Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 34

Originally Posted by hlkc

I used to have i3 2100 and it performs well with exactly what you described.

Originally Posted by tomtbone

any issues withe the G620? It is only $60 at microcenter right now!

Originally Posted by Midwayman

You can get 2gb of ram for $25 shipped on amazon. (dd2 pc6400) I had a stick die on me and ordered more to get back up to 4gb. I'm not sure exactly how big a difference it make for WMC as I'm still waiting for the cable co install. I know on regular win7 2gb to 4gb can make a huge difference. Other guides I've read listed getting to at least 4gb of ram as one of the best bang for the buck upgrades you can do on WMC.

Originally Posted by Mike7143

First post here at avs and I'd like to see if anyone can answer my questions. I got comcast cable a week ago. Coax cable comes from pole, into house, into cable box (I got digital channels, no HD stuff) out of cable box and into my hauppauge card. I've got the IR blaster thing taped to the front of the cable box. Then I turn on my xbox 360 and use media center to watch TV. This set-up works, but it looks like absolute crap. I don't know if that's because I'm watching non-HD digital cable channels on my 720p Samsung plasma, the hauppauge card isn't capable of passing through the signal clearly, or what. Not only does the picture look bad, but when watch TV through the xbox, I have to change the picture size on the tv to stretch to get the picture on the whole screen. If I leave it on 16:9 like normal, not only are there black bars on the top and bottom, but also the sides. No point in having a 51" tv if the picture is only 30". When I watch cable straight from the cable box to the TV, it fills the screen in 16:9 mode unless i'm watching an older show that's in 4:3 just like it's supposed to.

So... will getting the Ceton card make my picture look better? Will I be able to leave my tv picture size on 16:9 all the time rather than currently changing it constantly (ie I gotta go back to 16:9 to watch movies from my media library then if I go back to live tv I gotta go back to stretch.)

Or is all of this bad picture quality and small size have to do with the fact that i'm just watching digital and not HD on my 720 plasma?

Also, think I should be ok running the Ceton in my PC? I've got a dual core E6750 2.6GHz intel processor, 4GB ram, plenty of recorded tv storage, and a Nvidia 8800GTS video card. i think it's all in spec but is it on the low end? Am i going to have problems?



Thanks for taking the time to read all that!

Originally Posted by Midwayman

The Ceton should have improved PQ even on your SDTV digital signals. It won't be re-encoding the signal like you are now. It simply records what the cable co is sending. It will look like going direct from your cable box now. I'm not sure how it will handle going from 4:3 content to 16:9 relative to the cable box. That sort of stuff is somewhat dependent on your TV and video card settings. Ideally you'll probably want to leave your tv in normal mode and let your HTPC handle the scaling.

As for hardware, your processor is just below the recommended one. You'll probably be fine. 4gb of ram is good. The 8800gts- which version is it? 640m? 512m? 256m? The g80 based 8800 cards apparently don't support hardware decoding of some of the formats you'll probably want. Fortunately a new $30 graphic card will.

Originally Posted by Mike7143

Ok good. I figured my picture quality was sucking because it was going through multiple boxes and cards and then to the Xbox so who knows what all happened to it. As far as 4:3 goes, It's not a big deal, but an example would be when you're watching a show in 16:9 and it cuts to a commercial that's shot in 4:3. The TV just automatically puts black on the sides. Hopefully the Ceton card and going to the Xbox would do the same.

As far as PC specs go, the video card is the 8800gts with 320-bit 320m GDDR3. I should have also specified that I'm overclocked and running at 3GHz on my E6750. So it sounds like I should be good to go? As far as decoding, does that matter since I'll hardly ever watch TV on the PC, 99.9% of the time I'd stream to the Xbox. I guess if I'm not happy with it I can always sell the Ceton for little loss.

Also, unrelated, but maybe someone knows... If I decide against the Ceton for whatever reason... and I go back to the cable box/tuner card and IR blaster... can the smaller digital boxes that they put at secondary TV's that has no menu or on-demand go higher than channel 99? I was told by someone that they don't but my buddy says his does. If so that helps since I don't have to cram the bigger STB near my PC somewhere.

Originally Posted by Mike7143

[...]This set-up works, but it looks like absolute crap. I don't know if that's because I'm watching non-HD digital cable channels on my 720p Samsung plasma, the hauppauge card isn't capable of passing through the signal clearly, or what. Not only does the picture look bad, but when watch TV through the xbox, I have to change the picture size on the tv to stretch to get the picture on the whole screen. If I leave it on 16:9 like normal, not only are there black bars on the top and bottom, but also the sides. No point in having a 51" tv if the picture is only 30". When I watch cable straight from the cable box to the TV, it fills the screen in 16:9 mode unless i'm watching an older show that's in 4:3 just like it's supposed to.

