Green blur on picture in Freeview DVB-T on Windows 7 Media Centre / Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-900HD TV tunder Card

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › Green blur on picture in Freeview DVB-T on Windows 7 Media Centre / Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-900HD TV tunder Card

BlueToothKiwi

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# 36072 19-Jun-2009 08:51

I have a DELL XPS (Intel Core i7 / ATI 4850) / with WinTV-HVR-900HD

Originally, I had Vista (64 bit) running Freeview HD working fine on the WinTV 7 application that comes with the Hauppauge TV tunder Card. I was happy with it - but it would not resize to a small size so I can have it on the side of the screen. I wanted to use Windows Media Centre - which allows resizing of the video - but it did not pick up any of the digital channels on the DVB-T tuner with the old Vista (probably not being able to use the H-264 that shiopped with the tunbder card) - though it picked up the analog channels - but the quality was not as good as DVB-T.

So I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 (64 bit) Premium.

And to my delight, I could pick up the digital TV channels from DVB-T tuner from Windows Media Centre.

The pictures on TV1/TV2/TV3 was fine 99% of the time.

But C4/TVNZ6/TVNZ7/TV3Plus /TVNZ Sports etc. shows up in Green

To get an idea of what I mean, check out the following screen dumps - one working, one half working / one not working.

What is also weird is - I can record it and play it back - and it no longer Green like the above. [Edit - It does the same when you watch recorded stuff back too]

But when you watch any channel apart from TV1/2/3, it is unwatchable live.

It cant be the signal - I have an external aeriel - and the signal strength meter shows the following:

I just upgraded the disaplay driver(latest from ATI) and latest tunder driver (latest from Hauppauge) - but the problem persists - anyone came across similar issues with Windows 7 MC?
Tim

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

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# 226562 19-Jun-2009 09:08

That's due to the well-known issues with ATI drivers.

Nvidia cards do not have a problem.

BlueToothKiwi

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# 226564 19-Jun-2009 09:13

Ah! Thanks Rhysb. It is not an option to change my display card - I only just bought this machine.

I searched the forums - but did not get any where. Are you aware of a solution.

P.S. Is that a valve amplifier on your profile picture?

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

rhysb

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# 226568 19-Jun-2009 09:22

Unfortunately the only known solution with 7MC is to use an Nvidia card. Your other option is to use a different PVR app, some have had luck with various combinations of codecs and drivers.

Yes, the valves are from the legendary Quad II.

BlueToothKiwi

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# 226582 19-Jun-2009 09:51

rhysb: Unfortunately the only known solution with 7MC is to use an Nvidia card..

How come the three main TV channels (and the HD demo channel) show up crystal clear in HD?

What is unique about TV1 / 2 / and 3 on DVB-T ?

Could it be my aeirel is pointing to the wrong tower? I live in West Harbour.

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

rhysb

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# 226703 19-Jun-2009 14:16

The problem is that the ATI drivers do not decode SD h.264 properly. TV1 & TV2 use HD 720p h.264, while TV3 uses 1080i h.264.

It has nothing to do with how your aerial or anything else is setup, it's purely a software issue with ATI's drivers.

BlueToothKiwi

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# 226705 19-Jun-2009 14:44

rhysb: The problem is that the ATI drivers do not decode SD h.264 properly. TV1 & TV2 use HD 720p h.264, while TV3 uses 1080i h.264.

OK - I looked more into what you said - and I now think you are spot on about the cause.

I found this on the Wikipedia - which was consitent with the only channels that worked on my hardware with Windows 7 are TV One, TV2 and HD Demo (all on 720p), TV3 (1080i).

All the other channels (on 576i) are showing up as green vommit.

OK - I am just going to accept that I can only watch TV One / 2 / 3 until Hauppauge / ATI or Microsoft create an update that fixes the issue.

I thought I will go back to the application that the tuner came with (Win TV 7) under Windows 7 - now that I figured out you can actually resize it by changing the view mode to 'no title'!

But to my horror, this (which worked great in Vista with the same hardware) not work properly in Windows 7. The picture is fine - but the sound is terrible and garbled up!!

