I finally got SunTV using WatchHDTV with ATI650 PCI card...it is hidden at 66 and -1 subchannel, how sneaky...the signal strengh was never a problem for me.

It is set to record weekly @ 2330h :~)

I also have problem with adding SunTV HD to Windows Media Centre. I use software to scan the channels, and SunTV is located digital channel 0.0, and physical channel 66. The signal is very strong, but I can't add 0.0 in Media Centre. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Hey, I need your help. What would be considered good cards? I want to do OTA HDTV plus QAM (if possible but not mandatory). Should I go with two tuners? I want to record shows and such, but I realize I can be watching with my TV while the HTPC records. What's your take? I want something that will do a good job.

I recently built a HTPC using some new and old parts I had lying around.

I was wondering how much power in your PC you need to pull in OTA HDTV clearly. When I watch CBC for example (95% signal strength from my antenna), the picture stutters every now and then, best noticable when the camera pans around, it's just not smooth like HD through a regular cable box. I would call it barely watchable. I'm using standard WinTV that came with the card configured with overlay as VMR is just totally unwatchable with jumping and struttering and audio hiccups. Any opinions on whether the processor or video card just aren't strong enough to display HD smoothly through the HVR-1600?

HTPC consists of:
P4 2.4GHz
512M ram
ATI Radeon 9250
Hauppauge HVR-1600
500G WD Caviar
Pioneer 18XDVD-RW

Great question.... I am sure you are about to get a variety of answers.

My suggestion would be to try another piece of Software first to see if it helps.... like "watchHDTV"

On previous HTPC setup watching OTA on my HTPC was around 50-60%
(previous setup was a Athlon XP3000 with 1GB ram)
With watchHDTV it was around 40%.
Both ran without "stuttering"

My processor bounces between 88% to 99% usage while watching HDTV. It's funny cause I've seen others posting CPU usage around 50% or so with similar processors. I haven't noticed a direct correlation to dropped frames when the stuttering occurs and when the usage is 99%, it seems to occur randomly and frequently even when cpu usage is bouncing around the 90% mark. That's what made me think maybe the video card can't keep up, although I downloaded an HDTV *.wmv file from microsoft that was HD resolution and it played that back without any difficulties, and was of astonishing detail.

I was wondering how much power in your PC you need to pull in OTA HDTV clearly. When I watch CBC for example (95% signal strength from my antenna), the picture stutters every now and then, best noticable when the camera pans around, it's just not smooth like HD through a regular cable box. I would call it barely watchable.
[...deletia...]
HTPC consists of:
P4 2.4GHz
512M ram
ATI Radeon 9250
Hauppauge HVR-1600
500G WD Caviar
Pioneer 18XDVD-RW
You mentioned in another post that cpu usage bounces around between 88% and 88% at times. Is this a dedicated machine? The only Windows machine in my place is running XP in support of an Autumnwave GT USB tuner. Since it's dedicated to PVR use, and never connects to the internet, I uninstalled Macafee, and that greatly sped up the machine.

Home-version anti-virus programs from commercial companies tend to be absolute resource hogs, much more so than the commercial versions. The cynical side of me would suggest that this is done to discourage businesses from using the lower-cost home version of the company's anti-virus product.

If you're running XP, 512 megs should be OK. With Vista, it's marginal, and you really should get more ram. Take a look at what other background processes you have running {CTRL-ALT-DEL} and select "Task list". Unnecessary processes take up ram and cpu capacity. If you get occasional pop-ups advertising sex sites, and your IE start page and search is re-directed against your permission, all bets are off.

Actually I downloaded watchhdtv as suggested above and I can watch stutterless hdtv with that, cpu usage is around 50%. Ram usage is only 250M, so I guess I'll use that great little app for now.

I OC'd the 2.4G to 3.0G and got smooth hd using WinTV, so I guess WinTV is just a resource hog and needs a slightly faster PC. I tried GB-PVR and can't get a smooth picture from that to save my life. Tried all the decoders and muxes but the video is stuttering all over the place no matter what I choose, even when the same decoders are used as with watchhdtv -- this seems quite odd to me.

