"Tuner Decay" - Anyone Experiencing This?

[Savage1701]

I have Hauppauge and K-World tuner cards/sticks that have worked fine. I have good antennas and we are close to major markets.

I have noticed over the last year or so 3 of my tuner cards have stopped reliably tuning very strong stations. Others tune them just fine.

Rockford IL 13-1 was the first to go on SOME tuners. Now 47-1 out of Madison, WI is problematic but only on some tuners. There is such strong overlap that my Madison antenna can tune some of my Rockford stations, and vice-versa, so I don't think it's an antenna issue.

One thing I notice when I watch the channel setup area for a tuner is that while the tuner may be pegging at 95%-100%, it will then briefly spike down to 5%. I do not re-map. I have tried re-scans. My work-around is a seperate lineup for each ATSC tuner with all channels except the one(s) it won't tune. It's a pain. My HD-PVR, being fed by Dish, is NOT subject to any of this, by the way.

The net effect is tiling on recorded shows, which I have traced using recording detail to the offending tuners. Not enough to black the show out, but just enough to mess up the video and sound for a half second or so.

Anyone experienced this? I did get support instructions on how to literally clear the properties files of everything pertaining to tuners, but I am reluctant to take a sledge hammer to a finishing nail unless absolutely necessary.

[david1234]

Unless the tuner is failing for all channels, I don't see how it can be "wearing out." I would look first at the number of splitters going to the tuner, then at the signal itself.

[dcardellini]

Not clear from your post if it is confined to just the USB tuners, or to the internal card too.

I have four usb Hauppauge 950's (and three Firewire direct to STB's). I was having problems when I first rebuilt a new system (MB etc.) with tiling on the USB tuners (same tuners in previous build fine).

I moved the USB tuners to the MB-direct connected USB ports, and that solved my problem.

I think the power demand on these usb devices are pretty close to limit....and if your power supply drops even a tenth of a volt, you could start seeing problems.

....just an idea.

[Savage1701]

Yeah, first off, I agree - the tuner would have to be failing on all channels. This is what is throwing me.

Second - It is happening on both cards and USB sticks. I went to an NEC-based x1 4-port USB card exactly for those reasons - my MB has so many USB ports but I know power draw and controller competence can be issues. Some of the ports on my MB are great, and some are awful, so I went with a powered card.

Still, maybe it's worth swapping ports to see if things improve. But, the thing is, I have a PCI K-World card that is doing the same thing.

Well, I appreciate the comments. I'll keep plugging away at it. Thanks.

[vikingisson]

I've noticed a similar thing but I'm convinced that it is antenna related. In your case it seems even more sure. Things look right but the last time this happened I pulled it all down and cleaned up all connections and realigned, things were then back to normal. Canada just (finally) did the digital switch so once again OTA went through changes and hiccups. I'll be doing an antenna check once more before winter. My local channels are sometimes flaky but the much farther away NY channels are fine.

[Serra]

I had exactly that problem with my system. I had my antenna located in my attic for about a year with no issues. Then I started getting issues, pinned it down to the antenna, so I move the antenna outside. It worked fine there for 6-8 months and the issues returned, so relocated it higher. That worked fine for 6-8 months. Recently I started getting issues again, so I replaced my splitter, all of my cables and everything, including a new/additional tuner and nothing helped. I had to move my antenna again to the top of my roof.

I swear that the signals are getting weaker or something.

[Savage1701]

Yes, I know that as the elements oxidize the overall effect will be that the antenna loses its ability to pull in signals.

I just was not considering it with this one because it is only a couple years old, and it is borderline oversized for the furthest market I pull (Madison, WI), about 40-50 miles away as the crow flies, and my installer made me promise not to hold him responsible for overloading if I pointed it at my closest market (Rockford, IL), about 15 miles away as the crow flies.

I could swap out the splitter and cables, but moving the antenna would be a real b***h as it is mounted on my roof and only that part of my roof has a clear north-south line of sight (Rockford and Madison are on virtually reciprocal headings from where I live).

But, I do appreciate the suggestions. Maybe the amp and/or cables and/or connectors are getting wonky on me. Hard to nail down when it affects different ATSC tuners differently with different channels.

Thanks.

[trallyus]

I had the same problem with my tuners not pulling in certain channels and ended up uninstalling sage tv and removing all of the sage tv directory and then reinstalled sage tv as well as the wiz.bin file.

Now all my channels tune in with no problem. The only thing that is changed in the reinstalled sage tv is for the H.264 video decoder I now have it set to default and no longer am using CoreAVC 3.01 which may have been my problem in the first place.

Trallyus

[mikel]

I've had several USB based tuners 'decay' as well as a PCI card. I'm pretty sure it's been the hardware, because if I just swap them out with a new tuner things started working fine.. and it only happened 1 tuner at a time.

I don't think the tuners we are putting in Sage were designed for such long term usage.. The tuners that went bad had been used for 2-3 years before showing the decay.

[MacDaddy]

FWIW. In addition to my HD-PVRs, I have two HDHRs. One is attached to Comcast cable for clear QAM locals and one is OTA using an attic mounted antenna. The QAM HDHR never seems to drift, but I have been engaged in an ongoing "whack-a-mole" game with Comcast as they shift transmission around. The OTA HDHR produced an interesting result with the local FOX affiliate. I found that on occasion, the local FOX transmission would pixelate badly and drop sound (all others tuned fine). I would usually find out about this after the fact during replay. I could re-scan and get back to a good signal. Eventually it would get bad again and I finally gave up and dropped it from the OTA lineup.

I live about 5 miles from the HD antenna farm in Houston. I get the ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS feeds rock steady. My guess is that perhaps the FOX transmitter may be doing the actual "drifting", but I don't have a way to test and confirm.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by mikel

I don't think the tuners we are putting in Sage were designed for such long term usage.. The tuners that went bad had been used for 2-3 years before showing the decay.

FWIW, I have a DVICO Fusion5 Gold, as well as an BBTT AirStar HD5000 that were 6 years old that worked fine. I took them out of service only because I updated to a newer motherboard with fewer PCI slots. These 6 year old LG-DT3303 based cards perform far better for OTA than the HDHR I was planning to replace them with.

Drew

[trallyus]

Before I uninstalled sage tv and reinstalled it, most of my tuner decay was caused by a crappy coaxial cable that after I replaced it with a new better cable I have no more tuner decay.

My old coaxial cable would loosen up for some reason eventually and then my tuners would display no signal and after replacing the cable and doing what I posted previously in this thread my tuner decay seems to have gone away so far. Knock on wood
Trallyus

[mtpudelko]

Though not familiar with tuning antenna or QAM using a Hauppauge tuner, I experienced a similar issue with an HDHR+QAM. I'd get pixellated recordings on several channels, noticeably worse on the CBS affiliate. It was worse when it was raining, too. Viewing the same signal through the HDHR setup application revealed a signal that was occasionally dropping out. It would for maybe a second or so go from 90%ish signal quality to like 70%. Pulling out a splitter made it somewhat better but still there was the annoying occasional drop in signal quality and pixelation/dropouts. My $40 solution was to buy this amp, and the signal has been perfect ever since: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000066E6Y

Regards,
Mike