Lost in the Sage

[bjterry62]

I am having some issues with my recently assembles Sage box. Hardware specs are:

Antec NSK2400
MSI K8NGM-FID Socket 939
Athlon 64 3200+
1x Hitachi 2.5" hdd
1x WD 400gb hdd
2x 512 Kingston PC3200
Hauppauge PVR-500
Windows XP Pro SP2
Sage
nVidia Purevideo Decoder
DX 9c
On-board sound and video w/
all the most recent drivers

My problem is with Live TV. No matter how I tweak the settings, I cannot get a viewable picture. I mean it's REALLY bad. Like watching tv through 10' of blizzard. I'm feeding the PVR-500 through coax coming straight from the wall with only one splitter between it and the outside. I can get perfect picture from my older DVR that uses another PVR program, so I know it's not the signal. I even loaded Sage onto that box to see if I had the same problem, and I did. So I'm convinced that I have it configured wrong. I've tested the PVR-500 with WinTV and it works fine. So, I don't think it's the card.

As listed above, I have tried all nVidia video drivers (9) from 84.12 to 91.33 and all have the same result. I tried every combination of Video Renderer, MPEG2 Decoder, Audio Renderer & MPEG2 Audio Decoder that are available with every series of the drivers. I'm at my wits end. What am I missing.

Frustrated

[emok]

Have you set the tuner in sage to use the correct signal type? (air versus cable)

Have you tried using the hauppauge WinTV software that comes with the PVR500 to try tuning channels?

If it works, with WinTV, then it's probably sage configuration.

If not, it could be the Hauppauge drivers or a bad PVR500.

edit: oops.. i didnt' see your last line "I've tested the PVR-500 with WinTV and it works fine. ". Sorry...

[Mahoney]

Is it this issue?
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=19140

[bjterry62]

Yes, I have it set up for cable and it actually found all of the channels I usually get. It's just that they are completely unviewable. Extreme static! As I was going through all of the nVidia drivers last night, I would occassionally see some pixelization, but I could work that out if I could just figure out what is causing the lousy reception.

BT

[bjterry62]

Mahoney -

I'm not sure. You describe it as screen corruption and that it happens shortly after loading. Mine is instantaneous and it really just looks like static except that the audio is okay and you can barely make out the video beneath the static. I tried LOTS of video drivers with no success. I am going to try again with my other box (Biostar MB) and see if it is a Ge4force 6150 issue. If so, I will just switch MBs.

BT

[Mahoney]

I'm not sure what you mean by static, but a 6150 with all the latest drivers sounds like the same situation as me. According to that thread it is not the video drivers that are the problem but the forceware ones. And did you try my "solution"?

Edit - false info, it's the video drivers you need to use the MSI versions of, not the chipset apparently.

[MeInMaui]

bjterry62,

This sounds just like having the cable connected to the FM input on the pvr-500, except that you said it works with WinTV. Hmm... I think the first thing to do is to establish if this is a recording or a playback issue. Try opening one of your recordings in another player like windows media player or the free version of zoom player. If the playback is snowy outside of sageTV, then you are dealing with a recording problem, which is most likely signal related. That will help direct you to the right place to look.

Edit: Another thought is maybe one of the tuners on the pver-500 is bad. Try starting a recording and then try watching live tv on another channel. Are both pictures snowy, or just one of them?

Aloha,
Mike

[tmiranda]

I had this problem once and solved it by rescanning for all the channels on all the tuners. Go to Setup->Setup Video Sources-> (select tuner) ->Channel Setup->Scan for All Available Channels.

[bjterry62]

Mahoney,

Ahhhh, I didn't think about the chipset drivers. I'll check those tonight (if hockey doesn't interfere). I'll revisit your post.

Thanks,

BT

[bjterry62]

MeInMaui -

I pretty positive I have it connected to the proper input (second one from the top), it is marked TV. I played some recordings back in Sage and they looked the same as LiveTV, but I didn't try any other MP. Will try tonight.

Snowy on both tuners.


tmiranda _

Tried rescanning several times with no luck.

Thanks all,

BT

[emok]

Actually, in the post above, I was referring to the graphics drivers which ARE the "Forceware" drivers (as opposed to the nforce MOBO drivers). I AM using the latest nforce drivers from nvidia, but to avoid the screen corruption issue on my K8NGM2-FID, I'm using the nvidia 82.05 graphics drivers.

Although from your description, it doesn't seem like it's the same issue we're seeing with screen corruption.

Can you attach a picture of what you're seeing?

[Mahoney]

Sorry, ballsed up my understanding of it - ignore my post.

[emok]

It's what happens when they "force" us to deal with all these similar words.

Sorry, it's been a long day. It would definitely be nice if I need to use a old version to get things working right. I guess that applies the JRE, too.