Live TV Judder

[frazell]

Hello All,

I have been having problems with the Live TV on my new build.

I have the following components;

Asus A8N-VM CSM board
1GB Ram
2 x Black gold TV cards

Everything works ok, DVD playback is smooth through power DVD etc. the only problem is terrible judder and frame dropping on some channels... other channels are better than others. I am pretty sure its not the aerial as i have 70% signal showing through my digifusion box.

After reading most of this forum, last night i downloaded all the latest drivers and flashed the bios of the mobo etc. I havent had a chance to test the machine, but i just needed to ask a couple of questions;

1) I have read about having the right codecs, do i need theatretek or some similar codec pack to enable smooth playback on live tv?

2) I am totally confused about refresh rates and resolutions? Do i need to registry hack to get 50hz? What sort of resolution do i need to feed to a panny pwd6 (sd panel)??

Any help much appreciated.

[mkonieczko]

One thing to remember is that an internal DVB-T card will never give as good reception as an external (even very cheap digibox). That said, with a good signal you should expect really good quality video.

Secondly, you mention that some channels are better than others. Depending on your transmitter (you don't say where you live) the 6 different multiplexers transmit at different powers due to interference with analogue channels. In my part of the world I cannot get MUX C or D on my MCE but could get them (most of the time) on my digibox.

My live TV judder certainly improved greatly after rollup 2 and the latest Catalyst drivers a few months back. Can still only find 34 channels though (including radio)

Good luck

Mark

[frazell]

Thanks mark,

I live in berkshire so am using the crystal palace transmitter. MCE scanned and found 65 channels (incl radio) which i didnt think was bad.

As i mentioned i have about 75% signal strength on my digifusion which is pretty stable and the aerial already has a booster.

I dont think its a signal quality issue... maybe i need purevideo or something?

[lisag]

What DVD codec are you using?

[cbemoore]

Originally Posted by mkonieczko

One thing to remember is that an internal DVB-T card will never give as good reception as an external (even very cheap digibox).

When you say "good reception", I assume you mean that a PCI card will require a stronger signal than an external digibox.

I initially read your post to mean that the picture quality wouldn't be as good as an external digibox. This certainly isn't true - my Hauppauge Nova-T PCI cards give far better quality than my old digibox!

Chris

[mkonieczko]

Chris

I agree. The quality from my BG cards is much better than my Thomson PVR, it's just that the Thomson was more sensitive in terms of finding channels. Having said that, I would often get breakup and macroblocking when reception was poor.

MCE seems to decide that if something is too weak it just won't bother and tells you there is no TV signal.

Mark

[frazell]

Originally Posted by lisag

What DVD codec are you using?

Have got Power DVD and DivX installed. Im a bit new to this MCE stuff so not sure if i have everything i require.

[lisag]

You should be ok with that, you could try downloading the nvidia purevideo codec 30 day free trial and seeing if that improves things.

[frazell]

thanks lisag will give the 30 day trail a go and see if that helps. I noticed on another thread that some people are having problems with losing MUX's from the transmitter... maybe im experiencing problems because of this?

[mrdavo]

frazell, do you have a passive Y splitter between your aerial socket and your TV tuner cards?

Our Media Center has two tv tuner cards and due to jumpy TV we've just had a new wideband high gain antenna fitted... but it's the same! However, as soon as I removed our Y splitter from the equation and just used the first TV tuner card, the signal seems much better, and there are virtually no jumps.

Now I'm left with the question of which two output active aerial splitter to get. Could anyone advise please?

[mkonieczko]

I use a little plug in amp that I bought at Argos - never even bothered with a Y splitter as they look like such crap and always fall apart. It is an SLx2P or something similar and even has a nice blue LED to indicate power!

Might be worth checking your coax leads as well. It's best to make them up as short as possible and use high quality satellite coax which has really good screening. They also work out cheaper than the stuff you buy in DIY stores, which is also crap.

Sorry, if I sound a bit critical of cheap video stuff, but you really can ruin an expensive set up with poor input, remember GIGO

Mark

[esrg]

[quote=

My live TV judder certainly improved greatly after rollup 2 and the latest Catalyst drivers a few months back. Can still only find 34 channels though (including radio)

Good luck

Mark[/QUOTE]

My artisan system was fine until I installed rollup 2 ever since then live TV has been virtually unwatchable due to judderring.catalyst has not helped at all.

am currently trying to find a fix

[frazell]

OK. I have done everything i could think of and up to last night had almost given up hope. The only thing left out of the equation had to be the aerial signal..... to answer the previous question about passive y splitters... yes i am using one to split the feed into the tuner cards.

However, last night i packed up my entire HTPC and drove it around to my parents house and spent 15mins highjacking their evenings viewing to test the quality of the aerial feed.

Upon connecting i now have ALL channels totally judder free, whilst still using the passive splitter.

Conclusion: went on-line and purchased a high gain TV aerial and will spend this weekend risking my life up a ladder.

A word to all n00bs like myself. My signal according to my digifusion box is 70% which is obviously not enough for even 'high quality' DVB-T cards, so please invest in the best quality aerial signal u can, otherwise u will be wasting time thinking there are all sorts of hardware issues that dont exist!

Thanks to all for your help/suggestions.

[mrdavo]

Originally Posted by frazell

Conclusion: went on-line and purchased a high gain TV aerial and will spend this weekend risking my life up a ladder.

A word to all n00bs like myself. My signal according to my digifusion box is 70% which is obviously not enough for even 'high quality' DVB-T cards, so please invest in the best quality aerial signal u can, otherwise u will be wasting time thinking there are all sorts of hardware issues that dont exist!

I'd be interested to know if your new aerial makes any difference. Think we get a similar sort of percentage according to our old inbuilt digital tv, but our new high gain wideband antenna hasn't helped the juddering.

[frazell]

I will report back when its fitted.