Sasem OnAir USBHDTV (QAM enabled)

[Stealth1971]

For those of you interested in a QAM capable HD Receiver besides the DVICO Fusion hardware- I received my Sasem OnAir unit last week (USB2 HD Receiver). I thought I would at least post my findings so far.

My setup:
PVR250, Sasem OnAir,
Athlon XP 2600, 512MB DDR, 60GB storage (soon to be 250GB)
NVidia GForce 5600, NForce 3.0 sound/digital coax out.
Samsung RP DLP 50Inch via DVI

Software:
Their player application is CPU INTENSIVE! 60-80% on my Athlon 2600 and is not very intuitive. I can't figure out if it is using the right DS filters. However, the analog MPEG encoder is recognized by STV and works fine as another analog tuner for my STV config. Their app has no EPG either. They currently seem to be slow on software updates. Lastly, I haven't got a chance to use the included remote.

Hardware:
The form factor and chassis are nice, but there is noise coming through in the analog audio and most of QAM HD channels are not tuning right (I get 2 out of 10). I have read that the power supply is the source of noise - So I imagine that it is affecting all signals. The power supply requires a 5V 1A source; so I am going to attempt to power the unit from a PC switching power supply to see if my noise issues are resolved. It seemed well vented and didn't produce much heat.

Next steps:
- Fix Power supply
- Find the HD DS filter source and manipulate in a filter graph
- Test IR Remote
- I plan on trying to at least controlling the HD recording through STV - some magic coding somewhere/somehow. (If you can't code with it - code around it)

Anyways thought this might be of interest to the HDTV owners like myself.

[Cayars]

STV = ???

[Stealth1971]

STV = SageTV - I thought that was a common abbreviation - my bad...

[edmc]

The reason STV might be confusing is that is the acronym for the "skinning" efforts made possible by Sage Studio you might have seen around.

As for the Sasem box, I have had mine for several months now and rely on it completely for my HD experience. Little/no success on using it as a PVR though. I can't seem to get it to record a program and not mess with any other app wanting to display video (e.g. SageTV or ZoomPlayer) simultaneously. So I'm limited to Live HD only. Of course it does have a Pause Live TV feature (only for HD) which comes in very handy. Can't say I could do without this feature I've become very dependent upon.

Re the use of the Analog portion of the Sasem box. True, SageTV does "see" it, but I've had varying success from build to build. I'm not particularly pleased with the tuning abilities of the Analog portion of the Sasem box either. I currently only have a single unamplified signal going into the Sasem box. Amplification has bad effects on the QAM HD section, so I don't have an amplifier there. As such, the Analog tuning suffers greatly. My PVR-250, for instance, has a 10dB amp in line with the 4-way split cable coming out of the wall - this was necessary to get the PVR-250 to be acceptable in my case, so I'm not really faulting the Sasem...

Of course we'd all love to see SageTV suport the Sasem. Many have speculated this will require BDA driver support from Sasem as well as SageTV. So I've put in my request to Sasem for just that support.

[sudipto]

edmc: Can you comment on how sensitive the HD tuner is on the Sasem box ? If you have owned the MDP-120 or AccessDTV (or any other HD card) could you please compare the tuner sensitivity of the Sasem box to any of these.

Thanks !

[edmc]

sudipto,

I can't compare the Sasem's sensitivity to either the MDP-120 nor AccessDTV - nor to any other card for OTA reception. My only reception option is Cable (QAM-256). As for that, only the DViCo F3Q-class PCI Cards and the Sasem box support QAM-256. In my experience, the DViCo F3Q was very senstitive to overly strong signals. I found that I had to *not* amplify the heavily split (6-way, I recall) cable to get even a couple of QAM-256 stations to work on the DViCo. I've never had a problem with the Sasem box, however, but that is likely due to never having amplified the cable going to the Sasem box (having learned my lesson with the DViCo F3Q). In any event, for me anyway, the Sasem box is far superior in tuning unencrypted QAM-256 vs. the DViCo F3Q.