sound problems on channels 2-9

[Purple]

I have a funky problem and I don’t know if the issue is software or hardware…

Basically channels 2 through 9 have a buzz/static sound on the audio. This problem does not occur when I watch the same channels on a normal TV directly from cable but they do happen on every channel when watching with SageTV. This problem does not happen with other channels – just the first 10 or so.

My TV capture card is a Hauppauge PVR 250.

Any suggestions? As luck would have it, the channel I watch the most is 9, so this is a major pain for me.

[mls]

The channels 2 - 13 for standard broadcast (and most analog cable) are in the VHF range. As such they are susseptable to many forms of interference.

However, the sound is FM (rather than AM like the video), so normally the picture would have problems, not the sound. This makes me wonder if maybe the tuner card is picking up something else from within the computer.

Is the tuner card next to any other card that is known to be a possible source of extra hash such as the video card or a hard drive controller card? If so, try moving it to a different slot.

You could also try re-arranging the cables going in/out of the computer, but I doubt if that would help much with the audio side of things (however, it often does make a difference with the video).

Other than that (for now anyway) only other thing I can think of that might be causing the problem is a bad tuner card. Several others have had bad tuner cards and had to return them. Not saying that you do, but is possible.

[Purple]

I have let this problem go for a while and now that I am looking at it again, it is REALLY bugging me. I have also determined that the only channel with sound problems is channel 9. The picture isn’t great on the others but I can live with that. The sound is a real nuisance.

I tried rearranging the cards inside. An easy tasks that Windows2000 makes unnecessarily difficult with having to reinstall drivers each time. I have 3 cards – a 4200ti video card, a linksys wireless network card and the Hauppauge PVR250. I bought a 5-slot motherboard so no card is next to another; each one has at least 1 PCI slot in between.

Sadly, this did not fix the problem although removing the network card did lessen the sound problem. Not good news since I need a wireless network and the USB version I tried originally did not work properly with my Linksys router; the internal one worked fine.

I also tried rearranging the cables. This seemed to help the picture, as you predicted, but not much affect on the sound. I have a really long coax cable and most of it is wrapped in a loop so I will try getting a cable that fits properly and remove the loop of excess cable.

I thought it might be a bad card but assumed that a “bad” card would be bad for all channels not just 1 or 2.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I haven’t fixed the problem but at least I am ruling out some of the possible causes.

[Purple]

I just wanted to close this issue since i have resolved it.

Although there were slight improvments by moving my wireless network card, which implied the network card was the interference, I solved the problem by changing the coax cable.

I had a 100' cable for a 20' distance. Looks like the huge loop of excess cable was causing massive signal interference for the VHF channels. When i replaced this cable with a 25' one, my picture and sound quality improved greatly. Yay!

I assumed that cable rebroadcast everything on different frequencies from the original OTA source. In fact, i was getting the sound with just the cable as an antenna, not even plugged into the wall. *shrug*

Thanks for the help. Glad this is resolved.

[mls]

With that long a length of cable there would have been a large amount of signal loss. Plus, coiled up the cable can start acting as a filter choke further reducing the signal of certain channels even much more.

Guess you learned (the hard way) that you should always use the shortest cables possible (and also not coil up the excess).

Glad you did get this solved and I'm sure your picture is a whole lot better on all channels now