunham]

I don't have much more to suggest. I've never relied on a computer connected to the TV I'm viewing on. Too many variables and issues with hardware to get consistent results. I read so many horror stories about jerky video, sound sync problems, etc that I went with a MediaMVP when I was doing standard def only, and now that I'm doing HD and SD I put SageTv HD100 extenders on both my TV's.
Plus as of right now that allows me to keep running my puny p-4 2.8ghz machine with 1gig ram as my SageTV server with no problems. Spend the money on the extenders and not the server.
Though I must confess I am going to be upgrading my server so that when the commercial marking applications get H.264 working well I can comskip my Hauppauge HD-PVR files.