Help! No tv signal with ntl stb on MCE

Nialloc

I have the NTL digital cable connected to my stb and this connects to my smasung 32r7 lcd using scart and rf lead and conecting to my Sony Vaio VGX XL100 PC, I am using scart from the stb onto the video card using composite(i think, its got six connectors). It finds the channels and I have intermittant sound but the tv signal is grey, it was working for a while, nothing has changed but it just won't work now and i have a no tv signal icon occasionally in the bottom of my desktop screen.

Anybody any suggestions on this, I bought the PC to use as a PVR so it's not much good without a tv signal! when it was working, the picture quality was brutal, very bad colours, faded, any ideas on how to get the best picture assuming i can get it working again! I'm new to all this so don't worry about spelling it out in steps for me:D

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

8T8

I think this may be a cable issue but how exactly are you converting the scart output from the NTL box to composite for the HTPC's tuner through an adaptor like this one or something else ?


Just so you know composite consists of three cables, yellow for video and red/white for audio so 6 cables coming from your scart cable doesnt sound quire right. This is an example of a composite video cable.

subway

im interested in the six wires too.
the bad image is probably to do with s-video and rgb setting ,
either on the decoder or in mce setup.

what color are the wires your using and what make of tv card do you have

Nialloc

thanks for the reply guys, I have an avermedia hybrid tv tuner card ac16. i got proper composite cables today along with a rgs to s-video composite convereter and also have the adaptor as well, playing around with them now but just getting sound no picture. could you walk through exactly what cable goes where for me?

cheers.

subway

you should have a yellow composite wire coming from the back of the ntl box to the composite input on the tv card.
there mshould be no svideo involved.
its as simple as that

did you go through the tv setup wizard again?
do that just to make sure you ahve it right.
halfway through you should get to select your video input.

Nialloc

thanks guys, got the tv signal working, the other cable I was using was obviously wrong one. The picture isn't great though, very dull and faded, any way of improving this, I bought an rgb to s-video composite converter (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=30782&criteria=rgb%20to%20s%20video%20converter&doy=6m9), will this make any difference to picture quality or am i stuck with how it is now?

Nialloc

there is only a scart output from back of the ntl stb, it's one of the small silver pace boxes, i put a scart/composite adaptor on one end of the composite cable on stb side and other composite end into the tuner card and like i say, i got tv signal but quality is poor.

subway

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=47315&criteria=scart%20to%20composite&doy=6m9
if your using composite rather than s-video you dont need a converter.
use an adaptor like the one linked above.
its likely the converter is messing with the signal.

also, makse sure the ntl box is set to the right output format -
menu - setings - picture [i think]

failing that, post a screeshot of the image so we can try to identify the issue

8T8

Nialloc the Scart RGB -> S-Video converter may improve the picture quality I don't have one myself but others have said they work well enough. Obviously you need to supply it with an S-video cable and the red/white cables for audio.

Does your tuner actually have an s-video input ?

As for the poor picture quality over composite that is to be expected, unfortunately no-one makes a tuner with scart RGB support the best you can get is s-video.

Composite isn't all that great for detail either in fact it's near bottom of the barrel, some tuners are better at others in cleaning up the image by applying various filters so you may want to invest in a third party tuner.

Failing that you should check Sonys support site for a driver update for the tuner, I checked Avermedias and while they do have PCI hybrid tuners listed it was impossible to know which was yours unless you crack open the case yourself and have a look.

BaZmO*

Just on the subject of poor picture quality. Channel 4 seems to display vertical lines whenever I view it through MCE. Is there any way to fix this? All the other channels are fine and Channel 4 comes in fine on the the tv when not viewing it through the MCE.