Poor video quality on some channels

[JmpnJimBob]

I’m having a picture quality issue while using Sage. On some but not all of my television channels the quality is very bad, kind of fuzzy and snowy. In fact the picture quality is bad enough that those channels are almost not worth watching. It started in version 5 and has continued when I upgraded to version 6 (I was hoping 6 might help). But the odd thing is that it doesn’t start out this way.

I just reformatted and reloaded Windows XP Sp2 so that I started with a clean slate. During the install of Sage everything looks fine. I setup my tuner and then add my channels and everything works and looks fine. In fact I can watch TV or record a show then with great quality on every channel. I can shut down Sage and reboot the computer, start up Sage and generally within one or two times of doing this the quality of some of the channels changes. This is exactly how quick it happened the other evening.

After the reformatting, etc. I had everything setup including Sage. I had shut down Sage, rebooted the computer and then turned on Sage after rebooting. It was during the second or third reboot that the picture quality degraded. This only seems to happen on some channels. But these channels that now have a poor quality image had a great image the previous times I had checked them. I had not loaded any other software or applied any patches to Windows, nor had I messed with any of the settings in Sage (decoders, renderers, etc.) just simply rebooted the computer and re-started Sage.

Just to see if I was having a hardware problem I started up WinTV2000. The channels that look bad in Sage look great using WinTV2000. I next tried updating my drivers for my PVR-150 card. I used HCWCLEAR to make sure that I had removed all of the old drivers and then installed the new Hauppauge drivers. This had no effect. I’ve deleted the tuner and shut down Sage. Starting up Sage I re-setup the tuner and checked the quality. The picture quality is still poor. I reformatted again and set everything up again this time only using the latest Hauppauge drivers. Within a few restarts of Windows the picture quality on certain channels had degraded.

The only way that I get good quality across the board is when I’ve reformatted and reloaded Sage. But this only lasts a short time and again it's only the quality on certain channels that gets bad. It doesn't seem like a hardware issue because WinTV2000 looks great on the same channels. It's starting to get a little frustrating so any help that you can give me would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks.

Jim

My system specs are as follows:

Windows XP Sp2
Sage v 6.0.19
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
1 Gb pc2700 ram
MSI K7N2 Delta2 – FSR motherboard
Nvidia 6200 video card
Maxtor 120Gb (partitioned as 20Gb C and 100Gb D), Samsung 400Gb E (main Sage drive)
Hauppauge PVR-150 tuner card

[Opus4]

I'm not sure if this is the issue, but try searching the forum for freqshifter to see if it might help.

- Andy

[JmpnJimBob]

Well, it appears that the freqshifter idea is correct. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the picture quality was caused by the TV channels needing to be fine tuned. I read through some of the posts that are on the board about people who are having the same problem. If it had occured to me that it was a tuning issue and not a video quality issue I might have ran across their posts before posting my plea for help.

I did have some success at fixing this issue. What I did was to have Sage re-scan the channels and in doing so the channels that I was having trouble with were fine tuned and the picture quality was improved. But it appears that there is still some work to be done. When Sage scans the channels it doesn’t find a bunch that I have available. So I manually enable those channels. They do come in but are a little snowy. The original problem that I have with the channels becoming out of tune and snowy will resurface after starting and stopping Sage, just like I had mentioned in my original post. Sage must not be keeping the channels settings after the re-scan. So there is still a problem. I can just re-scan the channels as I have done to fine tune them and improve the picture quality, but I’d like to find a more permanent fix.

After looking over some of the other posts in the forum there appear to be some third party software out there (freqshifter and freqcopy) that people are using to fine tune their channels. I didn’t have a whole lot of time last night to read through their posts and figure out what they’re doing to try and fix my problem. Once I have the time to read through all of their posts maybe then I can permanently fix my problem.

But this all leads me back to square one. Why can’t Sage come up with a more permanent solution to this problem? It appears that there are quite a few people out there with the same problem. One of my good friends uses one of Sage’s competitor products and doesn’t seem to have the problem that I do. He lives within a mile of me and is using the same cable TV provider that I am so I can only assume that he should be having the same issues. But he doesn't. And then there’s the fact that WinTV2000 on my computer doesn’t have the tuning issue either. So it would seem to me that it has something to do in the way that Sage's channel tuning is done. If this is the case I’d even be willing to pay an additional amount to get an add-on package from Sage so that I didn’t have to deal with this isue again.

I have loved Sage TV since the first time I tried it out a year and a half ago. To me Sage’s interface is a whole lot better than the other software packages out there and just seems to be more intuitive and easier to get around in. But I’d really like to see a more permanent and polished fix for this issue in the software instead of having to hack around in the registry. It’s something to think about.

Jim

[layoric]

Wow, it's good when others have the same problem, then I don't look crazy any more!

So, Sage developers, what's the fix? I have the same hardware as the original poster. PVR 150, Windows XP Pro, normal cable without a set top box.

The description as above stated where the shows don't look 'tuned' properly seems the best way to describe this.

- Layoric

[layoric]

Couldn't get the freqshifter program to work, kept saying it was loaded but empty, didn't provide any options...

Updated drivers and win2000 application. Rescanned all channels, and one particularly offending channel: 21. Verified that this channel looks poor on wintv AND sage. Attempted to change frequency from autotune to manual in wintv. Didn't get any better picture, just worse no matter which direction I went (left or right with the slider).

Uninstalled/reinstalled SageTV, removed and reinstalled source too. Channel 21 still looks poor, it's grainy and generally looks like a weak signal. Like I said prior though, Channel 21 (all really) comes out great direct to TV.
If it's a bad cable, why would only some channels come out poor?

- Layoric

[layoric]

Read up all day on this. My video problem sounds like a low signal issue. Perhaps I need an amplifier: http://www.cabletvamps.com/drop%20amps.htm

- Layoric

[nate33]

If it makes anyone feel better, I have the exact same problem.

Channels 39-52 look great with Hauppauge's WinTV software, but they don't tune in Sage. Most are so snowy that they're unwatchable. If I force Sage to rescan the channels, they all come in pretty well though I have to enable channels 39-51 again. Unfortunately, I lose the channels whenever I exit Sage and/or the computer restarts.

This is a problem because Sage's stability is only so-so. I occasionally have to reboot, especially when watching HD programs. If the computer ever crashes when I'm not around, it always means that whatever programs that I had planned to record on 39-51 will be ruined.

I tried Freqcopy but there was no effect. Haven't tried Freqshift yet.