Hauppauge HVR-1600 HD tuner with MCE 2005

[rallynavvie]

The regular MPEG2 encoding looks ever-so-slightly grainier than my PVR-250 but that could be from me messing around with my cabling. I'm still messing with getting both tuners to work from a single outlet with a splitter so I'd be able to do a better comparison then. Now at least both tuners have fresh new drivers for them.

I saw the unencrypted QAM capability for my card already. The later hardware revisions (which mine is) had a firmware update or driver update that enabled it. I'll mess with that once I get both tuners working. I'm still only getting one channel to come in properly in HD but since it's FOX I'm fine with it (thinking football season later this year). Problem is I don't think my cable service has digital content.

Verizon's FiOS trunk is nearby and I've been trying to get them in here for internet. I'd also pick up the TV option since they apparently have STBs with 1394 connections. I hope they don't save video in HDV though

[edDV]

The regular MPEG2 encoding looks ever-so-slightly grainier than my PVR-250 but that could be from me messing around with my cabling. I'm still messing with getting both tuners to work from a single outlet with a splitter so I'd be able to do a better comparison then. Now at least both tuners have fresh new drivers for them.

I saw the unencrypted QAM capability for my card already. The later hardware revisions (which mine is) had a firmware update or driver update that enabled it. I'll mess with that once I get both tuners working. I'm still only getting one channel to come in properly in HD but since it's FOX I'm fine with it (thinking football season later this year). Problem is I don't think my cable service has digital content.

Last night I searched the SageTV and BeyondTV forums to see how the HVR-1600 was doing and the consensus seems to be both the HVR-1600 and ATI 650 Pro tuners are working fine with latest software and also seem to work in combination together. If one has OTA reception, the HVR also functions as a dual tuner. Some are using two HVR-1600s to get two analog and two OTA ATSC tuners all recording to schedule.

So far the MPeg2 quality is being reported as similar to the PVR-250/150/500 but one guy reported some noise in black letterbox areas for the analog side of the HDR. Those with a good OTA ATSC signal report good quality for HDTV reception.

Although Hauppauge has recently added clear QAM capability, neither BeyondTV nor SageTV seem to support it yet as an alternative to OTA local reception. That is the solution I'm looking for since OTA reception is poor here. Most report dissatisfaction with the software supplied from Hauppauge. I haven't checked the MCE forums yet since I'm not using MCE.

I'm going to stop by at Fry's today to see if any more are available for $79 (less rebate). I'm surprised to see the price has dropped to PVR-150 levels. It makes me wonder if a replacement card will appear soon.

Verizon's FiOS trunk is nearby and I've been trying to get them in here for internet. I'd also pick up the TV option since they apparently have STBs with 1394 connections. I hope they don't save video in HDV though

The IEEE-1394 connection on set top boxes normally passes MPeg2_TS not HDV format.

[rallynavvie]

I read somewhere, be it Hauppauge's support forums or some other forums, that the QAM feature of the HVR-1600 is only supported by the Hauppauge apllication (WinTV?). I'd try it if the WinTV software worked with Media Center but I'd have to disable all the Media Center services in order for it to see the tuner and I just can't mess with it like that. I think it'd be a waste if Hauppauge only supported QAM through their own application, it would basically thumbing their nose at all the HTPC users who are already devoted to their products.

[edDV]

I read somewhere, be it Hauppauge's support forums or some other forums, that the QAM feature of the HVR-1600 is only supported by the Hauppauge apllication (WinTV?). I'd try it if the WinTV software worked with Media Center but I'd have to disable all the Media Center services in order for it to see the tuner and I just can't mess with it like that. I think it'd be a waste if Hauppauge only supported QAM through their own application, it would basically thumbing their nose at all the HTPC users who are already devoted to their products.

Eventually, the others will support the feature (BeyondTV, SageTV maybe gbpvr, maybe MCE) but they need to revise their drivers for QAM tuning. It's a big deal in the SageTV forums. Many like you are in apartments and don't want to deal with antennas. I have the same issue because a ridge blocks OTA reception here.

[edDV]

I got my HDR-1600 and installed it last night.

I'm just using the Hauppaugue WinTV software (Beta with QAM) software so far.

First reaction is the analog tuner side is marginal but usable. Much worse than the cable box S-Video out.

