TV Tuner Card Help please!

[esskay33]

Here's my setup:

Cable Into the house splits: one goes to the cable box, one goes towards the cable modem. This is how the cable company set it up. Now here's what I adjusted: That second one (towards the cable modem) splits again, and one goes to the cable modem, and the other goes to the TV tuner.

I would like to be able to also have a connection to my computer so if for example there's a sports game I want to keep track of while watching a show or something on the TV (or two games), I can have it going on the PC too and/or record it.

My PC has a dual tv tuner w/remote set, so that's taken care of.

All I need to figure out is how to make this happen.

Now that it's connected, here's what happens. (I'm using Media Center Edition to play TV).

I get some channels perfectly under 22. A notable and important exception is 5 (Fox) which is probably the most important one for me to work on the TV. Above that, the only other relevant channels for this setup I have are 25/26/36/37 (cnn/foxnews/espn/tnt) - and they are all scrambled.

Here's what I mean by scrambled: I get sound, but the picture scrolls horizontally across the screen in a totally scrambled fashion.

Here are the total specs on the machine:
Dimension 8400 w/650 3.4 Ghz processor
Dual TV tuner card (whatever dell sticks in there. If I need to find out, I can open it up and find out
1 Gig PC4300 RAM
GeForce 6800 256 MB vid card
300 GB SATA HD

That seems to be all that may be remotely relevant.

Can anybody help me? Thanks a lot, in advance..

 

[rise]

i dunno, it would make sense to me to split the line going to the cable tuner box, as i did. but i don't have a cable modem, just dsl.

 

[Traire]

1. Make sure your TV tuner in your computer is set to recieve cable stations and not over-the-air stations. This will be somewhere in the settings/options menu of whatever software your using to watch tv.

2. Try removing ALL the splits and plug the cable only into your computer TV tuner. If you still get poor signal, then there is likely something wrong with your tv tuner (check #1 again). If you get good signal with no splits to the tv tuner then:

3. Get a cable signal amplifier from best buy or radioshack and hook it up AFTER the last split to your computer tv tuner. Do NOT run the amplifier to your cable modem. Most amplifiers will cut out going signals, so it will mess up your modem.

 

[Matthias99]

There might be a filter on the line going to the cable modem. Try splitting off of either the main trunk or the line going to the cable box. If that works but the cable modem line doesn't, you found your problem.

 

[kylebisme]

I recomend just unpluging the cable modem to see if that clears up the trouble. When I had a cable modem and a tv hooked off the same line they used a spliter with -5db on one side, your cable company could probably give you the info you need to set it up right.

 

[esskay33]

Ok, it's a bit difficult (impossible) for me to run the cable from outside straight to the TV tuner only, but here's what I did:

I disconnected the cable modem from its end, same thing.

I disconnected the second splitter and ran it so that it goes only to the TV and the computer - same thing.



Suggestions?

I also updated the TV tuner drivers (it's an emuzed dual tuner)

 

[speed01]

If you have a cable box then the signal is probably scrambled and the box is unscrambling it (they do still work that way don't they?). Try plugging the cable that goes to the box directly into the TV and see if you get the same thing as the PC.

Speed

 

[esskay33]

Yeah looks like it's just the cablec hannels being scrambled.

Guess I'm SOL

 

[xtknight]

Assuming you live in the US, make sure your tuner is set to NTSC, not PAL nor SECAM nor something else. If not, set it to your local standard. Also, this might seem weird, but my video card drivers affected overlay which f'ed up my TV as well. The latest video drivers fixed this problem for me. These probably won't fix your problem but it's worth a try.

 

[esskay33]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Assuming you live in the US, make sure your tuner is set to NTSC, not PAL nor SECAM nor something else. If not, set it to your local standard. Also, this might seem weird, but my video card drivers affected overlay which f'ed up my TV as well. The latest video drivers fixed this problem for me. These probably won't fix your problem but it's worth a try.

I can't find where to set the tuner to pal/ntsc/etc