Cheap Geek

My experiences with Windows 7 Media Center have for the most part been very positive. The UI is even more beautiful than Vistas, the extender sessions seem noticeably quicker to respond, and Xvid is now natively supported, even with resume functionality, and on extenders.

And with that I decided that the next thing to try would be QAM. I have two physical tuner cards in my computer. I have a single tuner Hauppauge 150, and a VistaView Saber DA-1N1-I combo analog/digital tuner. The Saber’s digital tuner supports over the air ATSC and Clear QAM. QAM is only available under Vista with the TV Feature Pack, or Windows 7. VistaView’s provides drivers for the card under Vista TV Pack, but also requires a registry edit to get it all working.

With much trepidation, and some coaxing from Adam I decided it was time to give QAM a try. I was especially excited to do this as I’ve had little success with my limited trials of over-the-air HD. With my small indoor, non-amplified, antennae I was able to receive most of the local channels, but I always experienced jitters and skips with the video.

I first installed the drivers, which of course required a system reboot. After the system was backup I installed the registry edit patch. Just to be safe I reboot the computer one more time. After the second restart I fired up Media Center and started the tuner setup wizard again. The setup progressed normally, but ended with a new step. The last step was for the system to scan for all available QAM channels. The scan process took at least 20 minutes, but I wasn’t about to sit around watching a progress bar, so I don’t know exactly how long it took. Once it completed it had found 12 channels. The list was restricted to the local network channels and PBS. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who happened to get ESPN or anything considered premium.

Unfortunately my dreams of an HD panacea were quickly crushed. It was only a matter of seconds before I was experiencing the same jitters and skips that were present with the over-the-air setup. I began to wonder if the multiple cable splitters that are present in my setup were affecting the performance. My normal setup (prior to running an extra cable to the QAM tuner) included a two-way splitter at the initial cable run into the house. One wire went to the office (where my Media Center pc is) and one went to the basement. The one in the office was split with a second 2-way splitter and feeds two set-top-boxes. The basement hosts a 4-way splitter sending cable to my living room DVR, cable modem, and kitchen TV. To get the third cable in the office for the QAM tuner I inserted a second 2-way splitter into the office because I didn’t have another 4-way splitter lying around (remember, I’m the cheap geek.) 

My first step was to simply remove all of the splitters in the office. It was the easiest step to try. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to improve the quality at all. Next I unhooked the 4-way splitter in the basement. So I was essentially just working with a 2-way splitter at this point with one end going to the QAM tuner and the other one not being used at all. Unfortunately the video quality remained poor.

This leaves me with a few theories:

1. The QAM signal through my cable provider is just crap, and that there is nothing I will ever be able to do about it.
2. My computer just isn’t man enough to handle to handle the challenges of HD. It’s an older box, with an AMD 64 3200+ running at 2.2 GHz with 1.5 GB of RAM.
3. The last option is that my tuner card, the VistaView Saber just doesn’t do a very good job. 

I seriously doubt theory three is the answer though as ATSC/QAM tuners don’t really have to do much as all of the heavy lifting is done by the computer’s processor. So considering my computer’s lack of speed, and the fact that my results for QAM and ATSC were extremely similar, I’m leaning towards theory number two. Unfortunately, there’s no free way for me to test this theory. 

I guess my next test will have to wait until I build a new computer.