The ATSC/QAM side has very good quality. I'm only using QAM here since I lack OTA ATSC.

Is anyoue using the QAM tuning? Getting HD from cable seems to be a fox hunt. I get 18 active QAM channels (all excellent quality) but most are SD versions of the local station broadcasts. Only the PBS station has a permanent HD presence. The PBS station has separate QAM feeds for HD, the second SD subchannel and their SD Spanish PBS-VME subchannel. The analog PBS channel also appears in high digital quality as a separate QAM channel.

The network HD programming seems to pop in dynamically during actual HD broadcasts. The SD QAM channels remain with SD. I suppose Comcast is muting the HD channel when the network is showing SD to save cable bandwidth. In order to find the HD QAM channel, one seems to need to scan during HD programming.

What are others seeing?

Oh BTW, MCE and Sage are not supporting QAM yet so you need to use the Hauppauge beta software. I'll try BeyondTV this weekend.

[edDV]

Whoa!
A daytime QAM scan reveals many more open QAM channels including US Open Golf in HD !

Total so far 26 open QAM subchannels , a few not active.

[rallynavvie]

Actually you should be picking up all the HD content available at all hours. I have to find the link to the article but it was what I wanted to do with mine if MCE supported QAM.

[edDV]

Actually you should be picking up all the HD content available at all hours. I have to find the link to the article but it was what I wanted to do with mine if MCE supported QAM.

They didn't all show up in the scan until today. It appears SD and HD versions of the major networks appear on different QAM subchannels, at least here.

The only non-locals so far have been CSPAN 1 & 2.

For the HVR-1600, the quality for the QAM SD channel is ~true 704x480 and far superior compared to the analog version.

[rallynavvie]

Are you getting any stutter or anything you would attribute to bandwidth issues?

[edDV]

Are you getting any stutter or anything you would attribute to bandwidth issues?

I'm getting some lockups needing reboot*. I'll give them some slack since its beta stage. Lockups are on the digital side.

The test machine is a Core2Duo 6300 with mucho drive storage >1TB. Display card is a bit weak (ATI 9550) but after some stalls it does realtime 720p/1080i but 1080i takes longer to get going.

I'll be doing more with this card over the weekend.

I'm not excited about the SD side. While recording, video seems delayed vs audio in preview. I'm not used to that with DV or ATI AIW capture.


*Lockups affect Windows Explorer (disk view during recording) and the ATI Catalyst driver.

[jagabo]

Starting to see this card (HVR-1600) deep discounted

Outpost 99-20 rebate =79
Fry's store 79-20 rebate =59

I've been tempted to pick one up too. Thanks for all the detailed observations later in the thread. Our local Fry's has it for $99 with no indication of any rebate. Frys.com currently has it for the $99 and links to the $20 rebate form which only says you have to purchase from "Fry's Electronics" to be eligible. Maybe I'll just buy from the store and take a chance on the rebate. If I get one I'll post on my QAM experiences too.

[edDV]

Good news from weekend playing with this card.

I've solved the analog issues. The beta install put in wrong analog defaults. Turns out nominal default has everything set to 128. When that is done levels are good from the analog tuner. Last night Comcast had their test channel active and a I capped a good color bar. It has plenty of noise but the levels are good with 128 default settings.



A sample with white and black. Now this card seems to be working similar to the PVR-250 for analog although I don't have one to compare.



The QAM SD channels seem efficiently encoded to MPeg2 at the TV station/Comcast. Great news is they don't need further processing to go to DVD. Bit rates vary by station.

SD QAM Locals

ABC 2-6Mb/s vbr
CBS 2-5Mb/s vbr
FOX 2-6Mb/s vbr
NBC 2-5Mb/s vbr
PBS analog 2-4Mb/s vbr
PBS2 2-4Mb/s vbr
PBS3 2-4Mb/s vbr

I'm still getting crashes when switching QAM channels


PS: One other thing, I'm sometimes getting nonsync sound on analog channels.

[rallynavvie]

Any of the local networks work well in HD via the open QAM yet?

[edDV]

Any of the local networks work well in HD via the open QAM yet?

Answer is yes but my system is choking on 1080i during capture. 720p works fine. It must be my ATI-9550 graphics card or memory. The Core2Duo is going less than 50%. The captured file plays well with VLC later after capture. I think the WinTV software relies 100% on the display card and doesn't draw on the CPU for display assist.

