WinTv Go - AWAY!

[Vinpire]

Okay, after much discussion and testing i have decided that my wintv go card is a load of crap.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=56468&forum=2&0
that link will take you to my previous post on my problem.
to recap : since i upgraded my machine 4 months ago, my wintv go card has gained some interference from something. no matter what i try, i can shake it. i've turned everything off in my bedroom, my tv and both vcrs, and hooked up the main aerial to the card. i've had one of my vcrs going straight to the card via a scart to phono lead. i've tried unhooking the aerial from both vcrs and the tv and just watching the vcr through my card. i still couldn't shake it. i checked the time stamps on some of the files i encoded, the last good one i did was created on 17th may. the files that were created after that have the interference on them. it was about that time i upgraded my pc. just to prove that it wasn't my pc causeing the interference, i took it to my girlfriends pc, in a totally different house, with a totally different aerial hookup. this time my card got the privelege of being connected to sky digital, and guess what ladies and gentlemen.... IT'S STILL GOT INTERFERENCE! so then, most of my hair has been pulled from my head, my card is now firmly seated back in my pc, and i am non the wiser. someone must know why it's happening. anyone???? and now for the most important question of the post, is my card damaged in any way? i ask this because it doesn't seem to work with any combo of wires and vcrs i tried, or even in a different pc. love. i don't want to go buy another card because i'm a very poor student.

Vince.

p.s. sorry for the long post. links to pictures of the interference are located at the link on the top of this post.

[bal85]

im getting the same problem..any help

[bal85]

ive posted messages about this before and no one helped me...arggghhh

[KingJohn]

Hi Again Vince

Sorry to hear you still have the problem after trying so many things. I guess since its the same in another PC its got to be the card. You did have it working fine before you upgraded the machine, during the unplugging etc maybe its gone out of alignment.

Cant see my card its in the PC, But I have a ATI graphics card and it came with an ISA TV card made by Philips, the old ISA card like most of these tuners has a screened case where the antenna and AVI is plugged in. There are adjustment holes on that case, which move the frequency and there might be a level adjustment, all of these are factory set.

If you cannot get this card to work correctly maybe you can get some insulated tools and see if a "slight" adjustment left or right will improve or eliminate your problem. With you unplugging the card maybe a slight knock has moved it out of alignment. As we know if you get a weak signal on a particular channel its prone to interference from adjacent channels, even the AVI can pickup interference if its weak.

Since it was working fine and now not working in two different machines, its got to be out. What about an email to the company, maybe they will offer some help.

Just looking at the manual, it says ;

"A poor image could be caused if you VGA adapter does not have enough video RAM to hold the TV image. In this case WinTV resorts to Primary Surface mode, which lowers image quality"

"Another possible cause is VGA display does not support Direct Draw"

This is for the early days of the card and Windows 95...

"A poor video picture might also indicate a bad signal"

Then it lists things like moving the antenna or checking the connection It also says to run the diagnoses program. Not much help as usual. Have you tried lowering/increasing your desktop colors, 24 bit instead of 32 bit ?, also the video overlay mode change from/to Overlay or Primary Surface mode. Maybe something in this will trigger some thought ?

[thxkid]

had card 2 years, had same problem, when I use DVD, VCR or sat, nothing else can be hooked to the source you are taking the video from, thats right, a hassle but once I unhooked all antenna's and/or RCA cables from DVD, VCR or sat, which ever I was using at the time it works fine. If I run anything from my computer to my entertaiment system I get also a audio buzz, if I unhooked everything but what is running from the computer to let say the VCR it OK, I am not the 1st person who has run into this problem, I believe it has to be how the computer and entertainment system are grounded.

[KingJohn]

He tryed that...

One other thing, look in the installation folder, there are some hidden tools, I just messed with "pnpscan.exe" even though the card was still working I could not change channel - that will teach me to mess, its ok again, so if you do make changes write down the old settings.

[Vinpire]

wow, first of all, thanks to you all for the responses!
I think an email is the next port of call, and rest assured it's probably possible that i knocked the card at some point, i'll take a look at that in a minute and report back. by the way, i forgot to say, i am dual booting win2000 and win 98, both have a colour depth of 24bit and i have an 8mb 3dfx video card (the unheard of 3dfx velocity 100!) I have also tried turning off the overlay and switching to primary surface mode, i tried updating the drivers, i also tried uninstalling them and re-installing. i will go and have a look at the card now, but i think the tuner may be totally sealed. thanks.


Vince.

[Vinpire]

guess i'm not emailing tech support then.....

a direct copy & paste from the wintv group at yahoo.

"I reported the problems in detail to Hauppauge at
techsupport@h... each time but as usual never receive a response"

as usual, i never receive a response. hmmm.....


Vince.

[Vinpire]

and we have a winner?....

The Post :

Is there anyway to reduce the wiggly lines on a WinTV Nicam card? I am using SVideo in but it makes no difference. I get these horrid wiggly lines moving very quickly in a slightly diagonal motion upwards. I've tried moving the card to other slots but it does not help. I am wondering if it is picking up interference from the other cards (Promise ATA66, SBLive,Advansys SCSI, Matrox G400)?

Hmm...annoying...


The Reply :

Sounds like the wiggly lines might be induced by power supply switching noise. Had the same problem til I installed a good quality power supply. Also might be induced by an electric motor somewhere in the vicinity ie fan etc. Certainly worth checking.

My Thoughts :

I had a cooling fan in the front of my pc which i disconnected. it didn't cure the problem but it cured a lot of whirry noise in my bedroom. now the only fans i have left are the cpu fan and the power supply. i disconnected the cpu fan as well, that didn't work either. so the only other fan is in the power supply. now in my amazing upgrade i switched from an AT to an ATX case. with power management etc... it turns itself off, my old one didn't. hands up who thinks this may be another cause... because my girlfriends pc (the other pc i tried the card in) has an atx psu inside it as well.

Vince.

[Vinpire]

it's not as if i like posting so much info...

the tuner block on my card is totally sealed and impervious to any sort of tweaking. i tried the card in my mum's pc with an AT case. It worked. but the pc is crap so the capture was dreadfull. but at least no wavey wiggly lines. i made a new discovery, my motherboard has a via chipset, apparently this has caused problems before so i'm off the hauppage to see if this might be the problem...

Vince.

[KingJohn]

Hi Don't expect an email reply the next day. A reply might come up to 2 weeks later. Heck I'm still getting replies from US Robotics that I sent last year

This is a new case, so I guess you have a new power supply, can you fit the old power supply ? or are the plugs different. If it was an old power supply they do heat up and get dry joints, leaving some of the smoothing capacitors disconnected.

[Vinpire]

i emailed them anyway. my entire upgrade was free second hand gear my dad gave me. it is a fairly new powersupply. my old psu is in my nephews pc right now so i can't really try it, also the new psu is ATX and the old one was AT so they won't fit on the same mainboard.

Vince