Low volume/bad sound from Hauppauge PVR150

A

asmielia

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2003
Messages
337
Hi,
I've had a Hauppauge PVR150 MCE edition in my HTPC for a couple months. It's been ok. Actually, I've been pretty unimpressed with the video quality in general. It definitely looks worse than Live TV, but that's a different matter.

I just got a receiver and 5.1 speaker system on the weekend. I've successfully set up SPDIF passthrough on DVDs and AC3 encoded Divx/Xvids. I've just tried watching TV for the first time through the HTPC, and the sound is really low volume. Significantly lower than the rest of the HTPC's sound output. When I turn the volume up, there's a lot of buzzing coming through, like the kind you get when you try to overamplify a crappy sound source. I'm not really sure what the culprit is. Definitely not the receiver or the speakers. It's either the sound card (onboard) or the PVR card.

I didn't have this problem before I had the speakers, but I'm trying to figure out what's changed since then.

In terms of setup, I have a STB accepting coax input from the wall. The STB then has a coax running to the TV (for watching TV without the HTPC), RCA cables running to the PVR card, and finally a digital coaxial cable running to the receiver. I suspected the digital coaxial cable might be the culprit since I added that with the receiver/speakers, but I unplugged it and it didn't make a difference.

The HTPC has a digital optical cable running to the receiver, and an RCA video cable running to the TV.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I've checked all the connections, nothing seems to be loose. I've tried disabling every setting I put in for SPDIF passthrough, none of them made any difference.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Adrian
 
So the sound card's control panel and the video app are both setup to pass the audio out through SPDIF? How about the MPEG codec control panel?
 
RCA cable to the PVR150? No wonder you're not impressed with the video quality! Use S-video instead. If your STB doesn't have S-video out, call your cable company and get one that does. You'll be amazed at the difference.
 
also check your AC3 settings. the last couple of rounds have defaulted to the master volume settings being set to low. go into the AC3 config and change the preset to loud. see if that helps. of course, that usually ahs the opposite effect of what youa re describing.

option 2, check the master volume and be sure WAV isn't turned way down for some reason.

as for the video quality, encoding is never lossles. even the store bought tivos and cable provider DVR boxes degrade qualtiy. when people rave about the PVR150 video quality, they are usually speaking in comparitive terms. compared to the other crap that is out there, the 150 is the lesser of all evils. also, remember the addage "garbage in, garbage out". the cleaner your signal source is, the better the output will be. give it svideo input and try not to use anaolog cable as your source. and don't be foole, just because it is coming through an STB, it doesn't mean its digital. cable companies only provide digital channels in the 100+ lineup. all the basic channels are still ananlog. when I switched to DirecTV I had much better results.
 
Thanks for the responses,
Crimandevil, what did you mean by the MPEG codec control panel? Where is that located? I suppose it depends on which decoder I'm using correct? I've got WinDVD 7, that was the first thing I installed to get the TV showing up properly. I changed some settings in there, and I managed to get DVDs playing in 5.1 DD through that app.

I also have ffdshow and dscaler installed. Both of those *should* be setup to output via SPDIF. Whenever I play any video, the ffdshow icon shows up in the taskbar, so I'm guessing that's the decoder it uses. How can I tell which MPEG decoder is being used?

I'm pretty sure I checked all the volume levels last night and they all looked ok. Like I said though, it's more than just the volume being low, cause when I boost the volume, I get buzzing in the speakers. And I know it's not the speakers/receiver, so it must be the source that's crappy. What could be the cause of that? I should check all the connections again. I can boost the volume using ffdshow, but again, there's buzzing.

Ok, well, maybe I'll try and get my hands on an S-video cable. My TV only has a single RCA input though, so that's why I figured S-video between the STB and the HTPC didn't matter, but maybe that was a poor assumption.

IDversusEGO, I know you keep advocating Satellite, but there's just no way I'm gonna switch. The TV quality is excellent when watching any channel directly, so I don't think I have dirty cable lines. Plus I'm renting a condo, I can't put up a dish outside.

Thanks again guys,
Adrian
 
Well, TV quality is dependant on how good your codec is and I've never been impressed with PowerDVD and WinDVD's quality myself. Depending on what PVR software you are running I would try a few different codecs and see if that improves picture quality. But yeah your TV input (composite) is kind of scrapping the barrel when it comes to quality.

I'm not too familar with how WinDVD might be doing it now but you should be able to launch it and then go into the preferences and config it there for SPDIF pass through of audio.

Which FFDShow icon is popping? Is it the one with the black bar or the one with the blueish colored bar? The blue one is for audio and the black one if for video.

Do you have AC3 filter installed?
 
I suppose I could uninstall WinDVD cause I have no use for it. I just installed it cause I needed an MPEG decoder. Now that I have dscaler, it should be ok right? BTW, WinDVD is configured to pass through SPDIF.

I'm using MCE for everything. Yes, I have AC3 filter, and I have that setup to pass through SPDIF, the sound from DVDs and Divx/Xvid is all coming up as 5.1 Dolby Digital and it sounds fantastic.

Yeah, the audio ffdshow icon always appears, not sure about the video one, I know I've seen it.

Adrian
 
Have you tried adjusting the volume in AC3 filter like ID suggested? I had to do that for a few DVDs since they were too low.
 
asmielia said:
IDversusEGO, I know you keep advocating Satellite, but there's just no way I'm gonna switch. The TV quality is excellent when watching any channel directly, so I don't think I have dirty cable lines. Plus I'm renting a condo, I can't put up a dish outside.

