Trying to watch movies on VCR with SageTV... But see no video!

[bob_y2k2]

Hi, I have an Avermedia M150 and it has an s-video connector and 2 RCA jacks for audio. My VCR doesn't have s-video, so I use an S-VIDEO to RCA adapter and a standard A/V cable to connect them.

When I try to play a VHS movie, for the first 3 seconds or so I see video, and then the screen goes black but audio continues to play. This has happened with
BeyondTV as well, so it's not just a SageTV problem.

I'm not sure why this is happening. I set SageTV to channel 3 like I would do on a normal TV, but I suspect I'm doing something wrong. I remember on my Leadtek TV2000 Deluxe, the software had a setting for cabletv and composite so I could change it to composite and view VHS movies just fine. I don't see such an option in SageTV, aside from setting up a new tv tuner card configuration and selecting S-Video or Composite option. Well, I did that too and no video displays.

If someone knows what might be happening and what settings I need to change to fix it, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

[salsbst]

Why are you trying to watch VCR tapes in SageTV? I would recommend you plug the VCR directly into the TV or use a switcher if your TV is lacking inputs.

[wjohn]

Originally Posted by bob_y2k2

I'm not sure why this is happening. I set SageTV to channel 3 like I would do on a normal TV, but I suspect I'm doing something wrong.

Something is not right here (I think). Setting something to channel 3 is for RF input/output, not composite and left and right audio.

Perhaps I am missing something.

[bob_y2k2]

what channel do i set it to if i want to view vcr videos connected to the s-video and rca audio connectors on the tv tuner card?

[stanger89]

You need to set up another source (setup wizard) and select S-Video and probably no guide data.

I'm with salsbst on this one, trying to view tapes through SageTV seems like a very painful way to do it.

[ruel]

i've played vcr videotapes through sagetv -- particularly if i want to transfer some of my old videotape collection to digital. and you do have to set up another source - composite particularly since all of the VCRs that i've had were only composite.

also if your vcr is mono sound, you'll have to get a connector or you'll have to cut and splice your sound cable to input the non-stereo sound into both the left and right sides for the sound on the pc sound input. otherwise you may get sound on only one side if you have a mono-sound vcr. if your vcr is stereo, then you don't have to worry about the sound except to get the right stereo cable with composite rca sound plugs (red and white plugs on the vcr side) to the stereo jack (on the pc).

not too painful if i'm using sagetv, but instead of using sagetv i do get a better result if i run the videotape as live through my ati tv wonder using the ati mmc software without a pvr delay. i was doing that for years before sagetv etc came along.

ruel

[bob_y2k2]

OK, still no luck...

has anyone been successful with the same/similar setup?:

-Avermedia TV Tuner Card w/ S-Video and RCA audio connectors
-VCR with only RCA-style connectors
-S-video to composite converter (works both ways?)
-A/V cable
-I created a new setup in SageTV and BTV for composite and selected it.

I've tried SageTV, BeyondTV, and even WinDVR.. all with the same result:
When I play the VHS tape, video displays for about 2-3 seconds, and then the monitor goes black, but I still hear audio.. when I hit fast-forward, I see video again for a few seconds, and then it goes black again...

I've tried removing the cable tv connections from the vcr and the tv tuner card.. made no difference...

I have no idea why I only see video for a few seconds...

any help would be appreciated!

[ruel]

it could be the vcr or maybe even the tape. have you tried running tapes that you recorded from the tv or are you playing store-bought movie tapes? could be macrovision or some other protection on store-bought tapes. i had a similar problem with one new vcr that i bought but went back to using an older vcr. you could find similar problems with a dvd player and may have to swap with another dvd player. i've moved on to a new cheap vcr but no problems when i want to watch a tape on my system. if you have another vcr, you might want to try that other one to see if you get similar results. otherwise, maybe someone else with an avermedia card could respond.

ruel

[nielm]

> video displays for about 2-3 seconds, and then the monitor goes black

This sounds a lot like macrovision copy-protection...

[bob_y2k2]

Okay, if it's macrovision, then shouldn't it happen with all tv tuner cards? I had a leadtek tv2000 deluxe and was able to play vhs movies just fine using this same VCR.. the difference is that the tv2000 had its own software and you could select composite to view what was playing on the vcr. But it played just fine on that.. it wasn't a hardware decoder card like the Avermedia M150 though. Another difference is the Leadtek came with it's own adapters so I just had to use standard A/V cable to hook up to the VCR, no separate -video->composite converter needed.

So I wonder if it's a specific problem with the Avermedia card since the vcr worked fine on the Leadtek TV2000.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that when my VCR isn't playing a video, whatever channel it's set to displays on screen just fine... this problem only occurs once i play a video.. i'm going to try a homemade tape and see if the same happens.

[nielm]

Some TV cards detect Macrovision better than others, and the drivers may have a different way of handling it... Some may allow 'viewing' of the input, but not recording/capturing...

as ruel says, the only way to tell for sure is to record something on the VCR and try to play it back (macrovision would only be on commercial pre-recorded tapes, not on home recordings)

[bob_y2k2]

ok guys, thanks for your help. i put in a homemade video tape and it plays just fine. so it looks like a macrovision problem...

is there any way to get around it? short of hunting down an older vcr? my vcr isn't that new, it's probably about 5 years old now...

or is there someway i can transfer the contents of the video into an mpeg and then view it?

[nielm]

there are 'vcr signal stabilizers' dongles that you can get which remove macrovision protection (they have to be careful how they advertise themselves -- as they effectively break the DCMA)
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/ar...n_general.html

[ruel]

i don't know about those stabilizer devices but my guess is that they may certainly be worth looking at if you have some sort of expensive VCR.

otherwise, i would look for a cheap VCR or a refurbished VCR. i've recently bought an Orion VR313 VCR for $35 and that is relatively new at one of those electronics stores that specialize in getting refurbished products from factories. not stereo and gives typical VCR quality which is good enough for watching videotapes which so far seem to be all playing okay through my system with no problems. anyways, if i want higher quality then i would watch a dvd which gives edtv quality which is more than good enough for regular TV sets. you may want to be on the look out for anything interesting in the advertising supplements that you get in the newspaper and also in any weekly mail advertising that you may get.

also if you are thinking of recording the tapes to digital with the PC, from my experience i would say that you shouldn't be surprised if the picture quality is possibly at least a little washed out with the digital file recording even if you have no macrovision problem and even if the picture looked okay when you were watching it as the tape was playing. i've gotten this a-little-too-bright-washed-out effect with at least three different TV cards using several different VCRs over the years. i can understand wanting to transfer old videotapes to digital but once that's done for my old videotapes i want to preserve with the tape becoming the backup original, then now i'm usually happy with just devoting the VCR to merely watching any new videotapes we may buy (we have a bunch of bargain-bin $4 videotape movies on the shelf at my home still waiting to be watched) or having the VCR being the standby recorder for recording a show on one channel to tape while the PC is recording three other shows on three other different channels at the same time. rare if that happens for me to have the VCR also be recording since there is often simply too much for me to watch among the stuff that i have recording on the PC as it is. but for those situations would be when i devote the VCR to recording sports or recording some awards show (with the pre-show on the carpet) or some other really long show that tends to go into overtime to a six hour tape instead of putting that on the harddrive. anyways for whatever tapes (or parts of tapes) that i may want to save to digital, then i have to remember to manually compensate for the washed out effect by turning down the brightness.

ruel