SD quality - best on which tuner?

[ONLYinHD]

I've noticed a big difference in quality for SD.

I've used a few different tuners and it seems like there is a great difference in the quality of the recordings with the exact same settings in SageTV. Has anyone else noticed this?

[paulbeers]

Some of the Hauppauge PVR500's had terrible tuners and therefore the image suffered. I only use Analog for capturing from my analog STB's anymore so I can't say which tuners are best, but my Avermedia Purity 500MCE (dual analog tuner) was considerably better than my Hauppauge PVR500 back when I captured analog cable.

[ONLYinHD]

There were two different tuners used in the PVR-500. The version with Samsung tuners seem to have poor video quality.

Here's an article that details the problem (with pictures too):
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/home...r-500-mce.html

I should mention that both my PVR-500s have excellent video quality.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by ONLYinHD

There were two different tuners used in the PVR-500. The version with Samsung tuners seem to have poor video quality.

Here's an article that details the problem (with pictures too):
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/home...r-500-mce.html

I should mention that both my PVR-500s have excellent video quality.

So what you are saying is that it isn't the image quality of one of your PVR500's compared to the other, but you think Sage is causing a loss in image quality at random? That I have never noticed. No matter what analog capture card I use. My PVR500 vs my Purity 500MCE vs my Avermedia M150's always looked comparable to any other recordings made with the same card.

Edit: And yes I know about the different tuners in the PVR500's. That is old news. I just assumed that maybe you have one of each type and that is why you are seeing a difference in some recordings. I think you have a failing card, but the only way to know for sure would be to verify each bad recording and see if it is always due to a certain tuner.

[ONLYinHD]

I was actually comparing SD video quality of the Hauppauge 2250 and 950 tuners to the 500. The 2250 was worst of the three. The 950 has no hardware MPEG encoder so it got spotty performance but when it wasn't skipping several seconds at a time it got pretty good pq.

That's why I got rid of the 2250 and the 950 sits in a drawer.

Has anyone else noticed the difference in SD quality of the 2250 vs the 500?

[paulbeers]

For future reference then clarify your question! How the heck would we know you are comparing an HVR2250 or 950 to PVR500?!?! You don't have them listed in your signature and you didn't mention them in your original post.

And yes all tuners are different as stated in my original post in this thread.

[ONLYinHD]

I just wondered if other people had ever noticed any card doing better (in their setup) than another.

You, Paul, decided to make it about the 500 versus ???. I did not.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by ONLYinHD

I was actually comparing SD video quality of the Hauppauge 2250 and 950 tuners to the 500. The 2250 was worst of the three. The 950 has no hardware MPEG encoder so it got spotty performance but when it wasn't skipping several seconds at a time it got pretty good pq.

That's why I got rid of the 2250 and the 950 sits in a drawer.

Has anyone else noticed the difference in SD quality of the 2250 vs the 500?

I haven't seen any SD quality problems with the 2250 card. I have two of them. One that used to be connected to analog cable TV and is now connected to DTA cable boxes. The other 2250 is used for OTA ATSC.

The 2250 SD quality is about the same as a PVR-350. The 2250 receiving over the air HD is about the same as the HDHomerun.

So, I'm not sure why you think the 2250 is garbage.

If you want good video quality, then you should probably be watching HD instead of SD, if the programming content is available.

Dave

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by ONLYinHD

You, Paul, decided to make it about the 500 versus ???. I did not.

If all you have listed is the PVR500, why would i assume you have access to any others?!?! I made an assumption based on the limited information you provided. How was anyone to know what you have to compare to. Good grief. I swear to god these forums are being filled with people who think we have ESP or something.

Answers are only as good as the questions asked people! If you don't give us any good parameters, we can't give you a good answer! Take it from someone who's been on these boards for awhile....

[ONLYinHD]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

If you don't give us any good parameters, we can't give you a good answer! Take it from someone who's been on these boards for awhile....

Since you have "been on these boards for a while" you should have some body of experience that a reasonable person may believe you could share.

I didn't ask a technical question about X model of tuner because I didn't want a technical blah blah laden answer about why this or that model is better or my question is bad because of yadda yadda.

I, too, have been on these boards for a while and know that many (possibly well intentioned) responders regularly seek to prove their insight into a narrow subset of the issue at hand and tailor all their answers accordingly. I specifically left out technical details because I wanted people's honest and unbiased answers based on their experiences. I specifically didn't want some egghead dominating the discussion with nonsense and self aggrandizing.

It is a simple question: "have you ever noticed any tuner being better or worse for SD recordings." I had no idea that so many people have no ability to compare or contrast what they see with their own two eyes.