Originally Posted by Mike7143

Also, unrelated, but maybe someone knows... If I decide against the Ceton for whatever reason... and I go back to the cable box/tuner card and IR blaster... can the smaller digital boxes that they put at secondary TV's that has no menu or on-demand go higher than channel 99? I was told by someone that they don't but my buddy says his does. If so that helps since I don't have to cram the bigger STB near my PC somewhere.

Originally Posted by JorgeA

SD pictures on a modern HDTV look worse than on old analog CRTs. Today's TVs are really built for high-def viewing. Had I known this before we bought our first HDTV, we wouldn't have given away our old set to my nephew.

The black bars that you're getting all around the picture are standard fare for non-HD channels on an HD set. Happens to us, too, on all our HD sets. It's not your equipment (AFAIK).

I'm surprised, though, that you're getting a full 16:9 screen at all in SD. We have to use the Zoom function on our TVs in order to simulate that... and then the picture looks even fuzzier, of course. So we've ended up doing most of our TV viewing in HD, which both fills the screen automatically and looks sharp.

HTH

Originally Posted by JorgeA

That would be the Digital Transport Adapter (DTA). We have one of these on one TV, along with an A/B switch so that we can watch the local channels in HD. I just checked, and while the DTA does skip the OnDemand, music, and HD channels, if I keep clicking the "channel up" button I get channels all the way to 568. Found History 2, Biography, Investigative Discovery, and a bunch of Spanish-language channels I didn't even know we were getting in our "digital starter" package!

Originally Posted by Mike7143

Right, I've known for a while that if you stick an analog (say VCR) signal into a new flat screen TV, the ensuing horror show will destroy you. But the cable service I'm getting shouldn't be analog, it's digital. I mean, I have to have a digital cable box for it. When I straight plug the coax from the cable box into my ANT in on the TV, it looks just fine. Not HD quality, but still good. Howerver, it's when passing the signal from the STB into the tuner card currently in my PC and then streaming it back to the Xbox which is connected via HDMI to my tv, that I get really crappy picture. It's far worse than just plugging the coax straight into the TV. So my whole idea/question was if I'd get the same if not comparable picture quality with the Ceton as when I plug the coax straight into my tv. It sounds like the answer is yes so far!

Originally Posted by gsr

The answer is yes because you wouldn't be decoding the signal (in the DTA), re-encoding the signal (via your tuner/capture card if it's a hardware encoder or via processing in your PC if it isn't a hardware encoder card), then decoding the re-encoded signal in the XBOX. Depending on your setup though, you may have options available for the encoding quality. Make sure that option is set to the highest quality if you stick with your current solution as that can make a huge difference. Higher quality will of course use more disk space, but would likely make a big difference if you're currently using low quality. What specific tuner/capture card are you using and what type of connection are you using between the DTA and the tuner/capture card? If your cable box has component video outputs, another option would be to switch to one of the available component video capture options (the Hauppauge HD PVR and Colossus are 2 options) which might give you better quality, but the Ceton card is usually a much better option (it's far less expensive per tuner as you would need 4 cable boxes and 4 capture cards vs 1 Ceton card and 1 Cable Card to get equivalent functionality and a lot less complicated to setup).

Originally Posted by Mike7143

I've got a Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800 in the PC currently. Coax cable comes from the wall jack into the set-top digital cable box, comes out of the box with coax into my "TV in" on the Hauppauge. Then obviously it goes via Ethernet to the Xbox which is connected to the TV via HDMI. The only other video outputs on the digital cable box are the composite connectors (yellow, red, white). The installer said that was the best he had available at the time and that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as the STBs went. As far as the encoding settings for the Hauppauge, I have no idea what they're set to or how to change them to a higher quality. Would it be in software that came with the card? I didn't install any software for it, Windows 7 just found drivers for it online, installed, and it showed up and works in Windows Media Center. Perhaps I should install the card software? Or..... buy a Ceton I just would still be curious in case I can't get the financial backing for the Ceton and want a temporary setup that's not so stinking terrible to look at using the Hauppauge.

Originally Posted by hlkc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdi4VLgx4w

Originally Posted by jeff lam

I'm curious if this Ceton card will work with other media center solutions such as MediaPortal or XBMC? Does anyone have it running on one of these solutions and is it working as it should?

Originally Posted by jeff lam

What is the format TV shows are recorded in with the Ceton? And if the cable company flags the shows as copy freely (0x00), will I be able to watch a pre recorded show (not live) on my windows 7 laptop or other PC on the same network as the recording HTPC? I was reading reviews that said this was possible but they didn't go into depth on how it was done. And I was also reading earlier in this thread about how it can't be done, not even with official microsoft extenders... I'm confused.

Originally Posted by hlkc

with latest pkg... finally a very nice InfiniTV 4 UI inside WMC

Well done Ceton!!!