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  1. Hopefuly someone can help me out on this one...

    I have a 3 room directv system in my house.
    The picture quality in my room is fairly poor. There is fuzz around peoples hair, head, body, The background picture and Logos for the channels at the bottom of the screen.

    It looks kinda like VCD style fuzz. I know its not my cables connected to the reciver/tv.

    At first i tryed switching the feeds on the dish because i thought maybe the living room had the best feed and my bedroom had a split feed but i was wrong.

    I also tryed a signal booster from radioshack because they might have used too much cable and maybe im geting a degrade in quality from it but that didnt do anything.

    Im realy not sure what it could be. I want to capture dvd quality picture for dvdr and im not geting it. Like I said the living room picture looks great but im not geting that quality in my room.

    Any help would be great!
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  2. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    It may be your tv with "problems" is higer resolution than the other one. DirecTV is currently OVERLOADING their transponders. Quality is suffering. This is most likely what you are seeing.

    Welcome to the world of cheap-ass corporations and marketing lies. DirecTV never has been and never will be "DVD-quality" but more like CVD or SVCD quality on most channels. Only a few PPV have been known to get 704x480 DD streams, and even then, not with any frequency.

    Be sure you're using clean and shielded RG6 coax from dish to tv (all junctions). Maybe an FM trap or DC block will help, but doubtful. I think you're seeing the stream at its worst.
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  3. Thanks for replying lordsmurf,

    Im a big fan of your site and guides,
    So do you think it would be wise to go with cable tv or is that any worse?

    just bought an ati radeon aiw 9800 and was hoping to start caping straight to dvd.

    I guess i could probley keep buying the seasons on dvd... just hope more of the cartoons are released on dvd.
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  4. Member vhelp's Avatar
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    Yeah, I agree. DirecTV is sucking in quality, and getting worse. infact, the
    more they publicize that their quality is best, the worser it gets

    I've stopped paying for service.. and am just gonna let them cancel me.
    heck, some months ago, they took a few channels away from me, (to force
    me to move to a higher package deal) (of which I gave into, only because
    I watch them often) Yeah, it was only two channels that I needed) So, I
    ended up spending another $7 for two channels, that I (these days) never
    really see anyways, being that I'm at work 9 hours in a day, and 2 hours
    waiking up and dressing for work, 2 hours driving other 4 to 7 hours sleeping
    and if I get a chance to even watch those two channels (samiltaniously) I'm
    paying the $7 for 1 hours worth, monus the 5+ 3 min commericals in between,
    and then some

    To be truethfully honest, I don't think Satellite is worth it any mores ! !! !! !
    I'm tired of being the fool. And, that's $40 bucks back in my pocket :P

    pcbm, you're on your own

    -vhelp
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  5. The picture quality doesn't have anything to do with the sat feed coax from the dish to the receiver. If that coax has a problem you will simply lose signal and see the "acquiring signal please stand by" screen. Both Dish Network and DTV are all digital so the sat signal is either there or not, weak signal can cause "blocking" but not fuzz or static.

    Now to your problem. You didn't mention how you were hooking your sat rec to your capture card (or DVD recorder) but I'm going to assume you are using the red, white, and yellow A/V cables. First thing I would try is swapping rec with the one in the living room that is currently giving a good picture. I've seen alot of DTV rec that put out a bad picture due to a fault in the equipment. Difff model receivers perform differently as well.

    Since I've switched to Dish Network I've noticed an improvement in PQ. But even with Dish, some channels can be really lacking....most though look great on my 53" TV. Hope this helps.
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  6. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by duplicator
    The picture quality doesn't have anything to do with the sat feed coax from the dish to the receiver. If that coax has a problem you will simply lose signal and see the "acquiring signal please stand by" screen. Both Dish Network and DTV are all digital so the sat signal is either there or not, weak signal can cause "blocking" but not fuzz or static.
    If you take the FM trap off my coax that goes into the capture card, I'd have a piece of RG6 and a fuzzy signal that would argue with you. A wire can pickup all kinds of noise, as it is an analog transport system. The "digital" ends with the satellite dish and receiver.

