ATI HD 650 Combo PCIe -- QAM Working!

[null_pointer_us]

(Yes, I know the 650 PCIe is unsupported for QAM in SageTV.)

Out of curiosity I connected cable (no antenna) to the DTV port and set the 650 up as a digital cable source. The channel scan revealed about 110 channels, including most of the digital SD channels and even a few HD channels like Fox 5.

This worked out of the box; no changes were needed.

All my previous attempts to get digital input had failed with zero digital channels.

Remapping all the channels to the proper stations was easy but very time-consuming.

HD quality looks great so far. SD is so-so. I guess this is mostly due to the way the video is originally transcoded/distributed by the cable company.

Has anyone else tried ATI HD QAM recently?

In theory, the 650 Combo PCIe should support simultaneous use of both its analog and digital channels, but I haven't tried this yet. Maybe tomorrow...

[null_pointer_us]

Ah, I found and fixed these issues with my setup.


Issue #1 - Sluggish Playback, Artifacts, and Dropped Frames

Symptoms:

• Playback of video from Cartoon Network/Adult Swim has quite a few hiccups.
• Also, the SageTV menus and 3D windows are extremely sluggish.
• CPU usage hovers around 20-30% during typical MPEG-2/SD playback.

Cause:

I had D3DOverrider running in the background.

For some reason, it caused problems with these digital recordings but not with my previous analog recordings.

Fix:

Open D3DOverrider and create an exception for SageTV.exe with Triple Buffering set to OFF.

Issue #2 - Slow Channel Tuning

Symptoms:

• Channel tuning takes 2-3 seconds everytime.

Cause:

Apparently SageTV tries to rescan a QAM channel everytime it is tuned.

Fix:

Find the folder where you installed SageTV, then create an empty text file named:

QAM_FRQ_CACHE.ENABLE

To make sure there is no .txt extension appended to the file name, enclose the file name in quotation marks (like this: "QAM_FRQ_CACHE.ENABLE") while saving.

[vince100]

What OS were you using?

I'd very like to hear a success story under xp, because so far there was none.

[MitchSchaft]

I wish this would work for the regular PCI version.

[null_pointer_us]

Whoa, I did not notice the replies.

The OS in use was Vista 64-bit. It also seems to work under Windows 7 64-bit.

Why would it be different for the regular PCI version?

[MitchSchaft]

It doesn't have qam capability.

[jryan15]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

In theory, the 650 Combo PCIe should support simultaneous use of both its analog and digital channels, but I haven't tried this yet. Maybe tomorrow...

null_pointer_us, did you have any success in utilizing both tuners simultaneously? I've got two of the same card and can get all four tuners to record at the same time even though they are setup as 4 different sources.


edit: sorry, i forgot that you had chimed in on my previous thread... i just wonder if there is a way to modify a properties file to trick sage into thinking that two tuners are installed instead of the one...

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by jryan15

null_pointer_us, did you have any success in utilizing both tuners simultaneously? I've got two of the same card and can get all four tuners to record at the same time even though they are setup as 4 different sources.

I thought it was working, but my memory's a little fuzzy. Perhaps I was thinking of the 550 PCI card that was installed simultaneously for a while. SageTV probably just assumes that the two tuners are a single hybrid tuner (1 analog/digital), not a dual tuner (1 analog + 1 digital). Sorry, I'm not familiar with how SageTV detects this stuff.

[jryan15]

Is there any way to trick sage with property or registry changes, or is this a core sage issue meaning that we are stuck waiting for sage to support the dual tuners? I wonder if it would be worth while for me to request support from sage.

[MitchSchaft]

It's a hardware issue on the ATI card instead of a Sage issue.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

It's a hardware issue on the ATI card instead of a Sage issue.

No, the HD 650 Combo PCI-E has a combo tuner for simultaneous recording of analog and digital:

* Watch analog TV while recording digital TV at the same time, with Combo tuner functionality

Other Theater 650-based products without the word Combo in the name have only a hybrid tuner, which can record either analog or digital but not both simultaneously.

EDIT: Confusing, eh? This is what happens when marketing reuses a chip model number for a slew of products with fundamentally different feature sets. Check out the product matrix to see how weird it gets.

[MitchSchaft]

Doh, I'll shut up then .
I know that card isn't supported by Sage, so you might have troubles when you ask 'em for help. There's a list of support cards somewhere.

[gilded07]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

(Yes, I know the 650 PCIe is unsupported for QAM in SageTV.)

Out of curiosity I connected cable (no antenna) to the DTV port and set the 650 up as a digital cable source. The channel scan revealed about 110 channels, including most of the digital SD channels and even a few HD channels like Fox 5.

This worked out of the box; no changes were needed.

All my previous attempts to get digital input had failed with zero digital channels.

Remapping all the channels to the proper stations was easy but very time-consuming.

HD quality looks great so far. SD is so-so. I guess this is mostly due to the way the video is originally transcoded/distributed by the cable company.

Has anyone else tried ATI HD QAM recently?

In theory, the 650 Combo PCIe should support simultaneous use of both its analog and digital channels, but I haven't tried this yet. Maybe tomorrow...

null_pointer - can you tell me what drivers you're using for the 650? I'm on XP Home but have had zero success finding any unencrypted clear QAM channels (HDHR finds 8 just fine).

[SnakeJG]

What does your 650 show up as in your setup? Mine appears as "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" and I'm worried it is not finding the digital needed.

Update: the ATI AVStream Analog Capture was what I wanted, QAM works!

[gilded07]

What does your 650 show up as in your setup? Mine appears as "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" and I'm worried it is not finding the digital needed.

Update: the ATI AVStream Analog Capture was what I wanted, QAM works!

I returned it for a full refund. It showed up as ATI AVStream Analog Capture but never found QAM channels. I'm still just using the HDHR.

[IConver]

Sorry for being out of touch... I was out of the country for over a year, but I definitely had success tuning QAM channels with my PCI 650 tuner using Windows XP. My old posts on the subject are at: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31437

[MitchSchaft]

Excellent. Thanks for coming back.