I received my 250MCE yesterday and installed it ASAP! However after configuring Sage, I was extremely disapointed with the PQ. I currently have TheaterTek 1.56 installed, so I figured the Sonic decoders would be (IMO) the best available. I used the following settings:
Record Quality: 3 GB
Renderer: VMR9
Decoder: Sonic Cinapak
Hardware Accel: On
I also did some minimal color calibration, but I was really upset when Sage started and there was a great deal of pixelation, digital noise and really bad color rendering. I honestly felt my old ATI TV Wonder PCI was as good, if not better than the 250MCE and Sage. Well, for the next several hours I played with the quality and decoder settings and switched between channels hoping for a better feed. (using D" via a SD/HD STB) to no avail. So I kept coming back to the forums to see what I might be missing. I downloaded the latest drivers and WinDVD (Non-CSS) decoders off of the Hauppauge site and had some minor improvements - but alot of stuttering. Tried the registry hacks and finally D/L'ed the new 250 drivers that were posted in the " No picture" thread and WOW! Huge Improvement!! The picture from the 250MCE is honestly "BETTER" than the direct feed from the Sat box via S-Video or Component (Except for HD of course) Much smoother and no digital noise at all. I watched various channels until 2am and finally went to bed feeling completely satisfied. (Not too shabby considering I am married)
Got up this morning and began to show the wife what I was able to do and how great the PQ quality was and.... Poof - NO PICTURE! Great audio though...., installed the trial of Sage client in the Den and still nothing. Oh No! I played with the damn thing for about two hours, going over the the decoder, H/W Accel, etc. to no avail - still no picture. All the while the wife is giving me crap about this stellar investment...Reinstalled the drivers, found a newer copy later in the same PQ thread, etc. and still NADA, Zilch!!!! ARRGH! So now this is the least reliable piece of software/hardware I have used to date!
Wait a minute....didn't I set the STB box to HD (720P) last night before I went to bed? (because I connected the S-Video to the HTPC) and I knew no one would figure it out before I got up (since I went to bed at 2am.) Unfortunately the Zenith SAT520 box I have will not output HD and SD at the same time. So I changed the box back to SD and TADA!! Pefect picture once again! Maybe I was just tired, but boy was I getting ticked off fielding comments from the wife about the capabilities of SageTV. Once I got everything running again, I was just as amazed at the PQ on the feed to the client in the Den. All I can say is WOW and thanks to everyone here for all the advice in the threads and FAQ's! Great Product Frey!!
Lesson: Look for the simple solution before you go digging.
09-11-2004, 05:45 PM
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