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You seem to be talking about non-HD (i.e. NTSC) signals coming into the IQ816's TV tuner. An NTSC signal only carries about 480 lines of pixels or so, and the IQ816 LCD has 1080 lines of pixels. That means the TV signal has to be scaled up, and since there isn't enough real information in the 480 lines of the signal to make 1080 lines on screen, the picture is simply enlarged, which ends up duplicating pixels. Another contributing factor can be a weak TV signal or a TV signal that carries a lot of noise.
The reason Media Center itself looks crisp is because all the UI elements of Media Center are produced by the computer for the full 1080 lines of pixels. BluRay produces full 1080 pictures too. DVDs not quite, but at least there you get a clean digital "signal" right from the disc that just has to be scaled up a little (not nearly as much as NTSC).
Hope this explains it a little. I'm sure other folks here can get much more technical and precise than this.
Have a new iq816 and I'm struggling with getting a decent image via the RF (coax) output from my Comcast STB. Any 'television' -- whether it's Live TV, Recorded TV (including the canned stuff that came with Windows Media Center) are washed out, pixellated and generally blurry. All other screens in WMC, including the downloaded program guide, look sharp and beautiful. It's just anything 'TV' related that's horrid.
I'm not using a HD STB for this connection as it's too bulky for the area. It's a small Motorola STB with RCA and RF outputs. The RF is poor, as mentioned, so I thought I'd try a RCA-to-S-video adapter and see if that improved things. Nope. Can't get any video signal at all - only audio. The S-video image is white with black squiggly horizontal flickering lines. So it's back to the RF connector.
I moved the STB to a different television in the house and it works just fine, so I know it's not the box.
I tried bypassing the STB entirely and connecting the wall RF directly to the TouchSmart and it works for the basic channels, but the picture is still horrible.
My HD television and its HD box are working just fine, so I know it's not the cable signal, and anyway, the pre-loaded recorded TV movies are cruddy, too.
I updated the AVerMedia card drive to the 1-2009 version. No help.
I can't find any settings anywhere that I've missed. I've gone through the WMC setup umpteen times and no improvement.
Any thoughts as to the next step? Given that the image in every other area (DVDs, BluRay through HP's player, Vista in general) is beautiful, it's got to be something play(back)-related that runs through the TV card or Windows Media Center, right?
I can't find any settings anywhere that I've missed. I've gone through the WMC setup umpteen times and no improvement. I can't imagine trying to get this through tech support, given that it's not an explicit error.
(Oh, on a minor rant note, I keep losing my flippin' mouse; WHAT is with that?!?!? At first I though it was cheap batteries, but nope, it just up and quits responding until a full reboot. )
Thanks for any pointers on this problem. The TV picture quality is just unacceptable but it seems there has to be a software or setting solution.
Thanks for the reply. It gave me enough information to successfully Google for more, and I realize how woefully ignorant I am when it comes to AV stuff.
If I'm understanding you correctly, if I were to untangle the mess of cabling behind my HD STB and move it to the iq816, my poor picture quality will go away? That's presuming I can dig up a compatible cable that can carry 720 or 1080 to the iq816, right? Looks like I'm limited to RF or S-video at first glance, but I don't have the iq816's manual accessible at the moment.
That would mean my dream of having a small-footprint STB with my iq816 is shot. The attaction of the iq816 (to me) is to wall-mount a computer and television in a very small kitchen and while I was prepared to forgo full-on HD channels, I'm not about to live with this horrible picture. What about dropping the iq816's resolution on the fly when watching television -- will that help? I don't see an easy way to do that in Media Center, but in Googling up this issue I've read about other multimedia software with a much better rep than WMC; some that can handle Blu-Ray natively, too.
I believe the tuner is capable of decoding ATSC too, so if you have an HD feed from Comcast, you should be able to get that on the IQ816. It may be worth playing with the resolution too, but I'm not sure. Can't try any of this myself, unfortunately. Don't have an IQ816.
GeekTieGuy said: I believe the tuner is capable of decoding ATSC too, so if you have an HD feed from Comcast, you should be able to get that on the IQ816. It may be worth playing with the resolution too, but I'm not sure. Can't try any of this myself, unfortunately. Don't have an IQ816.
Thats correct. Windows Media Center gives you two choices in the TV setup. NTSC or ATSC. I have found that many people thing the "A" in ATSC stands for ana log. Its confusing.
Go into the TV Signal setup in Media Center and choose ATSC then follow the steps the WMC guides you through. You should end up with a very good picture.
I'm watching OTA (over the air) broadcasts via an antenna on mine and picture quality is very good here in the mountains of East Tennessee. :-)
David
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l299/xz550rj/HPMagicGiveaway.jpg
Woohoo! I won my Touchsmart!
I went back into WMC and ran the TV signal setup and it finds only a 'set-top box' signal, nothing mentinoed about ATSC or digital, no option to pick anything other than the STB. Tried manual setup and it finds a signal only on channel 4 from the STB.
I do have an HD feed from Comcast into the house, but this is not an HD set-top box. I just want a good quality TV picture at this location -- am not worried about whether or not the HD channels are viewable. No matter what configuration I try (and I did play with all of the resolution settings in WMC to no avail) I still get a horrible picture.
I realize I can probably ditch the Comcast STB and buy an OTA antenna but then I'll only get the handful of local channels. I would at least like to get my full bank of non-HD cable channels -- I pay enough for 'em!
I wish I knew someone in my area with an iq5xx or iq8xx on Comcast, that I could compare notes with. I've got to have something configured incorrectly, or could the AVerMedia tuner card possibly be bad?
I just purchased an IQ816 and are experiencing the very same issue you describe. I have to admit I am a novice here myself, so I'm wondering if you found a solution yet?
I can tell you that my IQ506t indeed has an NTSC/ATSC tuner, but Vista can not see QAM cable HD channels in the version originally shipped, and I don't know if later models had the OEM only TV Pack option that let you access non-encrypted HD signals on it, but summary is NO OEM TV Pack, NO HD from cable.
That being said, Win7 does have native QAM support, and I'm watching cable HD on my locals now thanks to it on my IQ506t that's been moved over to Win7.
Diane
Thanks for the info Diane, that is great news. I have Win 7 RC on DVD, I will give that a shot this weekend.
Vondie, sorry for the delay in replying but I was endlessly troubleshooting TV-related issues with HP and ultimately, shipped the thing to them for warranty repair. In addition to a really poor picture quality, the TV tuner itself would mysteriously disappear. In the end, HP replaced the tuner (it's integrated on the motherboard, I belive) and I got the new unit back yesterday with an awesome TV picture -- it was definitely a hardware issue.
[When I say endlessley troubleshooting, I don't mean to imply that HP tech support was causing any sort of delay. This is a tricky area and I was ruling out everything because I really did NOT want to take the iq816 off my wall, remove the wall mount adapter, put back the stand and ship it off for repair if I didn't have to. So it was me making sure I wasn't missing a setting or loose RF cable or bad STB, or something, dragging out the troubleshooting process. I have been nothing but very pleased with the support I've received from HP -- a big improvement from HP of memory ten years or so ago.]
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