Small issue with ATI TV Wonder Elite

[Markbnj]

Installed a TV Wonder Elite tonight, and downloaded the trial ver. of Beyond TV. Pretty damn slick setup. Never had a tuner card before, so I am getting a kick out of it. The remote works pretty well too.

Side note: interesting that my overclock had been stable for weeks, but the system blew up when I installed the ATI catalyst drivers for the TV Wonder. I had to back off the overclock to get it installed.

Anyway, overall working very well, but on some of the channels there is interference, either horizontal flashing bars, or general flickering. This interference is not evident on the televisions in the rest of the house. Is this likely a problem with the tuner in the card?

 

[rbV5]

This interference is not evident on the televisions in the rest of the house. Is this likely a problem with the tuner in the card?

Probably not. Its probably related to the signal strength, PC TV tuners seem to require a better signal than a regualr TV set. I usually notice on the lower channels, particularly 2 through 6. If you have a splitter between the card and the wall outlet, you can test it without and see if it helps, and maybe a different cable. I use signal amplifiers on both my HD antenna and my cable feed, and higher quality splitters and it makes all the difference.

 

[Markbnj]

Interesting, thanks for the reply. I did put a splitter in, since the line is the same that runs through the basement from the other end of the house, and then comes up through the floor to the cable modem in my office. That line is a home run from the first splitter at the wall where the service is tied off. All the other TVs in the house split off a seperate line. I did this to get the best possible signal for the cable modem, and was a little worried about splitting that line to the tv tuner, but the cable modem seems not to have been affected.

Does signal strength vary per channel coming in from the cable system? I wouldn't be surprised, since sound levels vary a lot. Some channels the ATI is pulling in sharp and clear.

Radio Shacks sells an inline amplifier. Not that I want YADC (Yet Another Damn Converter) plugged into the wall, but maybe that would help with the weak channels.

 

[rbV5]

Does signal strength vary per channel coming in from the cable system? I wouldn't be surprised, since sound levels vary a lot. Some channels the ATI is pulling in sharp and clear

I'm quite certain it does, cable Co tries to shove the analog channels down to the low end of the spectrum and cram as many digital channels in the spectrum left over.

Also, you'll notice that locally broadcast channels from the same city are never(or rarely) next to each other(and generally on the lowest end of the spectrum) since analog channels can intefere with adjacent channels, so compromses are made to the bandwidth. I'm pretty sure the cable co just rebroadcasts the locals, so I'm guessing thats why I'll see worse performance on those channels relatively speaking.

 

[xtknight]

I can't remember what problems I had, but some NVIDIA ForceWare video drivers really screwed my TV tuner's playback. It looked like a blue/yellow hue over it, was very inconsistent and weird, and it disabled deinterlacing so it looked awful. It happened when I used XTreme-G drivers of some old driver. Try updating your video driver to the latest official and see if it helps.

Is this the kind of flickering you get as you screw in your coax cable?

I too notice my local channels over cable look absolutely dreadful at times, and I mean I can barely tell if the thing talking is a person or a wolf.

 

[xtknight]

Does it look like this? (minus the static :shocked: ): http://farmz.net/xtknight/pukequality.wmv
Here's how my locals look: http://farmz.net/xtknight/nbc1.jpg
No joke. The second picture was with my cable plugged in properly and everything.

I can't say it's surprising. My dad picks up the cheapest stuff to split coax. The one we have now was probably in someone's trash can. I'd say that's the first thing to try (and fix). Then again, nothing else in this house is that bad. Or maybe I just don't notice it. I do have a splitter suspended in the air which is splitting the cable that's going to my tuner now. See if there's a similar situation at your house. I actually think the main splitter in my basement is OK.

If you want some laughs, here's my TV guide channel at the far end of the cable spectrum:

Spawn of Satan 1
Spawn of Satan 2

Channels in the middle don't look bad at all though. No, I'm serious.

 

[Markbnj]

[Is this the kind of flickering you get as you screw in your coax cable?]

More like that, yeah. It's obvious that it is RF interference or distortion, and not something introduced by the processing on the computer side.

[My dad picks up the cheapest stuff to split coax]

Yeah, that can have an effect. A lot of cable modem issues can be traced to having too many crappy splitters. I bought the highest quality splitter that Radioshack had available. But I may also try their inline amplifier.