HTPC Help

sprinkles

Ok, I'm a relative new commer to this so not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I have a WinTV-PVR-500 MCE card, installed it and loaded up the drivers. Then into the setup in Media Centre and I get as far as the select a working tv signal.

My NTL box is hooked up to the S-Video and when media centre scans for a signal it comes in as black and white and kinda fuzzy (compared to the cristal clear reception when connected with the tv).

That's not where the problems stop either. I can proceed with the bad signal but I can't get the windows remote to work for the set top box. And alas I can't get the tv set up properly.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Could it be my graphics card? - Radeon X1600

I've tried various cables and this is the best reception I'm getting (just bought it from Maplins so it should be working ok)

mathias

First the S video out thing , your problem is as common as it gets , heres a walkthrough to make sure you have the settings for the video card right , go through this and see if it helps ,

http://www.weethet.nl/english/video_pc2tv_ati.php

Next the remote , its the MCE remote yes ?
If so have you connected the one of the IR Blasters that came with it to the receiver on the NTL box ? You may have to tape it to the receiver.

sprinkles

Not sure if you got my issue... it's the NTL box connecting to the S-Video in. My pc is connected to my LCD tv and works fine. I have since tried using the second S-Video port on my card and it gets a slightly better reception but it's still bad.

As for the remote, yep it's the MCE remote, not much luck with it though.

mathias

Apologies , I must have misread that ,

I was assuming your problem was that the output from your ATI card to your TV was no good over S-video.

So just to be clear , you have the NTL box hooked up to the TV tuner card , and the ATI card is then connected to the TV right ?

SouperComputer

Your problem is that the NTL (PACE) box does not send an SVideo signal through SCART. So a SCART to SVideo lead will gave a greycale picture, beacuse there is no SVideo signal there!

The NTL PACE box only supports RGB and Composite over SCART, so your options are:

1. Use a composite cable to connect the NTL box to your TV card. Cheap and cheerful, you most likely have the cables already!

2. Buy an RGB to SVideo converter to convert the RGB signal that is being transmitted over SCART to SVideo for your TV card. By converter I mean an electronic device that converts the signal, not just a cable.

Option 2 is the best quality, however the digital signal is compressed so much by NTL that composite is adequate.

To be honest, this issue has been discussed in great detail, many times on the board, maybe ill write a sticky?

sprinkles

Thanks that sorts that out. I bought a RGB cable so I'll try that.

Now excuse my ignorance but where on the NTL (new) box do I place the ir blaster? The whole front of the box is black plastic and it's hard to tell where the ir receiver is.

Thanks again for the help.

sprinkles

SOrry for bombarding the forum with retarded questions but I finally got the setup working properly but... there's always a but, the signal from the NTL box is set up as 16:9 but is all bunched up on media player. Is there a way to change the setting on media player to show the full picture at the normal ratio?

SouperComputer

sprinkles wrote:

SOrry for bombarding the forum with retarded questions but I finally got the setup working properly but... there's always a but, the signal from the NTL box is set up as 16:9 but is all bunched up on media player. Is there a way to change the setting on media player to show the full picture at the normal ratio?

Set the NTL box to 4:3 in the menu in settings via the remote. The TV card you have is 4:3 anyway, so the NTL box should be set to this.

IR blaster IIRC I had mine about 1.5in in from the left of the unit.

HTH