Originally Posted by davephan

So, I'm not sure why you think the 2250 is garbage.

If you want good video quality, then you should probably be watching HD instead of SD, if the programming content is available.

Please see above. The original post was not "why is the 2250 garbage?" for the very reason I cite above. Had I done so I would get nothing in response but people who need to justify their purchase or massage their own ego. That was not my intent and wouldn't have been very nice anyway.

As to your 2nd point, has every American lost the art of critical thinking? Did I ask about HD? Did I say "I hate SD because the quality is...?" Did I say "Hey all you people who have a 2250 are idiots... now, discuss!" No. I didn't, and for very good reason. Small minds who just want to turn this topic into a flame war need not apply.

For the other 99.9999999% of the people on this board, please add to the discussion if you have personally observed experience with using two or more different tuner cards to record SD programming. Even if you have used a dozen different cards and haven't seen one ounce of difference, I'd like to hear your honest opinion.

[jbrandon]

Originally Posted by ONLYinHD

I've noticed a big difference in quality for SD.

I've used a few different tuners and it seems like there is a great difference in the quality of the recordings with the exact same settings in SageTV. Has anyone else noticed this?

Similar findings here…

I had a 2 – 150’s, 1 – 350, and an 1850 before purchasing two 2250’s. I also found the SD recording from the 2250 to be inferior to that of the other analog cards. My cable enters the house and goes directly to the main floor den where the cable company had put an amplifier in line with the rest of the house. Previous owner must have had TV’s in all the bedrooms, there were 5 two way spiltters.

My SageTV server is in the basement and of course I split the cable again to get it down there, then split again and yet again to get the 5 inputs.

I called TW and had a tech come out and check the signal level at the entry to the house and again in the basement. Entry was okay, the basement was down over 40db and down 60-65db by the time the signal got to the cards.

The tech rewired the entry point and removed the mass of splitters in the den. So now there are two runs into the house, one for the main level, the other for the SageTV server. I’m a little weird here, I only have one television…

I purchased an 8 way amplified splitter. The quality improvement was over 100 fold. My SD recordings look “almost” as good as the QAM HD recordings. Of course I still prefer the HD recording but am more than satisfied with what is being recorded in SD.

Jim Brandon

[robk]

I can only comment on SVideo input to various tuner cards - never really used any of them extensively for cable, always used DirecTV, Dish or a cable STB. My PVR-150, 250 are not too bad. My HVR-950Q is not as good as the others (possibly because it uses software MPEG encoding) but it is fair with an antenna for OTA stations. The best one I have is the HVR-1600, very good on SVideo input and it has a very sensitive digital tuner for OTA HD, never tried it with cable. I've used it to capture old Beta and VHS tapes through composite or SVideo and it does very well. All around it has performed beyond my expectations. Unfortunately it is soon to be retired as the primary card, by adding a HD-PVR since I just got an HD STB (presently connected directly to a DVI 22" monitor) and it's time to go to HD.
Hope that helps a little.
One other thing- the 1600 works well with clear QAM (cable), but the number of channels keeps dropping and the programming is garbage.

Rob

[ONLYinHD]

Thanks for the replies.

Jbrandon, thanks for sharing your cabling nightmare story, it makes me feel a little less bad about my own wiring messes. I had such a rats nest of cable and satellite wires up in the attic I had to run 2 new cables into my den (to the two 500s directly, no splitter other than what the cable co put outside in their box).

I think the 2250, being focused on OTA/QAM, must have a cheaper SD decoder in it.

Robk, I am jealous of people who get good OTA (ATSC) reception. Mine was so spotty, worked flawlessly for a day then couldn't even tune the channel, reran the scan and found other channels that didn't even show up the previous scan, wait a day or two and same thing on those channels. I am only 20 miles outside of the city but the towers are on the south side and I'm North East so maybe the buildings block much of the signal and the rest is taken out by atmospheric variables (moisture content? ozone level? gremlins?).

Did you have to fight with your cable co to get clear QAM? TWC here seems to be either blocking it or I was doing it wrong because I never got a single QAM channel to tune on the 2250 or 1600. Moot point because I sold both those and got the two 500s.

I tried HD and it looks great but I just don't watch anything on tv that I care that much about the look of. Maybe in a couple of years when all shows come in HD I'll change my tune.

