Hi,

I have a Hauppauge HVR-950Q and the wire whip ANT. I am very close to the broadcast tower under 20kms. My ANT is barley above the ground (I am in the basement) and I get about half signal strength with the WinTV7 signal strength meter. It does cut in and out once in a while and go black etc. so I pretty much figured I need to get my ANT up higher to get more signal. The trouble is, I setup the Hauppauge stick with Windows & Media Center and am now getting 6 out of 6 bars of signal strength and no dropouts at all what gives?

The other question I have is 7MC shows DD+ as the audio. Is DD+ really being broadcast OTA?

The sigmon utility from Hauppauge gives some meaningful comparison. Not great, but when the signal is yellow, you know it's cutting off.

The signal strength bars from Media Center means absolutely nothing. It's all or none.

The difference is the performance. The picture / signal in WinTV 7 is not stable. I have not seen a single dropout when using 7MC.

Ok

I no longer think there is a difference from app to the other app.

I installed the Digital Signal Quality meter from the hauppage site. ( WinTV is not installed only 7MC) and it actually works. The SNR is 21 about half the meter.