Are my expectations too high?

[arrggg]

I've got a Hauppauge 500 MCE, in a XPsp2 box(Dell) with 1gb Ram.

I've played around with the settings, but I cannot get regular TV to come in clear. downloaded AVI's play perfect, but anything I try to record myself (or just watch) is worse the a 10 year old VHS tape.

Should I be able to see channels almost as good as plugging the cable directly into my tv, or are my hopes too high.

(p.s. no Hi-Def or anything, nor any digital channels, just basic, basic cable)

[sub]

You should be able to get quality pretty close to original, but there will always be some minor loss of quality.

If you're having problems, then you need to work out where that problem is occuring. For example, to decide if the PVR500 is the problem you could burn a recording to a DVD and play it in the regular DVD player. If that works fine and looks great, then that rules the PVR500 out. The next stept would be to look at the video decoder and video renderer you're using.

Also if you're trying to output to a tv, it could be the quality of the TV out on your video card. If you're doing this, does it look better on your monitor than your TV?

[Gemini1706]

I am using Radeon 7500 through DVI, and my playback quality was ok but not as good as original TV.
Since I downloaded latest drivers from ATI (and also latest video codecs from ATI), my playback quality just went UP UP UP.
I cannot tell now if this is recorded or just real TV.

[flyswatta]

I had a similar issue with analog cable. If the cable wasn't "just right" then I would get some crappy reception. I also found an inline splice that was corroded outside the house. Ultimately replacing the splice and the faulty cable solved my problem.

[arrggg]

I think I do have a problem in the wireing... if I do "jiggle" it just right it will come in a little better, but if I plug the same cord into the tv it comes in perfect... maybe I'll try the card in a new slot.

[HtV]

And make sure it is pushed in the slot completely. The symptoms you gave point to a card not seated right or a bad connector on the card.:eek:

[skippy_nz]

I am using Radeon 7500 through DVI, and my playback quality was ok but not as good as original TV.
Since I downloaded latest drivers from ATI (and also latest video codecs from ATI), my playback quality just went UP UP UP.
I cannot tell now if this is recorded or just real TV.

Hey gemini1706 - can you advise what version of drivers you downloaded ? and where did you get their codecs from ?

cheers
skip

[Gemini1706]

the ATI drivers are latest for Radeon 7500 which is I think 6.11:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/ra...00-xp.html

The driver helped me big time in color and overscan department, as it detected my HDTV automatically and adjusted the horrible overscan I got before and corrected washed out colors (looks like ATI managed to support HDTV sets pretty nicely during 2006).

The video playback improved because of the video codecs, which I download by claiming I have ATI-All-In-Wonder 7500 from ATI website, which brings me to this:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/common/mmc9-14.html
If you see the second item in the list, it is the video codec, but requires that you have original ATI CD disk as it verifies it first then lets you download it (I use an ATI CD I got with my Radeon 9500 from another machine)

(Note that I do not have All-In-Wonder, but just normal Radeon 7500 PCI video card, but still the codecs work perfectly).

The video codec (it does not say what it is, but I think it is CyberLink tweaked for ATI cards???) works perfectly, as I tried many other 'free' codecs before but they all had playback issue or quality issues, except this one from ATI is super.

This way it is really superior playback compared to any other codecs I tried. I also later tweaked some brightness settings ...etc. (Gamma=1.3) to get even better color saturation ...etc.

[skippy_nz]

the ATI drivers are latest for Radeon 7500 which is I think 6.11:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/ra...00-xp.html

The driver helped me big time in color and overscan department, as it detected my HDTV automatically and adjusted the horrible overscan I got before and corrected washed out colors (looks like ATI managed to support HDTV sets pretty nicely during 2006).

The video playback improved because of the video codecs, which I download by claiming I have ATI-All-In-Wonder 7500 from ATI website, which brings me to this:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/common/mmc9-14.html
If you see the second item in the list, it is the video codec, but requires that you have original ATI CD disk as it verifies it first then lets you download it (I use an ATI CD I got with my Radeon 9500 from another machine)

(Note that I do not have All-In-Wonder, but just normal Radeon 7500 PCI video card, but still the codecs work perfectly).

The video codec (it does not say what it is, but I think it is CyberLink tweaked for ATI cards???) works perfectly, as I tried many other 'free' codecs before but they all had playback issue or quality issues, except this one from ATI is super.

This way it is really superior playback compared to any other codecs I tried. I also later tweaked some brightness settings ...etc. (Gamma=1.3) to get even better color saturation ...etc.

thanks for that - i check it out on my system - although i dont have any HDTV i dunno if it will help