Thinking of replacing tuner card on my SageTV

[TechBill]

Right now I am using Hauppauge PVR-500 dual tuner and 2 DirecTV boxes to it via composite cables.

The PVR-500 give a good picture but it look a little washed out expecially in the animate shows so I am thinking about replacing it for a better picture quailty which that offer more crisp in colors. When I hook Directv box directly to the TV the picture is sharp and crisp in colors but when it going thur the Tuner/SageTV the color look a bit washed out.

I do not need HDTV tuner just an analog tuner card with excellent picture quailty via either s-video or composite since I will be using Directv but closed caption support is a MUST and will work in SageTV. It also need to have R/L audio in as well too.

So I am asking for recommendations on tuner card but probably would like to stay with Hauppauge due to it's excellent Closed Caption support if any of their other models have better picture quailty than the PVR-500 via composite or s-video.

Thank you for your inputs.
Bill

[ke6guj]

If you want to stay iwth Haupauge (which you will have to do to keep CC since there aren't any other brand's other analog tuners that do Sage-style CC that I know of), I think your only choices would be going with a newer HVR card like the 1600 (you'd need 2 of them). IIRC, some people have claimed better PQ with the newer cards.

There was a problem iwth some PVR-500's having poor PQ when Hauppauge temporarily changed tuner manufacturers, but I think that only affected the coax tuner input, not for the s-vid/composite inputs.

I think the HVR cards will do CC on the analog side, and if you were to hook up an OTA antenna on the digital side, you may be able to even do native CC on OTA recordings as well ( PowerDVD and WinDVD decoders seem to be able to display digitally-embedded CC, nVIdia Purevideo doesn't).

You have tried messing with the tuner adjustments to see if you can clean up the recordings?

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by ke6guj

If you want to stay iwth Haupauge (which you will have to do to keep CC since there aren't any other brand's other analog tuners that do Sage-style CC that I know of), I think your only choices would be going with a newer HVR card like the 1600 (you'd need 2 of them). IIRC, some people have claimed better PQ with the newer cards.

There was a problem iwth some PVR-500's having poor PQ when Hauppauge temporarily changed tuner manufacturers, but I think that only affected the coax tuner input, not for the s-vid/composite inputs.

I think the HVR cards will do CC on the analog side, and if you were to hook up an OTA antenna on the digital side, you may be able to even do native CC on OTA recordings as well ( PowerDVD and WinDVD decoders seem to be able to display digitally-embedded CC, nVIdia Purevideo doesn't).

You have tried messing with the tuner adjustments to see if you can clean up the recordings?

No I haven't try using tuner adjustment yet since I am not sure where I can go adjust it but I'll google it tonight and do some reading on it.

Yeah I am aware of this tuner chipset that Hauppauge changed and I got the one with Phillip chipset which suppose to be the best one to use. I might have to try the s-video next to see if there any difference and see what kind of adjustment I can make on it.

The picture is fairly sharp but the color is like faded a bit or like there too much contrast maybe? It could be my video card that need adjusting but when I play it on my computer monitor it look the same as it does on TV set.

I been thinking about getting 1600 too

Bill

[Apap]

You could try Amontillado's Hauppauge Tweaker
Link.

It helped me improve the image quality some on my PVR 500.


Good Luck
Apap

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by Apap

You could try Amontillado's Hauppauge Tweaker
Link.

It helped me improve the image quality some on my PVR 500.


Good Luck
Apap

Nice .. I will give that software a try.

I googled and found some reviews on the 1600 and it seem folks are not giving a too good review on the 1600 so I think Ill stick with the PVR500 for now and try to tweak it.


Bill

[Djc208]

Definitally look at the video drivers, they usually offer a lot of modifications to color and picture quality in the advanced settings.
Also look at the TV settings, most newer TVs have seperate memories for each input, so the picture settings for the PC input could be different from those you're seeing when the box is hooked up to a different input directly.