Boil it down for me about HDTV

[visiontim]

OK, I've been running Sage 2.something for a few years now with zero problem, not a one. I've not upgraded because I haven't needed to as it did everything I wanted, just TV timeshifting and recording; I don't view images or listen to music or check weather or...you get the idea.

I now have a 42" LCD on the way and am thinking about digital channels. Right now I have Time Warner Digital (in NYC) and have access to several channels as part of my package.

The questions are... Does my Hauppauge 350 do anything special with digital channels? Will it just record them in the same resolution as SD? Will it be ANY better than SD?

I know the MPEG2 encoding takes away some clarity, but is it awful?

Thanks to those who can help me out with some answers!

[mayamaniac]

No, you don't have to do anything special to record digital channels. The signal from the cable company to your house is digital, but once it is fed into the digital cable box, the output to the TV or your PC is still analog via composite or S-Video cables. The only difference is you'll need a way to control the digital cable box from SageTV. There are several ways to do this depending on the brand and model of the cable box. For quality, if you set recording quality to max, it should be pretty good.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by mojotim

OK, I've been running Sage 2.something for a few years now with zero problem, not a one. I've not upgraded because I haven't needed to as it did everything I wanted, just TV timeshifting and recording; I don't view images or listen to music or check weather or...you get the idea.

I now have a 42" LCD on the way and am thinking about digital channels. Right now I have Time Warner Digital (in NYC) and have access to several channels as part of my package.

The questions are... Does my Hauppauge 350 do anything special with digital channels? Will it just record them in the same resolution as SD? Will it be ANY better than SD?

I know the MPEG2 encoding takes away some clarity, but is it awful?

Thanks to those who can help me out with some answers!

In case you're not already planning on it, may I heartily suggest that you actually use your HDTV for HD TV as well? Would you stand idly by if someone you knew had a color tv but only watched b&w shows on it?

[Juncti]

Having recently made a similar leap, I can say I'm pretty happy where I am so far. My only major problem has been rendering the captured video. I guess I've always had some interlacing problems, but when seeing them on HDTV content they really stand out. So I'm still trying to find some codec or combination that can render things properly.

The new Sage, I'm running the latest beta build, records and plays the HD and other content as reliably as I've come to expect.

[visiontim]

Well I did order a 1600 and plan on making a new rig at this point. I have to get a new STB from TW Cable too it seems.

Will the new version of Sage use my old versions watched shows info?

[malore]

Originally Posted by mojotim

Will the new version of Sage use my old versions watched shows info?

All the favorites and watched data is stored in the Wiz.bin file, which SageTV automatically updates to the latest version. Of course you have to transfer the wiz.bin file yourself if installing to a different location.

[visiontim]

Thanks malore.

I have another question, do I have to jump through hoops to get the HD channels with the HVR-1600 as described in the hardware section? I can currently see with my STB, in the upper channels, separate digital channels (NBC, ABC, etc.), will Sage use these channels in "digital" or do I have to still do the scanning an mapping thing?

[bialio]

In general, you will have to jump through hoops to get HD working. It's not a simple procedure yet - although it's getting better.

[visiontim]

Well I put together a new machine, imported my wiz file and got QAM working. It took hours and hours of debugging but it's done and football in HD has proven that it was all worth it. Thanks for the help

[steingra]

Originally Posted by visiontim

Well I put together a new machine, imported my wiz file and got QAM working. It took hours and hours of debugging but it's done and football in HD has proven that it was all worth it. Thanks for the help

Hi Visiontim, can you elaborate a little more on what you did, and how you did it. I am embarking down this path soon I think.

Thanks

[visiontim]

Do a search for my posts; I think that will be easier for you. The wiz file is the easiest step and I didn't even do that until I had everything else up and running.

[m1abrams]

Hope it is ok that I jump on this thread since I too am in a similar situation. I recently (this wekend) installed a Samsung 46" LCD (lnt-4665f). Up until now I have been using SageTV with my 32" SD CRT and have been very happy with the picture quality.

Course with the new TV you get to see HOW bad SD really is. I am using the NVIDIA PureVideo decoder, however I think I need to do some tweaking to get better SD quality. It currently showing alot of what I suspect to be ringing in the image and the colors are a bit dull. This is compared to feeding the cable straight to the TV bypassing SageTV.

So if anyone can point me in the right direction to improve my SD quality that would be great. My hardware is a Athlon X2 3800+, 512mb RAM, 2x PVR-150 cards being feed by Digital STB boxes, ATI 9600XT connected to TV via DVI->HDMI.

Does anyone think I should upgrade my video card for HDTV, or any other parts to better handle HD content? (note I am stuck with AGP slots do not want to upgrade the MB)

Next part what I discovered that most of the important HD channels are sent in the clear from Comcast (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc) so what is the recommended way to get that HD to my Sage box? Seems the HDhomerun and HVR-1600 are popular, leaning towards the HDhomerun.

Thank you for the help, if this should be its own thread would a mod please correct me.

[bialio]

The NVIDIA Purevideo drivers are good, however you won't get the full benefit from them with your ATI 9600XT. You might download PowerDVD from cyberlink and see if that decoder works better - it should be tuned towards both NVIDIA and ATI.

In my experience ATI does a better job with SD and NVIDIA does a better job with HD. I don't think that's necessarily the norm though.

Definately recommend the HDHomerun. I've got two and they work great.

btl.

[visiontim]

I was having crappy SD too until I did something I should have done a long time ago...I switched the incoming feed to my tuner card to s-video instead of coax. Wow, what a difference. SD is definitely passable now and really doesn't look bad at all.

I'm also using the Theatrix 650 for SD and HD right now so maybe that has something to do with the SD too. HDhomerun on its way (the HVR-1600 does better HD but the SD in the 650 does seem to be a lot better for me, they wont' work together for me either).

[kevine]

Originally Posted by visiontim

I'm also using the Theatrix 650 for SD and HD right now so maybe that has something to do with the SD too. .

You are using the Theatrix 650 for HD? Can you elaborate? Is it QAM? I only see 1 tuner with the latest drivers.

[visiontim]

Yes via QAM. You'll only see one tuner in Sage though. Set up the normal cable tuner then go add a new source and select the same tuner but choose Digital TV (I think that's what it says) and go through the standard QAM setup.

[kevine]

Originally Posted by visiontim

Yes via QAM. You'll only see one tuner in Sage though. Set up the normal cable tuner then go add a new source and select the same tuner but choose Digital TV (I think that's what it says) and go through the standard QAM setup.

You're awesome! Thanks.

[kevine]

visiontim,

could not get it working. I did as you said. I see 2 tuners there now but it found no channels. If find that hard to beleive. Anything else you can think of? What drivers are you using? Thanks.

[visiontim]

I used the drivers that came on the disk in the box. I'm not sure how "good" the QAM tuner is as I couldn't get half as much channels as the HDHR and the ones I did get were not super-quality. I ran mine through an amplifier that seemed to help but I actually disconnected QAM from this card and just rely on the HDHR for HD at this point. I recorded two HD streams and one SD stream last night without a hitch on a single SATA drive. Sweet.