PVR-150: perfect, no stereo on TV channels

[davidson54]

Neither WinTV2000 nor gbpvr give me stereo audio on live TV. Picture and mono quality are both very good. Comp and S-inputs also work perfectly. Hauppauge has tested this card and returned it. I have Cablevision (mid-Hudson Valley) and take the cable input right out of the wall. Latest drivers, HCWclear used several times. Windows XP SP2. I can only think there is a input level deficiency that keeps the tuner decoder from delivering stereo. Any ideas welcome here or by email. Thanks.

[pBS]

mmm,maybe try re-tuning the channels...some cables use off-center freq. channels [IRC/HRC cable] so may have to manually fine-tune the channels to get it to work right...usually stereo is the first thiing you lose when fine tuning..

so try setting them manually in wintv and those are stored in registry and i believe gbpvr uses them by default..auto-scan may not be working properly for your cable frequencies..

then again you may be right about the signal strength as well..

[davidson54]

Thanks, PBS. Hauppauge, over the phone, once told me about manual tuning. I tried that once, and can re-visit. I may try the signal boost method.

[FirstTeamOPS]

If you're not getting any channels in stereo, I don't think it's going to be a signal strength problem. It seems driver related to me, or a tuning issue as pbs mentioned. Now if you only had a few channels that were coming in stereo, then I would say it is a signal problem.

The cable (and over the air TV) covers a wide range of frequencies and even if there's bad interference it will only happen on a small range of channels (7 to 10 at most). And you mentioned the picture and mono sound is fine, that leads me to believe you're not getting much, if any, interference or signal degrading.

[davidson54]

Thanks, First.

No channels are in stereo. I have tried the last four recent drivers and beta drivers - to no avail. Hauppauge claims to have checked this particular unit out. The workaround is: go to STB and tap the outputs there. A little inconvenient, and I lose independent use.

[HtV]

Does your system play other files (MP3) in stereo? If so, have you tried changing audio renderer and/or decoder?

[Azimuth]

Some Cable TV operators do not broadcast analog channels in stereo. Have you checked into the possibility that yours is one of these?

[davidson54]

I appreciate the latest replies. It may well be there is no transmission of dbx-TV standard signal on the coax line - yet, I can get stereo off the set top box so there is decoding at least there. The PVR-150 indicates only Mono and SAP available. Selection by user can be mono, stereo or SAP. Oh, well. I guess 'nuff said. Again, thanks to all who've replied.

[davidson54]

I hooked up my VCR to the raw cable input and the stereo beacon came on for many channels. So, my cable provider is relieved of blame. I took the VCR output to the PVR composite input and, of course, I got what I wanted: stereo TV. The workaround is probably going to be another VCR used as a pass-through device with tuning by the VCR and using its decoded stereo. I will continue to try driver swaps.

[hbien]

I have the same issue here. Also using PVR-150MCE (kit), mono only for all channels. Pictures are clear and I do get stereo reception from an external TV tuner. Sounds like you found a work-around by going through VCR which is also an option for me, but means recording using the PVR will be difficult unless I preset the VCR to also "record". I haven't actually noticed any difference between "stereo" and "mono", but I suspect the problem is hardware and not gb-pvr/software related as WinTV also (like you) reports only mono. All other features working fine, except for one crash I had recently when trying LiveTV with pause/replay. Got the following weird messages in the log:

12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.031 VERBOSE [1] No key mapping found for: MEDIAPREVIOUSTRACK
12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.031 VERBOSE [1] Skipping back: 0
12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.031 VERBOSE [1] Current duration: 939 Current position: 543.076965332031 New position: 513.076965332031
12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.187 VERBOSE [1] Received WM_INPUT: 2
12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.187 VERBOSE [1] Received WM_INPUT: 2
12/10/2006 1:00:38 AM.312 VERBOSE [1] Received event code: 14
12/10/2006 1:00:41 AM.656 VERBOSE [1] RenewLease: 1
12/10/2006 1:00:42 AM.156 VERBOSE [1] StopLiveTV()
12/10/2006 1:00:42 AM.359 VERBOSE [1] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/NetRadioBufferSize
12/10/2006 1:00:42 AM.359 VERBOSE [1] getValue: /settings/NetRadioBufferSize : 96000
12/10/2006 1:00:42 AM.359 INFO [1] NetRadio buffer size is: 96000
12/10/2006 1:00:42 AM.656 ERROR [1] System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessageW(MSG& msg)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(Int32 dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(Form mainForm)
at GBPVR.xbb1566157f5f8b1f.xfb409e85bd292293(String[] xf18a926310372520)

happened right after I pressed "skip back" - don't know why it reports "Stopping LiveTV service". Also, never tried using NetRadio either, so don't know where those options came up.


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