Here is a Local 1080i News frame grab from VLC. The frame png file was 3MB. This is a 154KB jpg compression of it. Click on the file to see full size.



Here's a 720p sample from ABC. Broadcast bit rate was ~14-16Mb/s



This capability is like having a second HD cable box. I can now watch one HD program and record another without renting the cable company's HD PVR so long as one is a local channel. With BeyondTV or SageTV, the analog tuner can record a separate channel at the same time.

[rallynavvie]

I don't think your video card is choking up the system on the capture portion though certainly playback requires some power. My card has hardware MPEG2 decoding so it uses almost nothing, probably just overhead for the AC3 decoding.

[edDV]

I don't think your video card is choking up the system on the capture portion though certainly playback requires some power. My card has hardware MPEG2 decoding so it uses almost nothing, probably just overhead for the AC3 decoding.

I can capture the MPeg2_TS off the IEEE-1394 connector of the HD cable box using CapDVHS with almost no CPU load and full reliability. The Hauppauge WinTV 6 program has no way that I've found to turn off monitoring during capture.

There's an instability in this WinTV program that appears to be a conflict with the ATI catalyst driver. When the system crashes it seems to be when window priorities are changed by clicking on a window. When "crashed" the WinTV and Explorer windows go non-responsive and explorer.exe goes into high CPU usage 60%. Other programs continue to operate and it's possible to launch a second Explorer window and that works. A system reboot is needed to get the WinTV app working again.

As for 1080i, some stations seem to be reliable. NBC has been reiliable. The NBC station KCRA runs a separate WeatherPlus subchannel that reduces the 1080i feed to around 15-16 Mb/s. The picture breakup problem is worse with the CBS 1080i QAM channel. File playback shows data rates in the 16-20 Mb/s range.



Here PBS is using 720p so I'm waiting for a 1080i HD broadcast on the CW or My networks which are few and far between. CW is a duopoly with the CBS channel and My is a duopoly with the NBC channel so I'm not sure there will be a difference.

I've been holding off buying a new display card until the H.264/VC-1/HDCP issues are resolved. I'm considering swapping in a NVidia FX-5200 to see if there's a difference.

I haven't loaded BeyondTV yet. I'm not even sure they are tuning QAM channels.

[jagabo]

The Hauppauge WinTV 6 program has no way that I've found to turn off monitoring during capture.

If it's the same as the older version of WinTV2000 that I use with my PVR-250 you can press the || (pause) button on the little recording control panel. Contrary to what you might expect, it pauses the display but the recording continues. CPU usage drops to near zero when paused like this.

[edDV]

Thanks for the tip. The big problem is finding any HD programs on some of these channels. I see where CBS is doing one soap opera in HD during the morning. You have to wait days for any HD on CW or MY networks at least on weekends.


PS: I may not have made it clear that picture breakup with CBS goes to the capture file. WinTV6 seems to be WYSIWYG when it comes to errors.

Also, the CPU has never seen heavy loading during capture. I think WinTV6 relies only on the display card for preview.

[rallynavvie]

Do you have an HD-DVD or BRD drive on your PC that would require HDCP? However I do believe there are some video cards in the PCI-E market that have both MPEG2 and H.264 decoding hardware.

Mine is still giving me trouble on HD playback but I'm working with their support. I'll keep you posted.

[edDV]

Do you have an HD-DVD or BRD drive on your PC that would require HDCP? However I do believe there are some video cards in the PCI-E market that have both MPEG2 and H.264 decoding hardware.

Mine is still giving me trouble on HD playback but I'm working with their support. I'll keep you posted.

No. This PC is an HDCP virgin.
The motherboard is AGP only, CPU spec allows Core2Duo 1066MHz FSB.

I'm on-hold for h.264/VC-1. I'm not buying based on reviews to date. All are near dumpster candidates. There is progress to the goal but they can't climax. Who needs that?

I'm using a generic AGP ATI 9550 to test the software.

[edDV]

Some progress. By reducing the size of the preview window as much as possible CBS 1080i picture breakups have been reduced but not eliminated. The pause buffer approach has about the same amount of glitches so far as non-paused. I'll try increasing the pause buffer size.

