Poor Video Quality on One Video Card

[danward79]

Hi

I have a problem, I run two tuner card a Hauppauge 250 & 350, both run from antenna input. I use the sonic cinemaster codec, and sb Audigy direct sound output digital output, recording at 3.5gb/hr

The problem is that recordings from tuner 1 are always poor video quality with pretty bad macro blocking. all recordings from tuner 2 are fine.

I have dvxa enabled, and they are definately using hardware encoding, my CPU usage is between 18 - 20% with both recording

has anyone got any ideas for improving quality on the poor tuner?

Anyhelp would be much appreciated.

Dan

[carlgar]

This is a well known problem that at one time frey was working on. It is very unclear as to the current status since they have not replied to my post! See my post Clarification from Frey wantet concerning 350 and 250 issues for infomation about issues and my work around.

[ErsatzTom]

It seems to me that shouldn't be all that hard to boil that work around down into a small program that could be launched at startup, before SageTV. Perhaps it is as simple as changing the output settings on the card. I'm not really a windows guy so I'm not familiar with the API's but maybe someone else is?

[edmc]

This doesn't sound like a 350 vs. 250 issue. My suspicion is that you are running with different Contrast/Brightness/etc... settings on the two cards.

Try this:

1 - In the Guide, select a currently airing program to record
2 - Now go view it (i.e. select it in the Guide and "watch" it)
3 - Go to Detailed Setup->Multimedia and select the capture settings button
4 - Alt-Tab to bring the Hauppauge Control dialog to the front (it's tricky)
5 - Adjust the Contrast etc... as desired (mine are: B=90,C=40,H=-5,Sat.=70,Sharp=-2)
6 - Go back to the guide and select ANOTHER currently airing program to record
----- This requires you to continue letting the 1st tuner/program continue recording
----- Now go thru steps 2-5 again to set the parameters for the 2nd tuner

My suspicion can be verified by simply noting the settings you see when viewing them in step 4 for each. If they are different, I think you've found the problem...

Why do I suspect this? The MPEG-2 Encoder seems to be very sensitive to the Saturation and Contrast settings. By dialing back these from whatever Sage or Hauppauge thinks is a good default, I was able to significantly improve my picture.

Best of luck to you - hope this helps!

[edmc]

Oh, and one more thing... I also was able to help my capture quality by inserting a 10dB signal booster in the antenna before a Y to my 2 PVR-250s. Perhaps you've got a -15 chip on one and a -16 chip on the other and they have different sensitivities (i.e. only your 2nd card is able to use the lower
powered input with quality).

[carlgar]

Edmc, assuming that you are correct about this problem. Would the cards remember the new settings with a complete power off or would they need to be reset on every reboot?
BTW: This is first time I have seen any kind of resonable cause for this problem given.

[danward79]

I noted the same thing about the saturation, brightness and contrast. Surely as i have set that up once the same settings should be used for both cards?? I will try it out tonoght.

I already use an aerial amplifier, I don't like those y-adapters so I got an amp, with 6db gain which effectively dounbles each output.

The funny thing is that the 350 is the -15 chip and is the one with better quality, the -16 is the 250.

Anyway cheers for the responces I will try them out when I get home. after work, if I get home at a reasonable hour....

Dan

[mlbdude]

Hauppauge has all kinds of issues with mixed 16 and 15 machines. Software like Sage and SnapStream will hopefully pressure them to fix this.

Since each card is using a different driver set, you would have to modify their setting separately since they store them in different registry locations. I am skeptical that this is your problem but let us know.

Has anyone out there gotten a 350 (15) to work well with a 250 (15) - not including the other 350 tv out issue?

[carlgar]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Has anyone out there gotten a 350 (15) to work well with a 250 (15) - not including the other 350 tv out issue?

Once I do my manual initialization, I find the recording to be very exceptable with my 350 and two 250's. On occasion, one of my 250 cards go back to the poor recording, but I believe that may be due to my running of the defragmenter with Sage recording. Before starting testing with the deframenter I ran for a couple of weeks without any recording problems.