General questions about HD from a total HD newbie.

[pawn]

Sorry if this is a stupid place to ask these questions, but I couldn't see anywhere more appropriate.

I'm about to enter the OTA HD world for the first time, and I have some questions about how Sage will handle the HD channels. I'll be capturing (hopefully) several channels over the air with a UHF antenna, using a Hauppage HVR 1600 capture card, installed on my SageTV server, or maybe even on one of my clients acting as a network encoder. Specifically, I have these questions:

1. I have no idea about HD channel mappings, and how Sage will find them. I assume I will have to scan for channels using the Hauppage software to see what I can receive, then use the same channel numbers in Sage. Make sense?

2. Is there guide data specific to HD channels in certain regions? Not sure at all how that part will work.

3. I don't see anything "HD" looking in the recording quality settings. Do I just use the maximum or a high DVD quality?

Sorry to be so clueless. It's been a long time since I had to ask questions about Sage.

Thanks in advance.

[GKusnick]

1. Just do the channel scan in Sage when you set up the video source and it should find all the channels you can actually receive. Manual channel mapping shouldn't be necessary.

2. During video source setup, choose the Digital Broadcast channel lineup for your city, and those HD channels will appear in your Program Guide along with whatever analog channels you're already receiving.

3. Encoding quality is irrelevant to HD (and digital TV in general) since the program has already been encoded to MPEG2 by the broadcaster. Sage just captures the digital program stream off the air and writes it to disk without any further encoding or compression.

[pawn]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

1. Just do the channel scan in Sage when you set up the video source and it should find all the channels you can actually receive. Manual channel mapping shouldn't be necessary.

2. During video source setup, choose the Digital Broadcast channel lineup for your city, and those HD channels will appear in your Program Guide along with whatever analog channels you're already receiving.

3. Encoding quality is irrelevant to HD (and digital TV in general) since the program has already been encoded to MPEG2 by the broadcaster. Sage just captures the digital program stream off the air and writes it to disk without any further encoding or compression.

So the encoding quality settings are ignored for an HD capture card?

Thanks for the info.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by pawn

So the encoding quality settings are ignored for an HD capture card?

Thanks for the info.

Yes.

[computer33]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

1. Just do the channel scan in Sage when you set up the video source and it should find all the channels you can actually receive. Manual channel mapping shouldn't be necessary.

My experience was that yes it found the channels but simply added them to the line up Example:
Channel 6 << in original lineup
Channel 6-1 << added during scan

So, I enabled Channel 6-1 but the epg showed "No Data".
I went back to the set up and map the original Channel 6 to "21-6-1" (Physical-Logical-Program) and I ignored Channel 6-1. This worked but I perhaps there is a better way since I am also very new to this.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by pawn

1. I have no idea about HD channel mappings, and how Sage will find them. I assume I will have to scan for channels using the Hauppage software to see what I can receive, then use the same channel numbers in Sage. Make sense?

As noted, just run a channel scan in Sage and it will pick the ones it can receive, and automatically enable them (and in my experience it will enable some you can't actually get).

2. Is there guide data specific to HD channels in certain regions? Not sure at all how that part will work.

While what Greg said is true, it's only part of the story. When you do the channel scan, Sage will detect the channels you recieve, both their RF frequency (physical channel) and their logical channel mapping. For me that means I end up with CBS being detected on 51, but recognized as 2.1 and 2.2.

In addition, Sage will then (by default) pull the EPG information from the PSIP data broadcast as part of the ATSC transport stream (vs downloading it from Zap2It).

3. I don't see anything "HD" looking in the recording quality settings. Do I just use the maximum or a high DVD quality?

Yup, recording quality is ignored for digital tuners, Sage just saves the broadcast data as is (but it does extract only the tuned subchannel).

Sorry to be so clueless. It's been a long time since I had to ask questions about Sage.

Thanks in advance.[/quote]

[pawn]

Well, that didn't go well. I just spent a fruitless evening trying to overcome some massive stuttering. Everything went as advised in the setup, etc. Sage found about 13 channels, but they all stutter horribly during playback. My first troubleshoot approach was to hook up the signal directly to my TV. The TV's built-in ATSC tuner found the exact same HD channels and displays them perfectly. No problem there.

