pixelization on OTA HD

[sgregg]

I've just started to get some pixelization on my OTA HD recordings, going thru the setup wizard I'm still getting 92/93% signal strength. this is a recent occurrence just over the last 2 or so weeks.

unfortunately I don't remember the signal strength was when I installed it, but in the 90's seems very good, so I'm trying to decide if it may be a capture device issue or computer related issue or antenna. SD recordings are unaffected which come thru an STB

my HD device is a HVR-950.

any suggestion?

[Cross673]

To start with the simplest first: Is it occasional video artifacts or is it pretty noticeable all of the time? Does it only happen on one channel or on all channels? Does it only happen with Live TV or does it happen on recorded shows too? Are you using ‘Hardware’ encoding instead of ‘Overlay’ for your video renderer in BTV? When this happens is your system doing other things (i.e. recording two other shows, running a show squeeze job, etc)?

Assuming it is bad on all channels all of the time: What are your system specs? Is your system, video card, CPU, RAM, etc fast enough to run HDTV? If so, I would start with the antenna.

The small antenna that comes with the Hauppauge HVR-950 is pretty good but I had to upgrade mine to get all channels consistently. I bought, tested, and returned three antennas from Radioshack until I found one that worked well. I use the following $50.00 amplified indoor/outdoor HDTV antenna (part #15-2186). I have to point mine north-east to get the best signal strength in my metro area.

http://www.radioshack.com/search/ind...w=15-2186&sr=1

Do you have the latest drivers for the Hauppauge HVR-950? I know Hauppauge has updated the drivers for this tuner at least once since it was released.

[sgregg]

system specs are

AMD64 3700, 1G memory, SATA1 HD, Nvidia 6600GT, 2 300GB ATA drives for program storage, overlay.

I almost never watch live TV, so yes playback and recording happen at teh same time, but almost never 2 programs being recorded at teh same time as 90% of what I record in in HD.

no other processes run on this system, no showsqueeze, streamsnip etc...

the problems seems to occur in varying amounts depending on the channel, the worst is approx 25% of the time. I'm in the metro Atlanta area and all channels are in the same direction, so I use a directional antenna mounted on the roof, which has worked fine up until 2 or 3 weeks ago.

we have T-Storms in the area today so that rules out climbing on the roof to check the antenna, when the storms clear out I'll check the antenna direction.

thanks

[Cross673]

Well it sounds like you have way more than enough of a PC to run HDTV.

Just a guess but you might check the cable connections to the antenna. Or even possibly the antenna cable itself (depending on it's age). Other than that I don't know what could cause pixilation problems 25% of the time?

Any other BTV users have any thoughts?

[sgregg]

fixed the pixelization by turning off hardware de-interlacing and reformatting the recording drive at 64k cluster size.

now all I have is stuttering on one HD channel


BTW:
the Antenna is pointed correctly and all connections are tight

[Cross673]

Glad to hear that you fixed it.

I also use a 64k cluster size on my disk array. It was the default setting in the Nvidia RAID utility.

What cluster size were you using previously?