Thanks again guys,
Adrian
Click to expand...

oops, have i given that response to you before? sorry. sometimes I don't pay attention to the names on the posts. as for the hissing, you can get that when trying to amplify a low volume no matter what the source. try turning your master volume way down on your PC with a movie playing, then crank the reciever voolume. You'll get a nice hissing/buzzing sound. let us know if it is the same sound.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Have you tried adjusting the volume in AC3 filter like ID suggested? I had to do that for a few DVDs since they were too low.
Click to expand...

I'm not at home right now so I can't try anything for a few hours. But it's not a problem with AC3 filter because this isn't an MPEG wide problem. It's a problem specific to live and recorded TV from my Hauppauge PVR150. I can play DVDs, Xvids, and Divx just fine. The volume is normal and the sound is perfect. It's only on the Hauppauge that something is definitely wrong.

Adrian
 
IDversusEGO said:
oops, have i given that response to you before? sorry. sometimes I don't pay attention to the names on the posts. as for the hissing, you can get that when trying to amplify a low volume no matter what the source. try turning your master volume way down on your PC with a movie playing, then crank the reciever voolume. You'll get a nice hissing/buzzing sound. let us know if it is the same sound.
Click to expand...

Don't worry about it. I posted a question about video quality a month or two ago and that was the response you gave me. I wouldn't expect you to remember considering how many posts you and Crimandevil make. Where would this forum be without you two :)

Adrian
 
asmielia said:
I'm not at home right now so I can't try anything for a few hours. But it's not a problem with AC3 filter because this isn't an MPEG wide problem. It's a problem specific to live and recorded TV from my Hauppauge PVR150. I can play DVDs, Xvids, and Divx just fine. The volume is normal and the sound is perfect. It's only on the Hauppauge that something is definitely wrong.

Adrian
Click to expand...
Oh, all this talk about AC3 and such made me think it was a problem with DVDs and related.

Try this out: http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13065
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20294
 
One thing I have noticed about the PVR-150, sound quality sucks when programs that were originally recorded in mono (e.g. old 1950's/60's TV series) are broadcast over a stereo channel. The "fix" (actually a workaround) is to set the audio type to mono in WinTV2000's preferences when recording these programs.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Oh, all this talk about AC3 and such made me think it was a problem with DVDs and related.

Try this out: http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13065
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20294
Click to expand...

Well, thanks a lot. This seems really informative. When I bought the audio system this weekend, I also finally picked up a power bar for my home theatre. It is grounded and surge protected. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the buzzing. Not sure if this explains the low volumes, although if I could get rid of the buzzing, the volume issue could be fixed by other means.

Adrian
 
Frank DC said:
The Hauppauge Tweak Tool's audio registry tweaks don't work with driver versions past 23074. If you're using a later driver, steer clear of it. It'll cause more problems than it fixes.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure I've got the latest drivers on there.

So is there any harm in using this tweak tool for video settings?

Adrian
 
The only 'harm' I'm aware of is that the utility is poorly written and even more poorly maintained. It hosed my audio (I'm also using the latest drivers), and most of its video settings had no effect. It got to be such a mess of registry edits I finally wound up uninstalling my Hauppauge drivers and reinstalling the card from scratch.

The tweaker also doesn't have a proper 'restore defaults' function. Not that such a function is even possible, since Hauppauge's drivers are a moving target... e.g. registry key names and their locations change regularly, and in later driver versions some parameters for the PVR150's audio were moved down to a service level, so that one has to reboot before the new settings will take effect.
 
Hey guys, it looks like the problem was in fact a ground loop. I've decided to correct it by skipping the set top box altogether. I bought a new splitter and have a dedicated analog feed going right into the tuner now.

Can't say the video quality is any better, looks pretty much the same. The audio quality is back to normal, so that's what's important. The channel changing is also a million times faster, which is definitely a good thing. I just figured that the amount of times I need to record something on channel 75+ is next to never.

I ended up buying a 4 way 1100 mhz splitter. What's the rule of thumb on splitters? How much does the mhz rating matter, and what's the most amount of times you can split the cable before noticing a loss in quality? They had some 2400 mhz splitters, even an 8 way splitter, just wondering what to make of those?

Oh yeah, and since this tweak tool doesn't seem to be that great, is there anything I can do to fix up the frame rate/blurring issue I'm seeing with the PVR card? It's not that bad, but when watching fast motion, it's noticeable. Basically it just looks like it's skipping some frames and blurring others.

Thanks,
Adrian
 
asmielia said:
Hey guys, it looks like the problem was in fact a ground loop. I've decided to correct it by skipping the set top box altogether. I bought a new splitter and have a dedicated analog feed going right into the tuner now.

Can't say the video quality is any better, looks pretty much the same. The audio quality is back to normal, so that's what's important. The channel changing is also a million times faster, which is definitely a good thing. I just figured that the amount of times I need to record something on channel 75+ is next to never.

I ended up buying a 4 way 1100 mhz splitter. What's the rule of thumb on splitters? How much does the mhz rating matter, and what's the most amount of times you can split the cable before noticing a loss in quality? They had some 2400 mhz splitters, even an 8 way splitter, just wondering what to make of those?

Oh yeah, and since this tweak tool doesn't seem to be that great, is there anything I can do to fix up the frame rate/blurring issue I'm seeing with the PVR card? It's not that bad, but when watching fast motion, it's noticeable. Basically it just looks like it's skipping some frames and blurring others.

Thanks,
Adrian
Click to expand...
You should limit the number of splits to what's required. If you only need two, get a 2-way splitter. Above 1GHz the rating doesn't matter.

I also had skipping/blurring problems until I uninstalled ffdshow and a few other extra viewers and codecs on my system. MPEG4/DivX/etc codec packs are another suspect.
 
If you are having a ground loop problem. Is your cable feed properly grounded?
 
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