New Zealand Cheap Dick Smiths tuner card someone got channel listingings ?

[obsidianjaguar]

I bought the cheapest Dick smiths no brand tuner card .. looks good on the sofware it came with , but when I use Sagetv the picture quality is "pixelated" .. there seems to be two soundtracks one is in synch and the other is about 3 seconds ahead of the video . If i mute the wav then one of the soundtracks goes away , but unforntuatly it is the one that is in synch with the video .. now if I pull the little wire out the back of the card that leads to my line in then the other soundtrack goes away and it is noticable that its only about 1 16th of a second out of synch ... if you want to see the card I got it is here
http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.sto...9861?id=stechp

now firstly I want to fix the problems .. or at least understand them .. second I am thinking of getting the haugpage 500 dual card to replace this one .. will that fix up the picture quality and the sound synching issues do you think?

Thirdly .. since I am in NEw Zealand , how do I Set up things like channel guid .. names of stations .. logos? XML I think ? sorry I am very new but thinking about spending money to get all this sorted out , but would be nice to get it done on the cheap if possible .. oh yeah I have tried Myth tv under linux and it doesnt even see this card and most PVR softwares dont see it under windows , but sage Tv did and so did beyond TV ...

[dgbruce]

Your card is an OEM version of the LifeView FlyTV Platinum (see http://www.lifeview.com.tw/html/prod..._platinum.htm).

The card is a software encoder card.... it depends on software to encode the video/audio into MPEG2 format so that SageTV can use it.

The fact that it is a software encoding card is the root of your problem... it adds much more processing load to your system requirements.... Most software encoding cards manage to achieve real-time encoding by using a low video decode quality (the signal decoded by the tuner section). It is virtually impossible to get good quality video from a software based TV card.
If you want to try, do a search in the hardware section for "software encoder" or "lifeview"... you may get some helpfull information.

The Hauppauge 500 dual card is a hardware encoding card, and will work MUCH better than any software encoding cards.

As far as channel guides and station names are concerned.... I can't help you with any of that (i'm half a world away... in Canada... but take a look here http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11671).... but the channel logos should be available from lyngsat-logos....

Good luck