I'm having a spot of trouble. I'd been using my Windows Media Center 2005
with an antenna for a while with no problems (I've got a Hauppauge 150 card).
Quality was as good as could be expected from antenna. Recently, I've
gotten cable at my home and I tried to connect it to my computer. I went
through the process of setting up my TV signal through WMC2005, using the
automatically detect and the Cable settings. The quality I am getting is
worse than with the antenna . . . very fuzzy and snowy . . . like it is
getting poor reception.

Now, here's the odd part . . . when I try to use the software that came with
my Hauppauge card . . . the WinTV2000 application, the picture is crystal
clear! No problem at all. This tells me that there is no problem with my
coax cabling, connections, splitters, or hardware. I even went and compared
the quality of the picture in WMC2005 to the quality of WinTV2000 when using
the antenna and they look to have equal quality . . . my problem only
persists with the cable tv settings.

I'm just a little perplexed by what could be causing this, as I have had no
other trouble with the tuner card or with WMC2005 before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much!

I have the same issue too. Cable tv picture sucks even though antenna tv was
crystal clear.


"Jonah Garoutte" <JonahGaroutte@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8C1A6FDB-5273-4195-A40A-99929A11953E@microsoft.com...

Do you have the specific drivers installed for Media Center Edition? These
are different than for just using the tuner with the Hauppauge viewer. You
can go on their website to locate them :

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_mce.html

Just a thought...

"Tom Brickell" wrote:

Toml, Thanks for looking. I appreciate the help.

Yes, I have installed the MCE drivers for that card . . . that was one of
the first things I checked when I noticed the problem. I went straight to
the website below and made sure I had the latest MCE drivers.

Jonah

"toml" wrote:

Hers is one hypothesis forwhat you are observing.
MS requires that the MCE drivers be capable of inportint the video be
compressed and encoded in MPEG2 format with a maximum bit rate value at the
"Best" setting. The encoded video is then decoded by the DVD Decoder
software on the MCE system.
The Hauppauge Win TV program is not under any of these restrictions an be
inporting the LiveTv directly and doing its own processing which is why it
has better PQ. If takes a stronger input signal for the hardware encoder to
do a good job without adding artifacts to the signal or to be able to encode
the signal at all.
If Win TV is using encoded input video for LiveTV than it may be using a
higher bit rate than is permitted by MCE which would also accoung for better
PQ.
"Jonah Garoutte" <JonahGaroutte@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E05FA023-DAB8-4522-A31F-67357084C6A7@microsoft.com...

If MCE imposes a restriction on the decoding speed, wouldn't "everyone" be
complaining about their picture quality? I have read other posts from users
that are perfectly satisfied with their tv card and picture quality... My
picture quality depends on whether or not the subject is "moving a lot". If
the overall scene is tranquil, then the picture is crystal clear, but watch
out if this is an action tv show! It's like the middle of the picture blurs
momentarily - almost imperceptibly, but never the less blurs as the action
changes. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Could it be an issue with
the quality of our video cards?

"JW" wrote:

Many users have complained that their antenna or cable signal has much
better PQ when connected directly to their TV compared to haveing an MCE
system in the middle and the casue is the encoding. Tivo and other STBs
appear to use more expensive encoder chips since users have also complaine
that these boxes when used with their TVs also do better. The networks use
endoer systems costing many thousands of $.
The fact that you are observing the problem with motion can either indicate
an encoder that is haveing trouble keeping up with the required Bit rate or
that the motion compensation support contained in your graphics/video cards
hardware acceleration function.
The best motion compensation is provided MNIDIA 6600 GT and higher cards or
by the ATI X1x00 series of cards.

"toml" <toml@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A0E50FBC-9B64-4590-AA51-244DB33685D9@microsoft.com...