I don't think this is a Sage (playback) problem, since every combination of filters I tried over the last hour or so in GraphEdit stuttered just as bad or worse. It's hard to believe I have a hardware issue on my client, but maybe: A Pentium 4 1.8, with a Radeon 9550 (256MB) V/C. The CPU never goes above 20 percent.

I typically use my Sonic Cinemaster decoders, which are great for SD and DVD playback, but who knows, maybe they're useless for HD playback. But then, so must be my Intervideo, Cyberlink and Sage decoders.

Finally, I guess I could have a networking issue (never goes above 15% usage in Task Manager though) and maybe more likely, a capture hardware issue. I have three capture cards now on my server, which may be a resource sharing problem, and also of interest is the fact that the seal was broken on my HVR 1600, but it was resealed with a "Opened by Hauppage quality control personnel" seal, or something like that. I don't think it's a stretch that this was a returned board that they shipped back out.

I spent hours looking through the various HD threads on this forum tonight, so other than returning the HVR 1600 (after trying other PCI slots), I have no idea what else to try and am wide open to suggestion.

Thanks again,
KJ

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by pawn

Well, that didn't go well. I just spent a fruitless evening trying to overcome some massive stuttering. Everything went as advised in the setup, etc. Sage found about 13 channels, but they all stutter horribly during playback. My first troubleshoot approach was to hook up the signal directly to my TV. The TV's built-in ATSC tuner found the exact same HD channels and displays them perfectly. No problem there.

I don't think this is a Sage (playback) problem, since every combination of filters I tried over the last hour or so in GraphEdit stuttered just as bad or worse. It's hard to believe I have a hardware issue on my client, but maybe: A Pentium 4 1.8, with a Radeon 9550 (256MB) V/C. The CPU never goes above 20 percent.

I typically use my Sonic Cinemaster decoders, which are great for SD and DVD playback, but who knows, maybe they're useless for HD playback. But then, so must be my Intervideo, Cyberlink and Sage decoders.

Finally, I guess I could have a networking issue (never goes above 15% usage in Task Manager though) and maybe more likely, a capture hardware issue. I have three capture cards now on my server, which may be a resource sharing problem, and also of interest is the fact that the seal was broken on my HVR 1600, but it was resealed with a "Opened by Hauppage quality control personnel" seal, or something like that. I don't think it's a stretch that this was a returned board that they shipped back out.

I spent hours looking through the various HD threads on this forum tonight, so other than returning the HVR 1600 (after trying other PCI slots), I have no idea what else to try and am wide open to suggestion.

Thanks again,
KJ

Your Radeon 9550 GPU is severely underpowered for HD playback. A 9600-class card is the minimum for 720P playback. 1080i requires even more horsepower. You could use a software decoding codec, such as FFDSHOW, but you would need a 3ghz+ CPU.

What you really need is a system upgrade. However, if you can't justify the expense, I would suggest picking up a 7600GT AGP card. Then install and use the nVidia PureVideo decoders to take advantage of the Geforce7's hardware video processing capabilities.

[Tander]

I absolutely want to SCREAM everytime I read someone here stating with authority that you can't use the Radeon 9550... it just won't do HD, etc.

I am using the Radeon 9550, and that lowly ATI HDTV card everyone slams... and I'm getting superb HDTV! Yes, I am using Overlay, but by tweaking my filters, etc., I have NO tearing, NO stuttering, and my friends are all amazed at my picture.....

Yes, I put up a large HD external antenna up on my roof... but I am very pleased with my 9550!

I just hate to see people run out and spend more money on hardware when it may not be needed! Sorry for getting on my soapbox GTwannabe...

[pawn]

It's so hard to know what to test in a situation like this. Variables that occur to me:

- reception issues.
- poor tuner quality.
- tuner IRQ conflict problems.
- poor server hardware.
- poor client hardware.
- networking issues on capture (i.e., capturing to a network share).

Tonight I see better results, especially on some channels, which makes me believe there's a reception issue and that the HVR 1600 is just more sensitive to a poor signal than the built in tuner on my TV.

I wonder if some one without HD issues could possibly download this brief clip and see if it starts to stutter after about 8 to 10 seconds.

http://mirkwood.no-ip.com:8081/shows...-8738243-0.mpg

Thanks all.

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by Tander

I absolutely want to SCREAM everytime I read someone here stating with authority that you can't use the Radeon 9550... it just won't do HD, etc.