This is a HTPC, internet connected, no anti-virus installed at the moment, pretty much a fresh install of XP a couple of weeks ago.

Today's Woot was the launch of the new Pinnacle PCTV HD card. It's a rarity for a company to launch a new product on Woot.
Quick view of Pinnacle's website didn't yet list it so specs are as listed below:
Warranty: One year

Features:

* Watch SD and free HD TV on your PC, no service fees
* Includes remote control and FM antenna
* 3-in-1 tuner card for digital (ATSC), analog (NTSC) and FM radio
* Hardware ready for ClearQAM (unencrypted digital cable) reception
* Automatically record shows to your hard drive in your choice of formats (DivX, MPEG2 etc)
* Capture from your cable/satellite set-top box with the included a/v cable
* Turns your PC into a personal video recorder (PVR) with time-shifting, pause and rewind live TV
* Trim your videos with Pinnacle Quick Start
* Fully compatible with Windows Media Center (windows Vista and XP MCE)
* Certified for Microsoft Vista

TV Standards

* ATSC (HDTV up to 1080i, SDTV)
* NTSC (cable, over the air)

Inputs

* TV antenna input (F-connector/Coaxial)
* FM antenna input
* S-Video, Composite Video (RCA), Stereo Audio (2 x RCA)

Recording Formats

* MPEG-1/2
* DivX®

System Requirements:

* Windows Vista™ (32-bit) or Windows® XP with SP2
* Intel® Pentium® 4 2.4 GHz, Pentium M 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 processor (for HDTV reception, a Pentium 4 2.8GHz or Pentium M 1.7 GHz or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 processor is recommended)
* RAM: Windows XP – 256MB (512MB recommended); for Windows Vista – 512 MB (1GB recommended)
* Free PCI rev. 2.3 slot
* Sound / graphics controller with support for DirectX® 9
* Hard drive with minimum 1 GB free space (20 GB recommended for TV recording)
* CD or DVD drive
* High-gain indoor or rooftop aerial and/or connection to an existing cable TV jack (coaxial cable)

In the box:

* PCTV HD PCI card
* FM antenna
* PCTV installation CD
* Pinnacle Studio Quickstart CD
* Mini Remote control w/batteries
* Quick start guide
* A/V input adaptor




Curious,... it was listed as including an FM antenna.

Any opinions on whether the processor or video card just aren't strong enough to display HD smoothly through the HVR-1600?I had this card before but returned...the system was a A64 3200+ / 1GB RAM / onboard 6100 video. Beofre I returned it, I put the HVR1600 in my main rig 3800+x2/2GB Ram/8500GT and it's smoother but still not acceptable.

If you get a chance, you should try the WatchHDTV program, it's a little program but solid as a rock. I currently use an ATI650 with that program and it's pretty good. I never had a chance to try the HVR1600 with WatchHDTV, but if you don't get good results with this program, you'll nedd to make some hardware changes.

I had long ago given up trying to use the ATI HDTV Wonder. It worked flawlessly with the ATI Multi Media Centre (MMC). But the video jittered badly in Windows Media Centre Edition (MCE) 2005.

I finally decided to get serious and used GraphEdit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GraphEdit) to troubleshoot the filter chain. The problem was the ATI CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (clsvd.axI) works great for DVD but not the recorded HDTV. Using the XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility I set the preferred decoder to Intervideo Video/SP Decoder (ivivideo.ax). This cleared up the HDTV jitter but killed the DVD audio. What I found was that it inexplicably replaced ac3filter with the Intervideo audio decoder.

Final solution? Set the preferred decoder to the Intervideo video then edit the registry to set the preferred MPEG audio decoder back to ac3filter.


