Changing channels clears up poor image quality??

[RZRacer]

I have done hours of research here to try to get my pvr-250 / GBPVR combo to work well, but haven't had much success until just recently, and then it was just a fluke (to me) that something good happened. I like to think of myself as fairly technical and the kind of person that can figure things out on my own, but all of the video codecs, mux files, etc. just has me confused. Hopefully someone can help.

I attached the log files per sub's sticky, so hopefully that helps. Here is the issue - when opening Live TV, a lot of the channels coming thru coax into the PVR-250 have snow, wavy lines and no sound, while a few are clear with sound. After flipping channels for a while just to check which ones were clear and which were not, they all started working with sound and great clarity on my PC LCD and my HDTV hooked up via component to GeForce 6600 with 81.98 drivers. As I messed with it more by exiting in and out of Live TV, I could not come up with a pattern as to what made it finally "work". Flipping through channels 6-12 seemed to bring the quality back fairly consistently, but that is just strange to me. Especially since Channel 6 won't tune through GBPVR but will on my regular TV. After a bit of time with a really good picture, the synch on the sound would get off, also. Pausing Live TV results in the poor picture coming back and it appears that the recorded file has poor image as played back with Nero and Windows Media Player.

Any ideas? I now know that it is possible to get great quality from this setup, but I don't have a clue where to look.

Thanks,

Kent

[RZRacer]

Lots of views but no answers - maybe I'm not as patient as I should be!

Sub, do you think you could take a look at the attached logs?

Thanks,

Kent

[sub]

It actually sounds like a couple of problems to me.

The first thing I would try is a change of audio decoder. The Ligos audio decoder has been known to cause audio sync and video stuttering for some other users.

02:05:41.512 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - InterVideo NonCSS Audio Decoder for Hauppauge
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - Santa Cruz™
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - Ligos MPEG Audio Decoder
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - Capture
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Crossbar
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - TV Audio
02:05:41.512 VERBOSE - TV Tuner

[sub]

Here is the issue - when opening Live TV, a lot of the channels coming thru coax into the PVR-250 have snow, wavy lines and no sound, while a few are clear with sound. After flipping channels for a while just to check which ones were clear and which were not, they all started working with sound and great clarity on my PC LCD and my HDTV hooked up via component to GeForce 6600 with 81.98 drivers. As I messed with it more by exiting in and out of Live TV, I could not come up with a pattern as to what made it finally "work".

There have been a few users with these types of problems in the past, but there is not an easy to recommend a solution for ot.

It sound like your tuner is having problems locking on to the channel (ie, bad reception). A few of things you could try though. (1) remove any cable splitters to see if it performs any better with slightly stronger signal. (2) updated PVR250 drivers might do a better job of locking on to the signal. (3) try entering frequencies instead of channel numbers for problem channels.

[RZRacer]

Thanks, sub, I'll give these solutions a try. I don't remember selecting the Ligos audio decoder from the dropdown, but I made so many changes that I don't remember right now.

I didn't have any issues with sound when I first install GBPVR and the PVR-250 and the latest Nvidia drivers but the video quality wasn't very good. So I tried the Purevideo solution with the older Nvidia drivers that were supposed to enable hardware acceleration (like described in the sticky), but that just turned into a big mess. That is when the sound issues began and all I got for an image was garbage on the right and bottom of the screen with the video playing in the remaining area to the upper left of the screen. So I rolled back XP and then uninstalled Purevideo to get where I am now. I'll keep you updated.

Thanks,

Kent

[sub]

Thanks, sub, I'll give these solutions a try. I don't remember selecting the Ligos audio decoder from the dropdown, but I made so many changes that I don't remember right now.

It may be the system default audio decoder, so not specifically selected.

[RZRacer]

Just as an FYI, I finally got to work on some of the suggested solutions and it turns out it was as simple as manually entering the frequency for each channel. I knew my cable reception sucked but I didn't think the PVR-250 would have issues tuning the channels. Anyway, GBPVR is a great product and I appreciate the help.

Just out of curiosity, how do the commercial DVR packages deal with this issue - can they be "manually" tuned, also? I tried the trial version of Beyond TV 3 that was on the PVR-250 CD when I was having problems with GBPVR and had the same tuning issues.