Sky STB to HVR3000 Analogue Input

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zimbonz

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# 37348 11-Jul-2009 15:41

Hi All,
I am trying to connect my Sky STB to my Win7 media centre, in a slightly different way. Previously I had a MCE150, using a simple SCART-Composite cable, and it worked reasonably well, except for the fact that the picture was pretty average.
I had used a SCART-Component cable, direct to the TV. I have now rewired, and am using 1 x NOVA-T 500, for dual HD freeview, and 1 x HVR3000 for DVB-S freeview (so I can view Freeview on my Linksys Extender).
I would like to use the analogue input on the HVR3000 for Sky.

The HVR3000 came with an adapter cable, with the 3 x component video cables, connecting to a s-video connector, which fits into the card perfectly. I bought a cheap RCA to 3.5mm audio adapter for the audio, and I am know able to view Sky in Media Centre.

However I am viewing a Black and White picture... (Yes I do have the component cables connected colour to like colour... :)) - and I am stumped. I know there is some settings in the STB, that change the SCART setup - but I did try changing the SCART Component settings, and no luck...

Anybody else do anything similar? what was your outcome?

Cheers

zimbonz

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# 236649 18-Jul-2009 13:04

*Bump*
Still had no luck getting this sorted, and I am supposed to be showing the rugby tonight to family and friends...
Ah well, at least it's AB's vs Australia, so black and white won't be soo bad - beter than AB's vs Scotland..!

sbiddle

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# 236654 18-Jul-2009 13:49

Component? You just need to use svideo from the Sky STB to HVR3000.

Picture quality is also only very average as the HVR3000 has onboard MPEG2 encoder.

zimbonz

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# 236656 18-Jul-2009 13:57

My SKY STB does not have a s-video output unfortunately...
What I mean by component - is I already had the Sky STB component upgrade, and had being using that directly to the TV, with a great picture. I had previoulsy connected the secondary SCART output on the STB, via a scart to composite cable - into my MCE150 card. Quality is average with this scenario. I then did some re-arranging... and installed a HVR3000 to replace my MCE150, so I could get DVB-S in addition to the analogue.
The HVR3000 comes with a little converter cable - that loots like it converts the 3 component cables to s-video. It has a s-video plug on one end, and 3 sockets on the other - red, green and blue. (short 10cm converter)
Media centre auto scans this input as s-video - and I do get a picture, albiet a black and white one...
I am not sure if I should be making any changes to the STB SCART settings though - I tried a few and had no luck.

Due to the setup of my system, as I will post in another entry, it is difficult to re-run the cables as they were... Better test next time...

sbiddle

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# 236662 18-Jul-2009 14:04

Sounds like it might be the chroma issue which you can read more about here

It's the first time I've seen one of those cables.. You may as well just use composite anyway, it won't deliver any increase in picture quality using component.

Nety

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# 236692 18-Jul-2009 16:38

You were better off with your MCE150 card. That has hardware encoding unlike the 3000 which only has software encoding. My experiance is that the analogue picture via tunercards is fairly poor quality. Does not seem to make much difference what input you use be it composite or s-video.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64