Jerky Live TV from Tuner Card

tom2000

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Nov 23, 2008
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So I just built my brand new system. Core2 Duo E7300 running Vista 32-bit, 4GB Ram, Radeon HD 4670, and a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 dual TV tuner.

I'm trying to watch live TV through Vista Media Center. I configured the card, and I recieve digital channels from my antenna, but the video in jerky. Its also jerky in the WinTV app that came with the card, so the problem isn't media center. The card scans for channels just fine, and the video picture is good, there aren't artifacts or anything. It just stops momentarily a few times every few seconds. The audio sometimes continues, sometimes not. The signal strength shows up as good.

So where should I start in diagnosing the problem?

I have ruled out my system being too slow. From all accounts, I have a very good system for an HTPC. I don't think its a software problem in WinTV or media center, because they both show the exact same problem. I don't think its a monitor problem, since the few non-jerky second I occasionally see look great.

So, my thoughts:

Switch PCI slots. Someone else online did this, so why not try it.
See if my video card and tuner card are in conflict. Again, this fixed a problem for someone else online. I have no idea what they were really talking about though, and I'm brand new to Vista, so I'll need help.
Checking I have the right encoder/decoder. Again, fixed someone else's problem, but didn't really understand the jist of what they were saying.

What else should I try? I know narrowing down a problem like this doesn't come easy, so I'm really looking for how to narrow down where the problem lies.


 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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couple of possibilities

vista background tasks trashing your hdd

tuner reception is not optimal

hdd is not up to it.
 

tom2000

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Nov 23, 2008
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I'll stop background tasks and check it out. My HDD is a WD 7200 640GB drive. Does live tv even use the hard drive? I thought it just came through the tuner card, and your HDD was only put into use when recording tv.

I don't know what to do about tuner reception. Both Vista Media center and the Tuner Card's signal strength app show a few channels coming in strong, and they're jerky.
 

erwos

Diamond Member
Apr 7, 2005
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Originally posted by: tom2000
I don't know what to do about tuner reception. Both Vista Media center and the Tuner Card's signal strength app show a few channels coming in strong, and they're jerky.
IIRC, signal strength can be... misleading.

Live TV is going to use the hard drive, since it continuously buffers.
 

tom2000

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Nov 23, 2008
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But should a brand-new installation of Vista have a bunch of stuff using the hard drive so much it becomes impossible to watch live TV? That seems like it would make most tv cards useless, and I haven't really seen that problem online.

I don't know what to do about reception. I can switch to analog, because i know my tv gets reception just fine, so if its still jerky in analog, then its not the reception.

How about a hardware conflict with the video card? Any way to diagnose such a thing?
 

tom2000

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Nov 23, 2008
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Resolved: It was a mix between bad reception (like some of you said) and a conflict with an audio device that caused stuttering during full screen mode. I'm going to have to think about getting a new antenna, because I only get two broadcast networks, no matter which direction i face it (different ones depending on the angle of the antenna, but never more than two). That totally bites.

Thanks for everyone's help. I'm going to post the audio fix in a new post, it's apparently a huge problem with many causes.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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Originally posted by: tom2000
I'll stop background tasks and check it out. My HDD is a WD 7200 640GB drive. Does live tv even use the hard drive? I thought it just came through the tuner card, and your HDD was only put into use when recording tv.

I don't know what to do about tuner reception. Both Vista Media center and the Tuner Card's signal strength app show a few channels coming in strong, and they're jerky.

If you have instant replay enabled, it will cache the stream on hdd, which would work badly if you did not disable vista's stupid indexing
 

tom2000

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Nov 23, 2008
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Can I enable indexing for the partition i have vista on but not for the partition i store media on?
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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Originally posted by: tom2000
Can I enable indexing for the partition i have vista on but not for the partition i store media on?

Just disable that indexing completely. It eats up your cpu and hdd for no good reason. I wish I still have the list of things to disable in vista to make it bearable.