[robk]

I'm surprised at the reception of ATSC OTA where I live. Nearest "Antenna Farm" is about 45 to 50 miles due south, my elevation in FL is about 33 feet above sea level, but the path to the antennas is not blocked by any hills, skyscrapers, etc. My cheapo chinese goofy-looking ebay rotating antenna with a built in amp is about 12 feet above the ground on the roof. I get almost perfect reception of all UHF digital channels, but the antenna doesn't pull in a high-VHF (I think channel 11 or 12) that is about 25 miles away. Even a home made "V" coat hanger antenna works great here. I use that antenna for my 950Q (HD) and a $99 "Digital Prism" 7 inch flat lcd portable tv (SD) with great results. One thing - I live near a small training airport and I'm under an approach to one runway - planes must reflect the digital signal because I get pixelization, blocks, etc. when they fly over me.

About the QAM - I never asked Bright House (Time Warner) I just connected and did a channel scan. It's good for the 4 networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox - but the rest is religious or community programming, similar to OTA. It may come in handy next hurricane to see what's going on.... Last hurricane I was fine with Dish Network and a generator until the dish blew off the roof.

Rob

[Fuzzy]

I have had a number of SD capture cards over the years, and of all of them, the best quality was probably my old Matrox Marvel G400 card. This is probably mostly because it wasn't MPEG2, but MJPEG.. not where near the same compression rates, but pretty decent quality.. the fact that the TV Tuner itself sat outside teh PC case probably helped with reception as well.

Still, not that relevent to the current discussion, as I don't think anyone in their right mind would hook one of these things up to a sage pc.

I think part of the confusion in this thread is that there are two VERY distinct parts of an SD tuner/Capture card... the Tuner (being the ability to tune and receive NTSC/PAL broadcasts), and the Capture/Encoder (being able to turn that analog video/audio into a digital stream - MPEG2). The reason you needed to put more detail was that we really don't know WHAT part of the card you are talking about. You asled about the TUNER, but i think I'm not alone in assuming that you are actually wanting to know about the capture quality.

i have seen a LOT of variance in quality of the TUNERS on boards.. the PVR-500 has had a rash of bad tuner chips, and the last one I used for actual tuning, one of the two was significantly worse than the other.
Once I switched to using S-Video in from STB's (about 5 years ago or so), I could never tell the difference in the capture/encoding quality, between numerous different hardware MPEG2 cards.

As for OTA reception, I've got VERY passable reception where I'm at (I'm 40 miles from the transmitters, where my antenna doesn't quite have LoS past the ridge of a VERY high iron content mountain). I get perfect reception with my HDHomeRun, from an unamplified medium sized directional antenna I picked up new for $24, through 7db of splitters.) Antennaweb.org didn't say i could get ANYTHING from my house, with ANY antenna, because of the mountain in the way. Still, the point being, if you're so concerned about the quality of SD tuners, I'd think you probably WOULD appreciate HD material more than you initially might think.

[ONLYinHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

the best quality was probably my old Matrox Marvel G400 card. This is probably mostly because it wasn't MPEG2, but MJPEG.. not where near the same compression rates, but pretty decent quality.
. . .
i think I'm not alone in assuming that you are actually wanting to know about the capture quality.

You're right, I meant capture quality. I never thought that the encoder chip has as much to do with that if not more than the tuner. Oops!

Matrox: great quality on those babies. I just can't imagine the file sizes! Whoa momma! :-) (Though in the early days, Matrox was the undisputed leader)

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

if you're so concerned about the quality of SD tuners, I'd think you probably WOULD appreciate HD material more than you initially might think.

I wouldn't say I'm necessarily super concerned. I was just curious to see if others had noticed such a difference in any of their own cards as I had in mine.

You are right that if I WERE such a stickler for great quality I'd have TWC bring out some HD cable boxes and "hook me up." That I don't have even one cable box tells you that I'm less obsessed with quality as I am with cost and having the freedom to add or remove tuners whenever I want to, requiring no phone call and no waiting 2 to 10 days for them to get a box out to me.
(I still have a DirecTV box that sits unused on a shelf because I don't care to hassle with it just yet - it's on my to do list :-)

I'll eventually have an extender (or pc with placeshifter) in all the rooms I care to view my tv shows (or movies, or music, or photos, or online vids, etc.) at - I even found myself browsing the webs for a touch screen pc to put in the bathroom, until I realized that would be going TOO far. Damn if it wouldn't be cool to have TV behind the bathroom mirror... The freedom and "configurability" Sage offers is one of its greatest assets and that's why I'm using it (and why I sold all my tivos).

I know this post is too long. I just wanted to expand on the discussion because it seems that a number of people had questions about my root motivations in making this post in the first place and perhaps my goals or wants regarding the issue. I hope I've helped some to understand - or infected some with the TV behind the mirror idea!