[Heywould3]

ive had my hvr-1600 for 3 weeks or so and im still playing with it.. i just loaded the latest drivers 3.4D1 and it actually went smother as far as install. the beta drivers gave me errors but stil worked and yes i did use the too to remove all ofthe version i had loaded.

I picked up a standard rabbit ear antenna and it works great for free hd channels. i get 15 or so. i get some not listed on the antennaweb lineup. the picture looks great but i have some minor lag, sync, studdering. i m sure its due to my cpu and my graphics card. i posted a topic on this in the hdtv forum
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic331405.html#1716042

One note i found that if you manually tune the qam/hd/analog you will get more channels found. this has also been stated on the AVS forum. give it a try it really does work.. i posted in the other topic that i couldnt get anything but a few on demand channels with QAM before.. well since i manually tuned i got all my locals and some other stuff as well..

i havent tried to record yet as this is not why i got it..

i have had no crashing only thing i dont like is the lag when its switching turners while changing channels.

i will post more as i go\

[edDV]

Great info. Keep it coming.

I'm still getting WinTV crashes in combination with XP explorer.exe window crashes. After the crash explorer.exe sucks up 60+ % of CPU doing something. None of this happened before the WinTV Beta install.

If anyone else is having this problem I've found a way to kill the explorer.exe excessive CPU use. Just hit "end process" in Task Manager. XP responds with a warning of all the dire consequences of killing explorer.exe so select cancel and then explorer.exe becomes quiet.

[Heywould3]

Great info. Keep it coming.

I'm still getting WinTV crashes in combination with XP explorer.exe window crashes. After the crash explorer.exe sucks up 60+ % of CPU doing something. None of this happened before the WinTV Beta install.

If anyone else is having this problem I've found a way to kill the explorer.exe excessive CPU use. Just hit "end process" in Task Manager. XP responds with a warning of all the dire consequences of killing explorer.exe so select cancel and then explorer.exe becomes quiet.

edDV

i havent read all your posts but have you tried the primary program located in the setup folder? i stated no lockups but i actually use to get lockups at first when i played with that program. i have it set to allow VMR- either. try different combos of that program it might help you out.

[rallynavvie]

Are you using the WinTV app from Hauppauge then?

[edDV]

Are you using the WinTV app from Hauppauge then?

I'm using WinTV 6 Beta version 3.4D1 at the moment. It's the only one that has QAM tuning.

[Heywould3]

Are you using the WinTV app from Hauppauge then?

I'm using WinTV 6 Beta version 3.4D1 at the moment. It's the only one that has QAM tuning.

there are two versions that work the classic and the beta with 3.4D1 not that it matters they both work the same.

i have found that if you use the full screen tv mode the aspect ratio is off on some hd/digital channels. but if you set it to full screen with the white border the aspect ratio works correctly. i just strech the window to full the screen pressing the tv button on the remote will switch back and forth from full window to a "windowed" mode

[rallynavvie]

OK I think I may have solved the issues with my HD playback. I forgot to install AC3Filter on the machine after re-imaging it. I installed it last night and now the stutter I was getting is gone, however I left its setting at default so the SPDIF output is only in stereo instead of surround. The only other change I've made is installing VLC but that doesn't install any specific codecs or would otherwise mess with with my system, right?

I'm going to play around in AC3Filter to get the surround working. Once it's all set up again I'll start playing with the multiple tuners again and hopefully sometime soon someone will release a hack to allow QAM into MCE.

[edDV]

OK I think I may have solved the issues with my HD playback. I forgot to install AC3Filter on the machine after re-imaging it. I installed it last night and now the stutter I was getting is gone, however I left its setting at default so the SPDIF output is only in stereo instead of surround. The only other change I've made is installing VLC but that doesn't install any specific codecs or would otherwise mess with with my system, right?

I'm going to play around in AC3Filter to get the surround working. Once it's all set up again I'll start playing with the multiple tuners again and hopefully sometime soon someone will release a hack to allow QAM into MCE.

I've been distracted by the conflicts with explorer.exe. AC3 has worked and is present but I haven't spent much time with the audio side.

QAM with MCE requires Microsoft support. I'm sure they have this card in their labs.

[rallynavvie]

Well the problem with QAM support for MCE 2005 is that it's included in Vista MCE. I don't think they'll add support for QAM into an older OS if they have it in the new one. So I'm hoping that someone will come up with a way to trick Media Center into thinking that the QAM input is just OTA digital.