Re: XP Media Center 2005 - TV Sound & Quality Issues

1. Yes a trip to radio shack is required to get the adapter to connect the
Red and White to a single cable connector. The cable actually has 2 wires
plus shielding and the Pin connector connects all three.

2. HDTV is definitely better since the signal is already encoded as part of
the OTA transmission.

3. The HDTV tuner cards are only capable of receiving HD broadcasts using an
Antenna and the OTA signals from your local TV stations. They do not enable
you to receive HD resolution video from a HD STB.

"Aggie" <Aggie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3E77D9FB-589F-455D-8150-7E5ACC62D7BB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> JW, thank you so much for the response. I had seen many of your posts, and
> you are very helpful. Here are a few "refinements" for your/others'
> consideration.
>
> 1. I don't necessarily want sound to two places, but the sound out of the
> satellite is RCA/composite as opposed to the PC-friendly wire. My
> presumption
> is that the same trip to Radio Shack is warranted, if only to combine
> red/white RCA into a single PC-friendly wire and just have to live w/ the
> sound degradation.
>
> I incorrectly mentioned the graphics card when I meant the dual-TV tuner
> relative to the coax mention, so thanks for the clarification. The obvious
> question is how do people support their hi-fi equipment if they can't get
> sound in/out of a PC except through the little single-wire connection. My
> sound card has 3 line-outs, but I don't know how I'd get them into a
> "real"
> receiver/sub-woofer/etc. other than through the same splitter/converter
> that
> I am assuming I need to get it in from the satellite. Or, to get it into a
> "hi-fi receiver system", should I consider going out of my soundcard, into
> my
> LCDTV, out of my LCDTV w/ RCA into the HiFi system of choice (though this
> still doesn't solve my getting the signal "in" from the STBx).
>
> 2. Last night, I downloaded a new driver for the dual-TV tuner and the
> quality is a bit less "fuzzy" (still bad however) and the occasional jerky
> image must be an artifact that I'll have to live with given the required
> transforms in signal. The obvious question is will it get better or worse
> as
> HDTV phases in. I also was successful in solving the "not quite full
> screen"
> problem that I was having by using the Zoom feature of the MCE2005, which
> worked quite well actually as there appeared to be 3 zooms. It was
> accessible
> from the remote when I hit the "i" button I believe (it was really late at
> night).
>
> 3. The dual LNB question wasn't necessarily obvious so let me try again. I
> realize that I'll have to have the 2 STBx, or another "line-in" of some
> description (even cable). My question was more around the fact that most
> STBx
> only have coax or sVideo, and I was curious if I shouldn't start
> considering
> buying a more current STBx that supported another output, which may also
> require obtaining an HDTV compatible TV tuner card, or are they
> sVideo/coax
> too since the only HD is coming in from the airwaves.
>
> 4 & 5 were sufficiently answered
>
> 6. What experience do you have to propogate the recorded TV / DVD shows
> from
> one computer to another. Is there a way to broadcast the signal or via
> WiFi
> or E'net for other computers in the home to pick up, and do they also have
> to
> have a TV tuner / MCE2005, etc.
>
> --
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> "JW" wrote:
>
>> 1. The sound has to go to the tuner card not to your sound card. If you
>> need
>> the sound to go to two places just get a audio splitter cable(s) at Radio
>> Shack.
>> 2. There is latency because the video and audio into the tuner card are
>> encoded into MPEG2 compressed format written to disk and then retrieved
>> and
>> decoded by the DVD Decoder ant then sent to your sound and video cards.
>> The
>> encoding process, even when the quality is set to Best, does lower the PQ
>> as
>> compared to what it is when it goes direct from your STB to your TV.
>> Coax
>> PQ is not as good as S-Video PQ.
>> 3. If you want to watch one program and record another you will need 2
>> tuner
>> cards or a dual tuner card in your PC and you will need two DirecTV STBs
>> one
>> to feed each card a different channel.
>> 4. MCE2005 supports HDTV tuner cards which are using an antenna to
>> receive
>> the HDTV channels with an antenna from a local OTA broadcaster.
>> 5. If you want full screen TV on a dual monitor system you can not at the
>> same time use the other monitor for PC desktop applications.
>>
>> "Aggie" <Aggie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:14895376-7891-4610-B329-3FF341BAF75D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > Bought what I thought was an almost-top of the line box (XPS Gen 4,
>> > 640HT,
>> > 2GBRam, Dual 160GB drives, tuner card, 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 w/ a
>> > W3000
>> > 30" LCD display) but am having some issues I'd like your help with.
>> > Add'ly, I
>> > am using a monster DVI cable from the Nvidia card to the TV.
>> >
>> > I have read as many of the discussions as I could, but haven't seen
>> > reference to exactly this so here goes.
>> >
>> > 1. Being a Direct TV customer, wanted to use the sVideo sattelite
>> > output
>> > into the Nvidia card slot 1. Only issue is now I can't get the
>> > composite
>> > "sound" into my soundcard. Ques: Am I going to have to use an adapter
>> > or
>> > something to convert it, since I can't route it into the TV and then
>> > back
>> > out
>> > again (tried the MIC port) into the computer since it is tied to a
>> > particular
>> > input, or just go w/ coax into Nvidia card?
>> >
>> > 2. Quality of TV (watched w/o sound) and the quality of the TV was
>> > terrible.
>> > I suffered from what appeared to be a fuzzy resolution problem and more
>> > disturbing was the "jitters" that I was getting when I used the Media
>> > Center
>> > remote, or periodically when it was obvious there was latency in the
>> > DVR
>> > storage process intrinsic in Media Center. I did run the sVideo cable
>> > into
>> > TV
>> > directly from the Direct TV box and the image looked great, so I can
>> > only
>> > assume that the recording function is degrading the analog image during
>> > a
>> > digital conversion.
>> >
>> > 3. Ultimately, I think I'll want to use 2 inputs into the TV so that I
>> > can
>> > record one signal and watch another. I have all of the dual LNB
>> > features
>> > already, and was just wondering if there were some words of wisdom for
>> > how
>> > that should be configured (e.g. sVideo, coax, etc.).
>> >
>> > 4. Ultimately ultimately, I'll want to have HDTV capablities, but
>> > haven't
>> > heard that it is even supported by Media Center. In the meantime, I was
>> > hoping that I wouldn't have an issue w/ the propogation of digital
>> > media
>> > throughout my home, even if I chose to distribute the signal to other
>> > TV's.
>> > Is there any hope of having an RF remote so that we could use the
>> > computer
>> > as
>> > the digital gateway to the planet?
>> >
>> > 5. Dual screen capability would be nice without having to minimize/then
>> > manually almost maximize the window to use the other monitor to watch
>> > TV.
>> > (I
>> > saw this discussed already but it is silly to think I have dual purpose
>> > capability, but not something I can use). You can get IR repeaters so
>> > that you can have your IR remote in one room and generate the IR for
>> > the
>> > MCE receiver in another room.
>>
>>
>>


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