Here is the complete list from the Wiki - which backs rhysb's theory

Channel	Name	Picture format	Sound format	Notes
1	TV One	720p 16:9	Stereo
2	TV2	720p 16:9	Stereo
3	TV3	1080i 16:9	Dolby 5.1	^[7]
4	C4	576i 16:9	Stereo
5	Maori Television	576i 16:9	Stereo
6	TVNZ 6	576i 16:9	Stereo
7	TVNZ 7	576i 16:9	Stereo
8	TV3 plus 1	576i 16:9	Stereo	Timeshift channel for TV3, one hour behind.
20	TVNZ Sport Extra	576i 16:9	Stereo
22	Parliament TV	576i 16:9	Stereo
28	CTV8	576i 4:3	Stereo
30	tvCentral	576i 16:9	Stereo	Waikato and Bay of Plenty only
100	Freeview HD	720p 16:9	Stereo	HD test channel

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

Nety

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# 226719 19-Jun-2009 15:26

Or you could buy a Nvidia card. They are not expensive (around $120) and they work.

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

BlueToothKiwi

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# 228888 28-Jun-2009 08:59

Nety: Or you could buy a Nvidia card. They are not expensive (around $120) and they work.

I dont want to do that... I only have one slot on the Dell box - and I dont want to replace the Radeon - as it works beautifully with other BlueRay / media / Games stuff.

I just posted the problem in the ATI web site - and hopefully AMD will do a new driver for the Radeon cards that will eliminate the issues:

Forum Post

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

Nety

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# 228893 28-Jun-2009 09:14

Hope you have some luck. People have been after getting this problem fixed by ATI since DVB-T has been released.
Would be great if ATI finally did something about it.

watsonash

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# 233267 9-Jul-2009 22:51

From my end it looks like ATI have finally resolved the issues with 576i with CCC 9.7! nice work Bluetoothkiwi - particularly on your posting of a sample on AMD forum and your persistence of posting on ATI and Hau and Geekzone forums... - it made it easy to reproduce the issue! For more info click bluetoothkiwi posting; http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=115324

Now if we could get a small amount of momentum back on to provide free EPG import by Pete's http://code.google.com/p/xmltv2mxf/ or Bangers import process; http://blog.epgstream.net/index.php/2009/06/5-things-i-like-about-windows-7-rc-media-center/#comments NZers will be cooking with ATI/Win 7 RTM/HVR cards and a decent 7 day EPG for DVB-T!

This is a good day and most certainly a milestone from my perspective.

BlueToothKiwi

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# 233375 10-Jul-2009 04:23

Thanks for the leaked driver link, watsonash.

Downloaded it and installed it and I went "Holly Crap - it works!"

Tim M, Auckland
Blog: http://paddler.co.nz

rhysb

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# 233513 10-Jul-2009 10:32

That's good news, the official 9.7 drivers shouldn't be too far away.

jjero

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# 233662 10-Jul-2009 14:00

Thank you blutoothkiwi!

I was having the same issues. After a scary BSoD after installing 9.7 every channel works fine now! This is definitely a milestone for NZ freeview.

techo

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# 234273 12-Jul-2009 08:56

I'm running the Catalyst 9.7 beta and it certainly has fixed the 576i issues, however watching TV3 (1080i) or playing-back any recorded TV3 has bursts of pixelisation every minute or so. This is not a tuner issue, as the recorded TV3 was recorded on my main HTPC using GBPVR and plays back ok using GBPVR.

I'm using Win7 64bit RC(7100) with native decoders, and using ATI HD4670 video card.

I'm trying to identify if this is a decoder issue or video driver issue.

Anyone else seen this issue?

jjero

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# 234292 12-Jul-2009 10:54

techo: I'm running the Catalyst 9.7 beta and it certainly has fixed the 576i issues, however watching TV3 (1080i) or playing-back any recorded TV3 has bursts of pixelisation every minute or so. This is not a tuner issue, as the recorded TV3 was recorded on my main HTPC using GBPVR and plays back ok using GBPVR.

I'm using Win7 64bit RC(7100) with native decoders, and using ATI HD4670 video card.

I'm trying to identify if this is a decoder issue or video driver issue.

Anyone else seen this issue?

Yes I can confirm I have this issue, although I think I had it before 9.7 but not certain. And similarly the issue does not occur with gbpvr or wintv 7. It doesn't really bother me though.

To be more precise, the burst of pixilation is much shorter than a second and it appears that its a frame thats already been played several seconds before.

Importantly, if I rewind the issue never recurs at the same point. Could this be a software ie 7MC issue?

Windows 7 RC 7100, HD4850 + catalyst 9.7

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