Dual PVR150 tuning

[PaulH]

(GBPVR 1.0.16, PVR150 driver 2.0.48.25037)

Got a little issue with one my PVR150 tuners (I have two -- one is a PVR150 retail, other is a MCE).

Seems one tuner (I think its the retail) doesn't always lock in on a station. I noticed this when ER didn't record right. To see both tuners, I ran both PVRX2 and GBPVR at the same time view live tv. I can see on some channels of 1 tuner where it doesn't fully lock in on a station. Like its either black and white with no sound, or no picture at all.

I did try swapping cables to make sure its not a problem with the cable wire.

If I run WinTV2000 and PVRX2, everything looks fine on both tuners. Only seems to get weird on 1 tuner when GBPVR runs both of them.


Any ideas?

Paul

[stustunz]

have you selected the correct tuner in config
when adding them ensure you haveonly show devices on this machine
and called one device#1 and the other device#2
if you have try swapping the numbers over

[PaulH]

I have everything set correct. It's definately capture device #1 giving me issues, which I have set as a PVR150, and #2 as the PVR150MCE. Swapping capture device numbers swaps which one has the issue, so it's #1.

I even removed both capture devices, and re-added just #1. Same thing. Ch5 is fuzzy and CH6 sometimes doesn't work at all. Some of the other channels like 2 and 7 are sometimes grey at first, but after changing channels then it looks ok.

I don't get why its only getting messed up in gbpvr, but with WinTV it looks ok. I readded capture device #2. I showed live TV, one in gbpvr.exe and the other in pvrx2.exe. Left the one that looked fine running, and exited the one that looks fuzzy. Ran WinTV (which should be looking at the fuzzy one) -- but it looks just fine! Very odd!

-Paul

[rscheller]

I've had a similar issue (see thread here) with your exact same tuner card setup except I'm running GBPVR 99.13.

I tried a number of things but think it's basically a marginal PVR-150. I'm still experimenting for a fix without buying a new PVR-150 with my most recent attempt for a solution being to disable channel 6 on the problematic card and see if that works to record channel 6 properly.

[ShiningDragon]

At looks like as would the Tuner not tune correctly. If you dare you could try to finetune your tv-card by opening the metalcase over the tuner. You'll see a small screw which you can turn left and right.
If you dare, then be careful! Only small moves and checks. Perhaps this helps you both out.

[stustunz]

At looks like as would the Tuner not tune correctly. If you dare you could try to finetune your tv-card by opening the metalcase over the tuner. You'll see a small screw which you can turn left and right.
If you dare, then be careful! Only small moves and checks. Perhaps this helps you both out.

if its working fine with other programs i would NOT do this
once you screw it up its very hard to get it back right again


you would be better off finding the crorrect frequency and try entering that rather than a numer
you can find the correct frequency using the tuning assistant you could even try going higher or lower than what it finds
signal strength is another thing to look at sometimes that can screw with the auto lock

[ShiningDragon]

Yep, your way is better than mine. Mine should only be used if it's not possible to give back the card and the tuning assistant not working.

[rscheller]

I did try using tuning assistant to set channel 6 to the frequency identified but I still had issues getting a good signal lock on channel 6 with one of my two PVR-150's. As long as the scheduling had channel 6 recorded from PVR 1 it looked fine but from PVR 2 it was rarely acceptable.

Using the Haupphauge software, I'd see issues too with the one card but it would usually clear up after a second or so after tuning to channel 6. It's almost like the automatic frequency control (AFC) is borderline at pulling channel 6 in to perfect tune on this card.

[stustunz]

thats is weak signal i would say one card is more tolerant than the other
if you are able to boost the signal it may help (sometimes that will cause new issues to arise)
sometimes running the signal through an old vcr first can help boost the signal (or make it worse depending on the vcr)

[PaulH]

thats is weak signal i would say one card is more tolerant than the other
if you are able to boost the signal it may help (sometimes that will cause new issues to arise)
sometimes running the signal through an old vcr first can help boost the signal (or make it worse depending on the vcr)

Actually, I do have a booster in the basement which feeds the house (one line going to the PC which has a splitter). I increased the booster's gain a little bit and it currently appears to have worked.

Incidently, if I wanted to adjust the frequency for a particular station, where do I enter that?


Thanks

Paul