A More Detailed Explanation

I used the Connect to Remote Graph command to see and save the filter graphs that MCE and ATI used for HDTV and DVD playback

I recorded some HDTV video using MCE and ATI. I then played the recorded video back using the saved filter graphs. It stuttered terribly. I replaced components so it would start to look like the ATI filter graph which does work. Eventually I isolated the problems.

Obviously, ATI software uses their own CyberLink DVD decoder, which doesn't work with MCE. When I switch to InterVideo, the HDTV playback works great, but I lose all audio during DVD playback because it installs the InterVideo audio codec. Confusing?

The problem was to trick MCE into using different decoders for HDTV and DVD and AC3 audio. Basically,

InterVideo Video Decoder v6 IVIVIDEO.AX for HDTV
CyberLink Video/SP Decoder (ATI) v6 CLVSD.AX for DVD playback
AC3Filter for DVD surround sound audio decoding

First, I used DecCheck to set CyberLink as the preferred video.
Then I set Intervideo as the preferred video
Then I used registry hack to reset AC3Filter as the preferred audio.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Media Center\Service\Video]
"PreferredMPEG2AudioDecoder"="{A753A1EC-973E-4718-AF8E-A3F554D45C44}"

Great post Michael!

I have a question sorry if it seems obvious.... but I have never used the command "CONNECT TO REMOTE GRAPH"

Could you explain how you use it.

I am assuming you need to initative the software that you want to display the graphs for and then is it just a matter of enabling the CONNECT TO REMOTE GRAPH within graphedit? Can you than save the graph?

You got it. Have MCE running. In GraphEdit choose, File, Connect to Remote Graph. You can then save the graph. But if the graph includes the TV tuner, it won't play in GraphEdit alone. To troubleshoot my problem, I recorded a bit of HDTV to be the video source. Then I could swap out various DirectShow filters to isolate the source of the jittery playback.

Thanks Michael!

Did not work for me... I get a smaller window which ask to select a reomte graph to view... but there is nothing to chose.

So than I reread... MCE needs to be running? really?

IS that anyother way without running MCE?

I have the Hauppauge 1600 which is PCI. I just noticed they now have the 1800 which is also a hybrid (1 analog, 1 ATSC) but it is PCIe x1

Hey everyone,
i have a question about the hybrid tuners out there.

I'm in vancouver, but can't get any OTA HTDV signals in my apartment (haven't tried too hard yet. Need to do that in future). But my question is if i purchase a hybrid card with one ATSC tuner and one NTSC tuner in it, can the ATSC decode analog TV too? ie: with one of these cards, can i have them both tune in to basic Shaw cable service?

in other words, can ATSC tuners decode NTSC signals?

thanks

not as far as I know. ATSC tuners can only get digital OTA channels.

For a couple of reasons the answer is no. There would be no need for the ATSC tuner to do the job of the NTSC tuner sitting beside it on the same card. ATSC and NTSC are vastly different standards and each does its own job.

For connecting Cable TV to such a card you just run the coax cable into it. If it has separate ATSC and NTSC inputs you would run the coax from the wall into a good splitter, then run one lead into the ATSC tuner to get the QAM digital signals (if you get any clear ones with Shaw - I don't think so) and the other lead into the NTSC tuner for the analogue stations (if you still get Shaw analogue cable).

As to whether you will get all the digital and analogue OTA stations in Burnaby it all depends on your location and local circumstances.

Hi Teenie,

MCE or another directshow video application has to be running. That is the "remote graph" that graphedit detects and maps for you. It is a good way to see what filters the video application is using.

Hello,
I went through this thread but could not decide what the verdit is on best capture card would be for my setup.

I plan on using this card on the following setup:

- E4300 ( soon to be Quad), on 680i mobo
- 8800 GTX driving Dell 30", and 7600GT driving 2 Dell's 20"
- On board audio.

I would like to use this in Vista 32, right away to capture TV output from my BEV set top box (SD), and try to see if I can get FTO HD, but doubt it will work from my basement.

thanks