First time setup - anolog cable signal looks real poor

[paulbeers]

I am just going to throw this out since I didn't see anything mentioned (could have missed it though), but what about your cables?, card seated well?, etc.? I know that the drivers helped a little, but one of the things I have noticed, is that originally I was using a RG59 cable from my splitter to my PVR500, and that was awful. I switched to a RG6 and that helped a lot. I have also noticed that if I am not careful that even my RG6 cable will receive interference from my powercord if the two come close or touch. Right now I make sure that both my power cord and my coax cable run opposite directions (I plug my computer in to the power outlet to the left of the server and my coax runs to the right). This helped me a lot. Personally I am not a huge fan of my PVR500. If I were to do it all over again I would get one of the Nvidia dual tuners since they have an internal booster from what I have read. Obviously that statement helps neither one of us now!

Edit: Just realised I didn't even mention the part about the card being seated well. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that you will get jagged lines on the pvr500 also if the card is not seated well in the PCI slot.

[vorius]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

I am just going to throw this out since I didn't see anything mentioned (could have missed it though), but what about your cables?, card seated well?, etc.? I know that the drivers helped a little, but one of the things I have noticed, is that originally I was using a RG59 cable from my splitter to my PVR500, and that was awful. I switched to a RG6 and that helped a lot. I have also noticed that if I am not careful that even my RG6 cable will receive interference from my powercord if the two come close or touch. Right now I make sure that both my power cord and my coax cable run opposite directions (I plug my computer in to the power outlet to the left of the server and my coax runs to the right). This helped me a lot. Personally I am not a huge fan of my PVR500. If I were to do it all over again I would get one of the Nvidia dual tuners since they have an internal booster from what I have read. Obviously that statement helps neither one of us now!

Edit: Just realised I didn't even mention the part about the card being seated well. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that you will get jagged lines on the pvr500 also if the card is not seated well in the PCI slot.

Only with the newer drivers do I see the jagged lines on some channels. Especially channel 2 seems to be the worst. Once I installed the 23348 drivers that went away and the problem now is excessive noise. It's a big difference between the drivers, and I'm surprised the older drivers were the ones to give me much better results.

As for the cable itself, I honeslty don't know if it is RG6 or RG59. I do do a good job though of avoiding running the cable along high voltage power cables whenever possible, and if I do have to come accross them I try to make perpenticular intersections. I'm reffering to the cable I installed in the walls too.

Trying to re-seat the card is not something I tried yet, but I certainly could give that a try when I get home.

[paulbeers]

And to be honest, I am just throwing out just a few ideas of things that I have had to watch/do. It very well could be a driver issue/bad card type thing. Like I stated, I am not a big fan of my PVR500. It needs a really good signal. I get such poor reception at my house that my PVR500 has been regulated to pulling down OTA analog signals since I am only a couple miles from the tv towers. My Avermedia PVR150 Plus's are used for all of my analog cable. They seem to handle my poor signal better even with a splitter right before them that should degrade the signal to approximately the same as the PVR500.

[vorius]

Are there any web sites out there which compare these TV Tuners - how well they handle analog signals perhaps? I would love to just look for a new tuner and try to have this one returned for a refund.

paulbeers, do you have any experience with the nVidia dual tuner?

[paulbeers]

I do not. I have enough Tuners, and using my PVR500 for what it is doing is working well enough that I have other things I can spend my 150 bucks on. This is the thread that was created quite some time ago.....

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ht=Nvidia+Dual

The only limitation to this is that it appears the current drivers do not allow for more than 1 of these cards to be put into a system at a time.

[vorius]

Apparently there are two types of PVR-500s, some types have a new tuner and other people are complaining about their PQ being grainy, just like what I am experiencing.

this thread talks about it

It looks like I have the "type b" card, and I'm trying to get it RMA'd to hauppauge. I'm really disappointed with Hauppauge service. They had me on hold for an hour then it switched to some answering machine thing which asked me to leave a message and phone # and they will get back to me... that was like 4 business days ago...