I am using the Radeon 9550, and that lowly ATI HDTV card everyone slams... and I'm getting superb HDTV! Yes, I am using Overlay, but by tweaking my filters, etc., I have NO tearing, NO stuttering, and my friends are all amazed at my picture.....

Yes, I put up a large HD external antenna up on my roof... but I am very pleased with my 9550!

I just hate to see people run out and spend more money on hardware when it may not be needed! Sorry for getting on my soapbox GTwannabe...

I'm not saying you can't watch HD on a 9550. I used to watch 1080P stutter-free on a 16mb PCI Radeon 7000 (granted, it was a dually hyperthreading Xeon workstation). However, if he wants to run Sage with all the bells and whistles enabled (3D Acceleration, VMR9 rendering, hardware video post processing, de-interlacing, inverse telecine, etc), he would best be served by a video card that can offload his slow 1st generation P4.

[Tander]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

I'm not saying you can't watch HD on a 9550. I used to watch 1080P stutter-free on a 16mb PCI Radeon 7000 (granted, it was a dually hyperthreading Xeon workstation). However, if he wants to run Sage with all the bells and whistles enabled (3D Acceleration, VMR9 rendering, hardware video post processing, de-interlacing, inverse telecine, etc), he would best be served by a video card that can offload his slow 1st generation P4.

You are right, but right now he is trying to diagnose why he he can't watch anything "stutter free"... I just feel he is better off trying to diagnose the problem now, otherwise he would go out, buy a new graphics card, still see the same problems, and be possibly back to square one.

Right off the bat I would suggest the following:
1. Check his signal strength by going into the tuner setup....
2. Is he using 64K blocks for recording, ie., is he getting fast enough writes and reads?

Both of these turned out to be an initial issue with me, causing stuttering. Once I enhanced the reception, and went to 64K blocks, I saw a dramatic improvement. Since his CPU isn't pegged when he watches something, (He said it was running around 20%) I strongly suspect it's at least not a server issue... but possibly a network or other sub system bottleneck, assuming the reception is good and his hard drive transfer is fast.

In my opinion (Which I humbly retain the right to be wrong ) he should try the minimal setup to get things going first... using Overlay, no FSE, no acceleration, make sure the reception is strong, fast transfer (ie., read and write) etc., then start tweaking the driver combination, etc....

Just my thoughts..... I wasn't trying to argue... just wanted to make sure he was headed in the right direction.

[pawn]

Latest:

I doubt very much my client hardware is a problem, since for whatever reason, I can tune one channel (PBS of all channels) flawlessly and sustained with smooth playback.

As for other suspicions, the channel setup utility shows signal strength at minimum 88%, and mostly 90%+ for any channel I'm trying to tune, which just confirms that the signal is fine, networking and hard disk issues (64k blocks - of course), etc., would all show up on the one channel that works as much as any other. I've swapped PCI slots a couple of times, rebooted many times, different drivers: all no diff.

I'm more and more suspicious now about the so-called "seal broken by Hauppage quality control" sticker mentioned above at this point. As in, maybe this HVR 1600 is a refurb that has somethine seriously wrong with it. Nothing else makes sense at this point.

KJ

P.S.: just goes to show the impossible situation the guys at Sage are in sometimes with the myriad of software/hardware issues that have nothing to do with them.

[Tander]

Good Point Pawn! If you can watch PBS... (Gee... why wouldn't you just be thrilled with that ) fairly well, then it probably isn't the hardware or network, more likely the card. Just a point from my perspective though, with my ATI HDTV card, I noticed that stations that showed signal strengths in the mid 80's were prone to stuttering occasionally... especially if I was tuning into a side lobe of the antenna signal... (ie., due to building bounce etc.) That's why I initially went to Radio Shack (ARGG... did I just admit to that? ) and bought a cheap signal amplifier... then ended up buying a fairly massive roof top antenna just for HD.

With that said, I would expect stations in the high 80's to be stutter free at least for the most part...

Wish I could be more help... but I would look at the tuner myself...

By the way, have you tried "Overlay", No 3D Acceleration, 'Overlay color keying enabled", and FSE disabled? That seems to work well with my 9550... using the ATI Mpeg decoder that came with my tuner...

I'm not an expert by any means, in fact have only had Sage a month, but love it.... just trying to help....

[Tander]

By the way... I downloaded your file and tried to play it.... it crashed after about twenty seconds.... However, with that said...

