SageHD Extenders back in stock

[SnyperBob]

Thanks guys. I actually received mine yesterday. I never got a tracking number, that's odd.

I haven't had time to play with it yet. The packing was, well....it had about a dozen packing peanuts inside and it looked like the 'seal' on the white box had been tampered with. Hope this thing works!

 

[felixrosbergen]

ok..got my HD extender hooked up and working...

However....the video quality of the live TV displayed through the extended is not up to par witht the cable box directly connected to the TV.

My configuration:
PC with Mediacenter 6.3 and a PVR-500.
100mbit network though a Linksys RV042 4 Port VPN router (not sure if this is 'non blocking or not'
HD extender connected to TV via HDMI
TV is a 51" Sony HD capable (not sure which HD through 720,1080i, 1080p, ??)
I played back a DVD that was ripped with DVDShrink (using 'no compression') and the quality was excellent.
SageTV recording quality is set to 'Great' which i believe to be the default.

What can i do to improve to get the quality up? Since the DVD playback was fine i doubt it's the HD extended, likely it's the capture being done at insufficent quality. Bumping up the quality doesnt seem to make it better though.

When wachting the same channels directly on the PC rather than through the HD extender the quality is similarly poor.

All the setting under Detailed Setup > Audi/Video seem to relate to playback on the PC only.

It's possible my cable signal strenght is not great since it's split a few times, but the cable company STB next tot he TV is actually further down the tree (i.e. after more splits) and it's signal seems to be fine since it displaus ok on the TV.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

[RobWalker]

ok..got my HD extender hooked up and working...

However....the video quality of the live TV displayed through the extended is not up to par witht the cable box directly connected to the TV.

My configuration:
PC with Mediacenter 6.3 and a PVR-500.

Your capture card is SD only, so if you are comparing it to a HD signal coming from the cable box you are definitely going to see a big difference. HD capture is a whole can of worms due to the encryption issues.

There currently isn't a good solution that I'm aware of, but Hauppage have an external USB capture box capable of dealing with component video at HD resolutions that will ship very soon. There is a lot of discussion on the SageTV forums.

 

[ericvic]

SageTV recording quality is set to 'Great' which i believe to be the default.

I would up the quality to something higher, I use DVD Standard Play. I don't know if you have to but I would restart Sage server after you change the quality setting to make sure it took. Also what tuner card are you using?

Eric

 

[bfisher]

I have my quality settings on the max... my opinion is Hard drives are cheap but picture quality isn't.

Also - I prefer to set up my HD Extender to only output at the resolution of the TV. It can output at any of the resolutions - the problem is that if you leave 480i or 480p checked (in the configuration), it may default back to that.

Finally, as noted above, your capture card is your weak link. There are many solutions out there - depending on what your equipment/wiring needs are.

 

[felixrosbergen]

Thanks for the responses...my capture card is a PVR-500, i thought this was a fine card for SD signal capture.

I was not comparsing to HD from the cable box. The cable box is SD only as well.

Bumped the quality to DVD - Standard play and it's looking a lot better.

Abody have any clue why i never get picture when i turn it on and i have to press 'video out' on the remote once in order for it to display anything?

 

[bfisher]

Sounds like you didn't configure the output of the extender to the right one.

When extender is sleeping, press the home button. This brings up the initial hardware menu. Make sure your video output is configured to the right one.

 

[felixrosbergen]

Sounds like you didn't configure the output of the extender to the right one.

When extender is sleeping, press the home button. This brings up the initial hardware menu. Make sure your video output is configured to the right one.

It's set for HDMI and it's connected via HDMI. Will try as you suggested however when i get home tonight.

 

[bfisher]

when you're doing that, I'd recommend you uncheck the resolutions that you don't want/need. The wording makes it sound like you want every resolution the TV supports to be checked, but my experience with that was not good (it would change resolution to match the recorded signal). I have unchecked all but 720p (etc) and image is much better without issues.

 

[felixrosbergen]

when you're doing that, I'd recommend you uncheck the resolutions that you don't want/need. The wording makes it sound like you want every resolution the TV supports to be checked, but my experience with that was not good (it would change resolution to match the recorded signal). I have unchecked all but 720p (etc) and image is much better without issues.

Since my TV supports 1080i should i leave only that one checked? When i do the autodetect throught he HDMI the 480 and 720 are also checked..but i can uncheck them...no need to display at lower resolution than 1080i right eventhough all my content is SD for the time being.

 

[bfisher]

Correct, no reason to show any of the lower resolutions - the HD Extender will upscale everything to the resolution you've selected.

now the debate between 720p or 1080i... I guess it's personal opinion - I prefer 720p. I've tried to do an AB comparison and really don't see a huge difference, except in sports - the 720p seems smoother with less flickering effects. Anybody find anything different?

I haven't tried leaving both 720p and 1080i enabled. I assume (but haven't tested) if the extenders will switch the resolution on the fly to match what was recorded.

Minimally though, get rid of 480i/480p as options - or the extender will use them.

 

[felixrosbergen]

Ok...things are looking much better now...HD extender forced to output 1080i only and SageTV recording quality set to DVD standard play...

I still see that for larger blocks of the same colors there is some sort of funky pattern. This definetely does not happen when i run the TV directly of the SD DVR box. Since the DVR must also be PC based since it records digital with timeshifting why can that 4 year old box do so much better than the HD extender even with the DVR connected via S-video and the HD extender via HDMI...

I have not tried to hook up the extender via anything other than the HDMI...is this worth a shot? It would be strange though if a lower quality conenction would somehow give better picture..

 

[bfisher]

Don't know why your image has issues. Quality will only be as good as the weakest link. Maybe you have a bad svideo connection on your card... or maybe the card itself isn't that good (all depends on the encoding algorithm they use). Sage isn't really doing anything with the image (some scaling, but if the image being fed to it is bad, it's going to look bad)... so I'd look at your card as the probable suspect.

 

[SnyperBob]

Ok...things are looking much better now...HD extender forced to output 1080i only and SageTV recording quality set to DVD standard play...

I still see that for larger blocks of the same colors there is some sort of funky pattern. This definetely does not happen when i run the TV directly of the SD DVR box. Since the DVR must also be PC based since it records digital with timeshifting why can that 4 year old box do so much better than the HD extender even with the DVR connected via S-video and the HD extender via HDMI...

I have not tried to hook up the extender via anything other than the HDMI...is this worth a shot? It would be strange though if a lower quality conenction would somehow give better picture..

Just for kicks, I would try out a different video connection. I had an odd issue with my HD extender only outputting video in black and white. I had tried power cycling the extender, unplugging/plug back in, etc. This was over the yellow RCA composite output on the HD extender. I tried using the extender at my parents house over component output and it worked in color. Brought it back to my house and now it worked via yellow rca composite in color on my TV.

Very odd, but I guess my extender needed to be power cycled multiple times to work correctly.