Snowy channels on Hauppauge 250 tuner

[Vidfreaky]

I've got a Hauppauge PVR 250 tuner card and sometimes (a lot of times actually) when I tune to a channel it comes in snowy. It happens about 50% of the time when tuning to a channel above channel 13, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen to channels below 13. When it happens it looks like it does when you've just got a bad signal coming in to your tv, just generally snowy. This is not a sagetv problem because I tried the free trial of BeyondTV as well (sure makes me glad I chose SageTV let me tell ya) and it happens in Beyond as well.

I've tried uninstalling the Hauppauge drivers with the uninstall tool on their website and reinstalling the latest drivers from their site and it made no difference at all. Has anyone else had this problem or heard of it?

[gplasky]

How are you set up? Over the air channels or cable or what?

Gerry

[Vidfreaky]

Cable with a feed directly from the wall into the tuner card.

I should also mention that the channels aren't snowy if I plug the cable directly into the TV.

[gplasky]

Check your Sage configuration. It sounds like you have it configured for antenna and are receiving channels up to 13 through the cable wiring.

Gerry

[Vidfreaky]

It's definately not that.

[Opus4]

Is there a splitter in the line someplace that you can remove, at least temporarily? Maybe the signal level is a little too low, but the TV is able to work with it better than the 250.

- Andy

[Vidfreaky]

There is a splitter, and I have tried removing it and running directly from the wall with no change in result.

[Vidfreaky]

I took a screenshot to show here.

[gplasky]

I'd say look to see if your cable is running near any AC lines, power supplies, etc. that could cause that. Or a defective card.

Gerry

[mike1961]

I think you have the same problem I had. I wish Sage would fix this problem. If this is only happening on some of the channels, you need to use the frequency shifter to fix the problem. See this thread and do a search for threads on "fuzzy channels":

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...fuzzy+channels

And by the way, it is a SAGE and BTV issue. I don't think they scan as wide a frequency range as Hauppauge does. They should come out with an update so that we may specify the freq range to autoscan for. In the meantime, use the Freq shifter to fix the problem.

Mike

[mike1961]

As more cable companies continue to offset their digital frequencies from NTSC standards, it's going to become more of an issue and hopefully Sage will realize it is a problem and fix it. I sent a tech support request to them letting them know of the issue and all the details but as I received help from this forum and realized that was the Freq shifter that would fix the problem the tech support just continued to agree with me but hasn't replied to my suggestions about fixing the problem so that we don't need to use freq shifter. I actually wrote a simple program to offset some 70 channels in the shifter because I didn't want to have to input all of it myself. But, the problem at least may be resolved. I'm hoping at some point I'll actually be able to start using Sage rather than it staying in a "test mode." Seems like I fix one problem and another one just pops up. Now I have a "ground loop" problem I have to take care of but I've posted that in another thread. Eventually, I think it's going to be great but it's definitely a LOT more work to set up than a simple Tivo or something...but, in the end I know it will be well worth it.

Mike

[SHS]

screen show it picking up signals from an FM broadcast transmitter, solution FM trap (filter).

[Vidfreaky]

yeah, it looks like Mike is right. In WinTV (which I hadn't even installed so I hadn't thought to check that) the channels all come in fine.

I am actually an A/V technician with a large international company, so I definately know what inducted RF interference is and how to combat it, and this wasn't it.

So where do I find the "frequency fixer" in Sage? (and in Beyond if you know, although I know this isn't a beyond forum)

[mike1961]

See this thread which has several links:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14599

But also, here's the direct thread to the freq shifter:


http://www.webshifter.net/download/t...ifter_v1.0.zip

(in my prior post which I corrected - I meant frequency shifter, not frequency fixer. Basically, it's just a simple program that modifies the windows registry to override the NTSC default frequencies).

Now if someone could just PLEASE help me with this next problem I've encountered with the rolling waves up my screen. I have no idea what is causing that (a ground loop problem or something)?

Thanks,
Mike

[Vidfreaky]

Ok, I've been busy for the past couple of weeks and I hadn't had a chance to try this until last week.

I called my cable company to ask for the frequencies list and they WON'T GIVE IT TO ME! I've tried everything I can think of and they just won't give out that info. Does anyone have any ideas of how I can get this information from them? Does anyone have information for Shaw Cable in Edmonton Alberta Canada?

Perhaps if I knew what the "basic" frequencies for all the channels were I could start there and go up a few KHz at a time and see if I can fine tune it myself, but I'm kind of lost at this point.

WinTV 2000 tunes all the channels in fine all the time, but both my newly purchased SageTV 4 and my trial version of BeyondTV tune in the channels fuzzy about 80% of the time.