It was stuttering.... then very pixelated, then smooth out for a few seconds, then get pixelated and stutter again....

This looked to me like very poor reception.... (I spent way too much time initially watching stuff like this... ) but it is also possible your tuner is either marginal in working, or your tuning is off. You might want to go in and map a channel to an absolute frequency ... ie., go and look up the channels in your area.... http://www.antennaweb.org which will tell you what stations are in your neighborhood, and give you the channel numbers... find a close one, and try to optimize that. If you can, then it's your reception... if not, then a defective card...

[pawn]

Originally Posted by Tander

By the way, have you tried "Overlay", No 3D Acceleration, 'Overlay color keying enabled", and FSE disabled?

Always.

[pawn]

Originally Posted by Tander

By the way... I downloaded your file and tried to play it.... it crashed after about twenty seconds.... However, with that said...

It was stuttering.... then very pixelated, then smooth out for a few seconds, then get pixelated and stutter again....

This looked to me like very poor reception.... (I spent way too much time initially watching stuff like this... ) but it is also possible your tuner is either marginal in working, or your tuning is off. You might want to go in and map a channel to an absolute frequency ... ie., go and look up the channels in your area.... http://www.antennaweb.org which will tell you what stations are in your neighborhood, and give you the channel numbers... find a close one, and try to optimize that. If you can, then it's your reception... if not, then a defective card...

Thanks for your help in this. All of the evidence just points to a bad piece of hardware, IMO. I get about 10 crystal clear HD channels on my TV's built-in tuner, I can watch the one channel no problem and some of the channels (like the clip you downloaded) display fine for a few seconds before freezing up. It's hard to believe reception is the problem, but I have long history of being wrong.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'll post the results of a hardware swap later today.

KJ

[eopian]

Originally Posted by pawn

Thanks for your help in this. All of the evidence just points to a bad piece of hardware, IMO. I get about 10 crystal clear HD channels on my TV's built-in tuner, I can watch the one channel no problem and some of the channels (like the clip you downloaded) display fine for a few seconds before freezing up. It's hard to believe reception is the problem, but I have long history of being wrong.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'll post the results of a hardware swap later today.

KJ

What kind of hard drive do you have? Do you have 64k blocks (on your storage drive)? Do you have a separate drive for recording and your OS? If you don't, maybe your drive cant keep up with windows, your pagefile, and recording & playing HD?

Have you tried moving the card to a every PCI slot? Do you have the newest drivers for the card? Is the card 100% pushed into the slot? Do you have it screwed in properly? I suspect your answer lies in one of those spots.

If that didn't fix it here is a list of tougher suggestions:

Check the antenna (you may be having some multipath issues)
-is it outdoors (this made a huge difference for me)?
-is it high enough to see over all nearby obstructions?

Try a clean install of windows

Finally, if all else fails, do what I do. Clear your head, do something else and come back to it when you're calm, then start from the beginning. In my case, its usually something stupid and small, but obviously important.

[pawn]

Followup:

I exchanged the HVR 1600. No change. Of all of the suggestions in this thread, there's really only two that seem relevant to me: signal quality and storage speed.

Signal quality seems possible due to thet fact I can get the one channel pretty clear. I do have the antenna on the roof, but I am faily far from both transmission centres I receive from (Toronto and Buffalo). That said, again, the TV's built-in tuner shows around 10 channels perfectly crisp. But then, maybe the HVR's tuner is more sensitive.

The suggestions about 64k clusters and separate partitions: yes, I've been running a close to flawless sage system for years now. That said, my storage is spread across a network of several clients, all constributing storage space. I'm thinking maybe the server can't write HD files over the network fast enough. The fact that the stuttering/freezing doesn't start for about 10 seconds sounds like a buffer being filled to me.

Anyway, I'll play a little more. Who knows, maybe eopian has a point about missing something obvious.

Thanks again.

[pawn]

Originally Posted by pawn

I'm thinking maybe the server can't write HD files over the network fast enough. The fact that the stuttering/freezing doesn't start for about 10 seconds sounds like a buffer being filled to me.

And it looks like we have a weiner. I disabled my network drives and forced all recording to a drive local to the server, and it looks like I can dependably watch all or most channels. Too bad: I really don't want to lose the network space on my clients, but I can't see any way to force only tthe HD tuner to save locally.