Poor picture quality from TV tuner

[Sharkylegbreaker]

Hi all, hope you can help.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II (26xx) Tv tuner/capture card.

The image quality is very poor, is there any cards out there that even get close to an image that I would get running my cable directly to my TV?

I've tried to adjust WinTV but can't seem to get better than a grainy washed out image, especially if watching sports, is this the current technology level of tv tuners for pc's?

Please offer some hope...

[enaberif]

You'll need either a ATI product or the PVR-150 or 350 series.

[cdn_Madrach]

What are you using for a tv and is it reg cable or digital? I ask this because if the res on your tv is set very high and your signal is not great the high resolution will only magnify the flaws in the signal. If everything was hd you could just max out the res and it would look great. Just my 2 cents.

[Amon]

I used the TV tuner on my Rage 128 All-in-Wonder and even that 8-year-old card produced better image quality than some dedicated brands I've seen these days using an RF connector.

[Sharkylegbreaker]

Originally Posted by cdn_Madrach

What are you using for a tv and is it reg cable or digital? I ask this because if the res on your tv is set very high and your signal is not great the high resolution will only magnify the flaws in the signal. If everything was hd you could just max out the res and it would look great. Just my 2 cents.

I am using a 42in LCD TV with dvi-hdmi input the signal is regular cable not HD. I just yestereday picked up an ATI 650 HD tuner card and it's the same as the Haupage 150 mce that I currently have.

doesn't seem to matter what resolution i put in there it isn't a good picture very grainy and lots of artifacting. I only watch sports for TV programs so don't really want to pay for digital HD cable box. Would it help if I got an a cable box and input the signal as S-video rather than analog cable?

[cdn_Madrach]

Might help but with my setup lowering the resolution a little helped. Biggest problem is spreading a poor signal(cable reg) into a tuner card then out a big tv. Makes the picture look even worse. I use a fta sat card and output signal via hdmi with a hd2400 and the picture looks very good. Sorry I can't help more as I use sat thru htpc and hook cable direct.

[Gav]

I am using a 42in LCD TV with dvi-hdmi input the signal is regular cable not HD. I just yestereday picked up an ATI 650 HD tuner card and it's the same as the Haupage 150 mce that I currently have.

doesn't seem to matter what resolution i put in there it isn't a good picture very grainy and lots of artifacting. I only watch sports for TV programs so don't really want to pay for digital HD cable box. Would it help if I got an a cable box and input the signal as S-video rather than analog cable?

Unfortunately with a TV that big, SD cable is just going to look bad. The bigger the TV, the more obvious it will be. You would have to move to an HD signal to get the benefits from your TV. At that point though, you won't be able to use your PC to view it as it will be an encrypted signal.

I only use my HTPC for outputting SD cable onto a 32" CRT TV. I use my SHAW PVR to output my SD and HD to my 32" WS Viewsonic LCD TV. 32" is alot smaller than yours but SD still looks like crap. HD on the other hand is amazing.

Switching from Digital to Analogue won't help you at all in this case.

[ineedaname]

What are the specs on the rest of that HTPC?

Your probably need a vid card with HDMI.