This is, in part, a continuation of an earlier post involving the Hauppauge tweek tool. But it's a bit more involved so I wanted to start a new thread.

When I initially installed my PVR-150 (non-MCE) PCI card on my old computer, Hauppauge software caused me to experience overmodulated volume and flat/blurry captures. The Hauppauge Tweek Tool solved those issues:

http://www.cask-of-amontillado.com/pvr_tweak.html

However, if you are using the new driver set available here:

http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/pvr150/cd_pvr150_27.zip

the tweek tool won't function anymore. Still, according to this thread:

http://www.shspvr.com/smf/index.php?topic=10868.0

the new drivers appear to have addressed the video problems but not the audio problem.

When I recently installed the new driver/ap set on my new system, I attempted to find a solution to the audio issues. And, I found this on Hauppauge's UK forum site:

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=9083

The problem is that I could find none of the registry paths or values mentioned in MY registry ... and I'm running Windows 2000 Pro SP4. There are 3 possibilities:

1) The registry values shown on the page apply only to Vista and/or XP registries ... that the values under Windows 2000 are located in a different location.

2) The registry values shown on the page don't currently exist and must be added to the registry.

3) My driver/ap installation was incomplete. Of course, if this was true, there should have been complaints by now ... and I haven't seen any.

Since an attempt to join the Hauppauge UK board (allowing me to post email to the page's author) failed, I sent email asking which of the 3 possibilities is true to both the Hauppauge UK webmaster and the Hauppauge US tech support people and will post their reply (replies) when or if they respond.

So, I began to look for other options to solve the audio problem. And for PC users, I think I found one (but it's not free) - ChrisTV PVR. There's a "standard" and "professional" version - and the pro version is the only one allowing users to set up captures at customized bitrates.

But then, I noticed a funny thing. I did a few test captures with WinTV2000 and found that, for me, the audio problems experienced on my old system didn't materialize (sigh). In fact, most captured audio seemed slightly undermodulated ... which can be lived with, for sure. However, since these problems appear to affect some users, I'll continue to pursue the answers so affected users can benefit from them. If either Hauppauge or Hauppauge UK respond in any meaningful way with a means to adjust video and audio attributes, their "free" methods may be preferable to spending $59.95 for ChrisTV ... which may have its own issues.

One niggly I noticed with the new WinTV2000 version. Since I'm using it primarily to capture programming from the analog outputs of my new "digital" cable box (or analog VCR and DVD player outputs), I no longer connect a cable directly to the PVR-150 card. Because of that, there is no TV "signal" to detect. When I did my test captures, WinTV2000 did not allow me to view the video capture in progress at first. The capture itself worked ... it just wouldn't let me view it in progress. Instead, the viewing window defaulted to a graphic file named NoSignal.jpg:



The solution to that problem? Simply delete the C:\Program Files\WinTV\NoSignal.jpg file. With no file to display, the preview displays as desired.