PVR350/250 Tuner Quality

[Watter]

I've always used Sage withg my Dish Network receiver pushing svideo from the receiver to the PVR350, however I've recently moved (temporarily, thankfully) to a location that precludes the use of my satellite receiver so I'm settling for plain 'ole analog cable.

I'm feeding the cable straight from the wall into the PVR350 and I'm having some problems. When I feed the cable to the TV the picture is fine. Not great, of course, but it's acceptable and consistent. Through the PVR350 though, I have a lot of interference. I've checked the signal to WinTV2000 and I have the same problem, so it's not Sage that's casuing the problem.

If someone can tell me how to capture a screenshot I'll post one, but for now all I can say is that it's lots of thin light colored horizontal lines that flicker throughout the image. Some channels are fine and other are darn near unwatchable.

Does anyone know what the problem might be?

[zz5]

What you're seeing is EMI interference from the computer. I had the same problem. The solution is to use better cables. That's what I did and I've never had that problem again.

[Watter]

Better cables in what respect? From the wall to the tuner? From the video card to the TV? I suppose I could do the former, but I have some extremely high quality component cables from the video card to the TV so I hope that's not where the problem is.

[zz5]

From the wall to the tuner. I'm talking about the coaxial cable like the cable company uses to connect to your house. The cable company uses high quality cable that blocks interference. The short pieces that you get with vcr's or cheap ones at Radio Shack are not very good because they don't block interference. You want the thick kind, like the kind that comes in big rolls. That will do the job. You don't actually have to buy a big roll like that, just make sure that the cable is the same thickness. If I were you, I would go to Best Buy or where ever and buy one of those expensive short pieces (like Monster cable) that have the screw-on type connector. Make sure it has the screw-on connector because the ends is where a lot of the EMI gets in. Then you'll be able to see that EMI was the problem.

Here's something else you can do. Do you have a small indoor antenna that you plug into the TV? If so, try this experiment that will show you what I'm talking about with EMI interference. First, tune the TV to a station and leave the computer off. Now turn the computer on. You will see all those bands of static start rolling across the screen. The EMI is being picked by the antenna, so you don't need the computer actually connected to anything for this experiment. To see this most easily, try to tune to a weaker station.

[Menehune]

Yes, a better quality cable from the wall plate to the card should fix the problem. The push-on/pull-off type freebie cables are garbage. I've had some be bad out of the box. I usually throw them away since they are usually too short for my applications.

[Watter]

Hmmm, the one I'm using is a big, thick, stiff screw on type but I'll try a couple of different ones to see if it helps. Thanks for the advice.

[Watter]

For what it's worth, this turned out to be a flawed tuner in the that particular PVR350. I added a PVRUSB2 with the same cables and it worked fine, but I wasn't satisfied with the PVRUSB2's quality so I popped in a spare 350 I had layign around and it worked fine as well. All solved.