asus pvr-416 (conexant c23880x lower quality)

[fcollman]

I have a 3.2 Ghz HP media center PC with 1GB of ram and a asus pvr-416 tv/fm tuner card (conexant 23880x chipset). I can get Sage Tv working fine, and even got Sage tv client installed and working on my 3.1 pound tablet PC via my wireless b network. However, the performance is not great... it will lose the connection and there is a little bit of stuttering. I read the forums, and changed the number of buffers to reduce stuttering, and that worked to some extent. However, I was still losing the connection every once in a while. I thought I'd try to reduce the quailty from the default "Great" to something smaller and see if that helped. however, I found that any setting below great causes the video signal to act bizarrely. The top two thirds of the screen has like striped and repeating version of what's on, and the bottom two thirds is a flicking but static image of what seems to be what was on when the encoder was started, or something of that nature.

Can someone explain what is happening and what they might do to improve the situation. In the end I'd love to get the client working on my tablet wirelessly. I was able to get video working with reasonable and stable quality using windows media encoder, but it wouldn't do sound. This program will do sound, but i can't get the quality down enough to make the video stable.

[Opus4]

I don't know anything about that card & it isn't listed on the SageTV System Requirements page. A quick google search said something about it being a blackbird card, which is mentioned in that list. If that is the type of card it is, perhaps either it needs a driver update or else maybe it is different enough that SageTV can't fully use it -- could be why the video isn't playing right on other quality settings, if those settings aren't used correctly on the card.

Or, did you mean it played OK on the server, but not on the client? If just not on the client, can the video be played there outside of SageTV? Will it play correctly with any other decoders?

- Andy

[fcollman]

The drivers are up to date unfortunately.... it doesn't play right on the client or the server in the lower quality settings. Both are using different mpeg2 decoders, my server is using the intervideo decoder and my tablet client is running the elecard moonlight decoder. I was wondering if there was somethign i coudl put in the preferences file that might solve the problem? I don't know how to figure out if the problem is in the encoding or the decoding....

is there some setting that changes around that quality setting.. like the framerate is reduced or something? that might explain the multiple images type thing i see....

[fcollman]

btw... it works...OK, but I imagine if I were to leave my dorm room and my home wireless and move somewhere else on our network, that performance might fall off and reducing the quality might work better. It would be even cooler to make it work at much lower resolutions... to stream video to off campus networks (IE starbucks, airport, etc).

when it is working... its one of the coolest things i've seen a computer do. I've got a motion computing slate model tablet PC, weighs 3.1 pounds and has a really nice screen. So basically i'm holding a 12" 3.1 pound 1" thick wireless television.

[MrFizzbin]

I have the same chipset (Conexant CX23883 audio/video decoder) as you, in yet, I cannot get it to work. In channel set-up it seems to locate the full range of stations, but when I go to "view" them...I get an error msg. I am not too knowledgable regarding codecs and such...Is there a chance I can get it to work, even partially, or am I out of luck?

[fcollman]

whoops. . . bit of a typo. my chipset is CX23880 not CX23883.

[Opus4]

Do files actually get created when a show is watched/recorded?

Is there another chip on the card? According to SHS's site, the 'blackbird' card from Hauppauge has a CX23880 & CX23416 (unless I'm not reading that correctly).

I'm still guessing that SageTV just can't completely use that card, but of course my guess could be wrong. _If_ it is really a blackbird style card & since there is a blackbird tuner listed as a supported card, you could always ask tech support if any blackbird-based tuner should work, or if the one listed is the only one.

- Andy

[matthewsage]

This thread is old, but it may still help. I have a Kworld MCE 200 Deluxe which also uses the CX23880 tuner and CX23416 encoder (blackbird) chips. The blackbird cards only work with the default DVD Standard, DVD Long Play, and DVD Extra Long Play settings. If you choose other settings it will attempt to software encode and produce the jumbled image you saw.

I'm not sure what the hardware encoded resolutions are. The blackbird card is supposed to support mpeg1 hardware encoding, but SageTV's defaults don't appear to be compatible. Perhaps a custom resolution setting would work.