TV Capture is Grainy

[randyannie]

I just installed an ATI TV Wonder Pro video capture card and the first thing I noticed was that the picture quality is kind of grainy.

I came out of the cable from my wall, hooked it to a spliter, then ran one coax cable to my cable modem and one coax cable to my ATI card.

Also, I seem to have lost my on screen remote for the TV part. Sound is a bit distorted . . . just rechecked my video while typing this very post and it looks a lot better today than last night.

Thanks for your input, Randy

PS: the box advertised something like 121 channels but I'm only getting 70 after autoscan. Any takers?

[presto]

Just wondering. Are you watching on your TV or on the computer. The computer monitor never looks as good as on TV. Also playing a burned DVD on a set top player looks better than playing the video on TV from your computer.

The card can't give you more channels than you subscribe to. They were probably refering to the maximum number of channels it is capable of.

[upshot]

Sounds like you need some good shielded cables and a power conditioner... There are alot of fields generated around your electronic equipment which makes this a must....

[randyannie]

Hey Upshot, can you teach me what a power conditioner is. Is it like one of those APC Power Supplies? Maybe you could refer me to a link to some good shielded cables.

Thanks for your help, Randy

[upshot]

No prob... I'm using a monster cable stuff myself... You can find it at any bestbuy, compusa, etc....

I'd start with the monster cable HT800 (surge protector and power conditioner) good bang for the buck unit:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=255801&is=REG

You could spend thousands on one of these things and some do but for your general home use this does the trick with "Clean Power Stage 1 filter" look around you may find it for less or find a better unit for the same price. It also has the surge protection for your coax which is a MUST when your connecting to your computer... you can fry your motherboard just as quick though the coax...

That should improve your picture but if not you may have to look into shielded coax from your cable box... I'm personally just sheilding after I go through the HT800 (which happens to be about a meter from my "video area") you'll have to experiment with shielded runs since alot of stuff can interfere with your cable... light balasts, water heaters, dishwashers, laundry, ETC ETC.... Follow the run from the cable box and look for potential problems... You get the idea...

[randyannie]

Thanks so much folks, for the help. I'll try to answer both, Presto's and Upshot's posts, in this same post.

Presto, that was a good idea, I never thought about capturing and then watching on TV. I'll do that and let you know how it goes. BTW you were right, they only give you how many channels you subscribe to - no magic channel genie in the sky Thanks for the tip.

Upshot, that was a great hook-up on the Monster Cable HT800. I used to use that monster cable stuff years ago on my extremely expensive home stereo speakers, and remembered how good it was! Don't know when I'll be able to afford the ht800 but I know that Monster Cable is good stuff! Thanks again.

Best, Randy

[lordsmurf]

I have a UPS with AVR ... that seems to take care of power issues I used to have, in terms of interference.

Pure MONSTER cables.
RG6 from Radioshack for coax.

All video noise is gone. I'm still dealing with hiss though, I may need an attenuator. My JVC 9800 with REC LEVEL set higher overpowers the hiss with more audio. So for now, I'm okay. I'll see how long that lasts.

[Nelson37]

OK, before you spend lots of cash improving your worst-quality connection, try using the better-quality ones you already have.

Use the composite or s-video out, and audio, from the cable box. This bypasses BOTH the coax input and the tuner on the card. You should get a significant increase in quality.

This means you won't be able to tune channels with the card. So what? It won't tune either Digital cable or encrypted Premium channels anyway. Many digital cable providers actually are analog on all lower-numbered stations, your results suggest this may be the case.

My first major quality increase was to move to S-video from coax. Difference on CATV was almost comparable to using DVD for input over coax.

Audio quality also benefits.

Digital cable over S-video appeared to be of equal quality to DVD player over coax.

The dramatic noise reduction is what makes the difference in both of these scenarios. Noise not only degrades video quality, but also causes a big increase in bitrate requirement. For real-time encoding, it can make or break it.

[finny]

I have the SAME SETUP and SAME PROBLEM of grainy Picture Quality...

However I'm using an AVERMEDIA MediaCenter PCI 500 TV tuner card....
http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner_UltraTV_pci_500.shtml

What factors should I trouble shoot to fix the grainy picture quality?

Thanks