Please Help with Bad Picture Quality!

[COLO_PVR_GUY]

OK, I have done a lot of searching and nothing seems to help improve my picture quality. First off, my setup is:

Dedicated Server, Intel 3.2Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, WinXP Pro, PVR-150, HVR-1600, nVidia 7300gt, PureVideo Decoder, record quality set to 3.2GB/hr. The HVR-1600 is a recent addition and is currently only being used for analog tuning. I'm running Sage V6.1.9. I'm watching on a Panasonic 42" 720p HDTV and it's connected via S-Video.

The picture quality is so bad, my wife won't watch it. She thinks VHS looks as good as DVD. Every channel is like watching home movies on 8mm. I swear I'm not exaggerating.

I thought maybe the PVR-150 may have been part of the problem, so I thought I would try the HVR-1600. The picture quality is the same. The picture looks great when watching ripped DVD's and even downloaded TV episodes. The picture is only bad through the tuners, which leads me to believe that everything between the hard drives and the TV is OK. I have spent a lot of time trying the freqshifter application that has been suggested by some in the past, but the picture never got better. Originally, the cable came into the house and was distributed to the TV sets and Sage server through an OnQ 3X8 powered video distribution box with no addtional splitters anywhere. I have since split the incoming cable line with a plain-Jane, unamplified splitter to put the Sage server in before the OnQ, just incase that amplification was causing some kind of interference. That didn't help.

If I don't get a better picture soon, I'll be forced to scrap the Sage system and go back to VCR's. Oh, how I dread the thought...

I would certainly welcome any comments or help of any kind.

Thanks in advance.

[bcjenkins]

How does the pq look when connected to a TV? What driver versions are you using for the PVR cards? Did it look good before the 1600?

B

[Lucas]

I initially did not read the post completely. It seems that it's your tuners. Possibly bad signal.

[Apap]

If the problem is with your PVR 150 then you can try tweaking it with the Hauppauge Tweak Tool. Instructions can be found here.

It helped with my PVR 500 some,but it took some experimenting.

Good Luck
Apap

[95TBird]

OK, so you say that the picture is good when watching ripped DVDs & other sources. So it would appear that your problem is your cable. Have you tried running just a single cable, directly from where it enters your house to the cable input of the 1600 & see how it looks??

If it does turn out to be a cable issue there is an excellent FAQ here...

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/cabletech

PS.. I'm in Berthoud, CO send me a PM if there is anything I can do to help !!

[COLO_PVR_GUY]

In answer to BC, the quality was bad from the start (with only the PVR-150). The incoming cable quality is just fine when I run the coax directly to the TV, it's only when I watch through the TV through the tuner cards in the Sage that looks like crap. DVD's, ripped DVD's, and other downloaded video look great through Sage to the TV, so I'm having a hard time believing it's a Sage-->TV connector cable quality problem. I had the Sage server right next to the TV with a 3 foot S-video cable while my 25 foot S-video cable was on order and the quality was just as poor then. Since then, I have moved the box to the basement and hooked it up with a new, reasonably high-quality S-video cable. No change in picture quality.

On the PVR-150, I'm running driver version 2.0.48.25037. The HVR-1600 is running 1.62.25129.0. I'm not sure what they were running before, but I spent the better part of the night getting these new ones loaded. While I was working out the boot problems that I was having after the drivers got loaded and I installed the latestes Windows updates, I hooked a 15" CRT to the Sage server, made it my primary display, and disconnected the TV. The picture was bad on the monitor too.

As Lucas suggested, the PC display resolution was set to 1024x768. I changed this to 720x480, but that didn't seem to help. I found that the flicker filter was set to 127, so I moved it back to 0. That may have actually made things a bit worse. The Sage menus now look a little funny.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

[Yooper]

I've found that the video cards are a lot more sensitive to cable signal quality than a regular TV. I had to move my video server as close to the cable source as possible and I run the cable directly into the server without any splitters. A splitter reduces the signal strength in half. One splitter can make a difference.

As far as the hardware and software - there seems to be about 10,000 parameters that affect the quality of the picture. Any one can cause the problem. At first I was frustrated by this, just as you are, but I eventually succeeded. I now get a lot of satisfaction about achieving a great picture - and I learned a lot along the way.

This stuff is still not an "unpack box, hook-up and go" experience.

[Polypro]

What nVIDIA drivers are you on? I'd try the latest beta (163.44?) and see if that helps. If it's an option, I'd try Vista Business with an nVIDIA 8x series card. The difference blew me away, and I was pretty happy with XP Pro & a 7950GT...but try the latest drivers and see if it helps.

P

[sshapiro63]

Try adjusting the TV flicker filter within the Nvidia control panel application to a very low setting. That should improve the sharpness.

Steve