US QAM tuners that work

[SLR_65]

I may be making progress! I called the cable co and complained that everytime it rained, or was cold, etc. that my digital cable boxes got flakey. My neighbor said the cable co was in the alley today so I checked and I had a new line ran to the side of the house!

I stuck the HVR-1600 back in to see what I had. Before I had a low SNR of the mid 28's and a high right around 30. With a big amp I could get it near 30, but it still wasn't error free on all channels. Now hooked direct to the drop with no splitters I have the high 30s and though there is the occasional recoverable error in WinTV signal monitor there seems to be no unrecoverable errors and no errors when watching the tv. Hey! Progress!

Unfortunately ONE splitter (a good one - Channel Vision HS-2 pcb splitter) drags it back down to around 30 and the occasional unrecoverable error and playback glitch. Playing around I stuck a splitter on the output of my 15db amp before it feeds a trunk line with taps to feed the analog sets in the house (long story, old house and it'd be a pain to run a lot of cables for a home run system, so I ran a trunk and taps instead of splitters). HEY! I got the mid to high 31s and don't seem to have any unrecoverable errors or playback glitches! Having a splitter between the amp and trunk line didn't seem to bother the rest of the analog hookups in the house either!

All I had time to play with was WinTV tonight and I need to run another dedicated cable for the HVR-1600 which I'll try to do shortly, but it's VERY encouraging! I left it run for a couple hours tonight and it didn't seem to miss a beat, even on the lowerst snr channel! (which was about 31.2 at the lowest)

I didn't even play with drivers - still running 4.6a.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, I'll report back as soon as I have more time to play.

Steve

[dennit]

Keep your fingers crossed for me, I'll report back as soon as I have more time to play.

Your efforts remind me of what I went through. Every tweak had to be carefully checked on the signal meter. As a matter of interest, what frequency are you using to check signal strength? The upper end of the clear QAM channels I could get had a much lower signal strength than the lower frequency channels.

[SLR_65]

Your efforts remind me of what I went through. Every tweak had to be carefully checked on the signal meter. As a matter of interest, what frequency are you using to check signal strength? The upper end of the clear QAM channels I could get had a much lower signal strength than the lower frequency channels.

Hi Dennit,

I don't have that many QAM channels, they run in the 715 to 705 mhz range and I'm holding a pretty steady signal to noise ratio of 31 to 32 db across all of them with an occasional correctable audio error or two and zero (so far) uncorrectable errors using the Hauppauge signal strength meter utility.

I added an RG-6 quadshield run for the HVR-1600 and I was biting my nails worrying if it would work again once I hooked it back up . . . reminded me of the Friends episode where the guys were getting free porn and didn't want to turn it off for fear they'd lose it if they did!

TTYL,

Steve

[mmatheny]

Hi Dennit,

I don't have that many QAM channels, they run in the 715 to 705 mhz range and I'm holding a pretty steady signal to noise ratio of 31 to 32 db across all of them with an occasional correctable audio error or two and zero (so far) uncorrectable errors using the Hauppauge signal strength meter utility.

I added an RG-6 quadshield run for the HVR-1600 and I was biting my nails worrying if it would work again once I hooked it back up . . . reminded me of the Friends episode where the guys were getting free porn and didn't want to turn it off for fear they'd lose it if they did!

TTYL,

Steve

Does that app show the info for the currently tuned channel, no matter what application tuned it? Do you just run it and it shows this info? How does it pick which digital tuner to monitor?

[SLR_65]

Does that app show the info for the currently tuned channel, no matter what application tuned it? Do you just run it and it shows this info? How does it pick which digital tuner to monitor?

Yes, it does. It's a separate application that you can pop up/down over other applications. It doesn't play well with GBPVR though. You can pop it up and it works and shows the levels as you change channels but if try to exit it or minimize it it does odd things - it may just mess up the video display or at worst it'll hang GBPVR and I have to use task manager to shut it down. While playing I just learned to pop it up and leave it alone and to close GBPVR before exiting or minimizing it.

It seems to show the same levels from within GBPVR as it does within WinTV though (which is understandable as I think it's just reporting what the card is seeing and what it sees is independent of the program it's providing data to) so it's less hassle to just use WinTv when troubleshooting signal level issues.

TTYL,

Steve

[SLR_65]

OK, an update . . . I'm still looking for a QAM tuner that WORKS! :mad:

As I posted earlier, I finally got enough signal level to get the HVR-1600 happy, but I was having a minor problem picking up a channel I should be getting (Flix on channel 84 - it didn't show up at all, encrypted or unencrypted).

I've been working some overtime so I sat down today to play with the HTPC and I found a new problem . . . I have an PVR-500 installed in the machine as well as the HVR-1600 but the HVR-1600 is the first tuner the GBPVR uses. When watching Live TV it runs fine for several minutes, then starts stuttering and freezing, then straightens out and runs ok for a few minutes before stutering again. I changed codecs and stuff and it didn't help. I then disabled the analog tuner in the HVR-1600 so GBPVR would use my PVR-500 and the problem ceased. I was running the 4.6a Hauppauge drivers so I backed up to the 3.4d1 drivers and it made things worse, signal level actually decreased on the digitals and they became unusauble and the analog problem remained. :mad:

I give up! It just shouldn't be this hard! I think part of the problem is that it's fairly new technology and the bugs just aren't worked out. I'm sure as more and more systems start using clear qam and as the digital change over occurs and more need to use over the air digital things will get better, but for now things just aren't mature enough.

I like having three analog tuners so I don't really want to disable the analog on the HVR-1600 just to keep the digital and it's taking up a pci slot. I think I'll give this card to my son to use for over the air digital and I'll look for something different. I would like a digital only pci-e card as I have a spare pci-e slot, maybe a HVR-1800 . . . if the analog works without stuttering on it it would be a bonus, if it doesn't no biggie, just disable it and use the digital side. Maybe an hdhomerun, or maybe a usb solution would fit the bill too. I'm open to suggestions if others have a card that would fit the bill!

TTYL,

Steve