    Cable tv is worse. Time Warner, Charter, Comcast ... they all suck as bas as satellite or worse even. Plus most "digital" cable is merely a digitally compressed analog signal.
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  7. Look, as bad as he says his picture is, he has some type of problem that is worse than the typical DirecTV picture. The fact that he states that the living room looks great, points to a connection problem of some sort or bad equipment.
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  8. Lordsmurf, please reread what you quoted me as stating. You mentioned putting an FM trap on the coax that goes TO your capture card. I was stritly talking about the coax that goes FROM his dish to the rec. All the decoding of the signal is done IN the sat box. PCBM's problem is either the receiver itself OR the cables used to connect the capture card to the receiver. He mentioned switching feeds and installing a signal amp (this type of amp he is talking about is not the typical RF amp most people are used to using...there is a sat signal amp that can help make up for the DB loss when running long runs from the dish to the rec)

    PCBM, if you ARE using the coax output from the rec's TV output then that is probably the problem. If your capture card has A/V inputs, try using those instead and the problem should go away. One more idea you might want to try is to use a stereo modulator. This device will connect to your rec's A/V outputs and turn THAT picture into a ch 3 or 4 RF signal. I know that on the face this seems to be doing the identical thing you are already doing now but I suspect your sat rec's RF output is bad....this is a way of cheaply bypassing this problem.

    One final thought, lordsmurf's post made me think of something. Sometimes I run into a situation where the ch 3 picture on a customer's TV has some interference. I can usually fix this problem by replacing the coax that goes from the Sat rec to the TV with a better grade piece of coax.....not all coax cables are shielded the same, we have a ch 4 TV tower very close by and it will bleed right through cheap coax (the coax jumper that came with your rec is about as cheap as it gets)

    Once again, hope this helps.
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  9. He said VCD style fuzz. Maybe he didn't know the correct term. Macroblocks and mosquito noise are know to form around fine edges i.e. hair head body, logos ect. I have noticed this myself on HDTV signles. Yes, the stream is either there on not, but just because the whole stream is there doesn't make it good quality. I mean look at a VCD on your computer, that is the whole stream, no interference, and it still looks like crap. Why? Because of the heavy compression. Satellite, cableand, and even broadcast (in HDTV's case), companies compress their signles to put more content within the given bandwidth, this makes the quality suffer with "vcd style fuzz".

    Its not your wires dude, its DirecTV sucking. There isn't much else better unfourtunatly. Sure, HDTV is sharp as all get out, but who cares when you have all these horrible compression artifacts?
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  10. He also said that the picture is fine in the front room.
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  11. Member
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    Another helpful hint, if you are using coax to the TV.
    Retune (or fine tune) TV to ch 3 or 4 (whichever you are using)

    Cheap coax can be susseptible to many problems.
    ie: funky connectors, minimal shielding,..etc
    Go with A/V cables if you can......much better signal.
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  12. Maybe the TV in the front room has built in noise reduction or has a slightly blurrier picture that masks the artifacts. Or maybe it looks fine on televisions, but when he caputures it "in his room" and looks at it on a progressive monitor, he sees the artifacts. It could be the compression of the capture card if he is "caputering strait to dvd". In his room doesn't mean on a television. So maybe thats it. Maybe the reciever in his room is decoding it correctly.
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  13. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    The tv coax connector could be bad, dirty... etc... also it could be the receiver. Somewhere you're running into coax line noise. Find out where and why. See if using composite helps. Remove all coax if possible. Go straight from receiver to tv to remove middlemen (no VCR, etc)
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  14. Yeah I guess I didnt give enough information on my setup,

    im using the rca drd435rh in all 3 rooms...
    That is connected with an rca cable directly to my ati aiw radeon 9800
    Ive tried swaping the box in the living room with my box in my room but same quality.

    Maybe the tv in the living room blurs the fuzz out, but I can tell you this..

    The fuzz is on the tv in my room.. and when i output from the second line on the sat box its still there.. You can tell the card trys to cover it up a bit, but its still there.

    Yes I agree $40+ a month is alot for possibly 1 hour of viewing per day. Geez i only get to watch it on my days off and even then im usualy busy lol

    Im happy to see how fast you guys answered me, thanks for trying to help!!! I guess we all have to live with crappy sat signal.

    Oh well, at least I get to watch boomerang! :P
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