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[yorri]

Hello everyone,

I am currently using digital cable service over a s-video connection and everything works fine but the quality of the tv is very fuzzy.  Are there any settings that I can do to improve.  I know that it is not the cable signal because it looks fine on my tv.  The sound is excellent also.  It is just fuzzy and most noticeable when there is text on the screen.  I am even able to record without a problem so I don't believe there is an issue with the software.

I am using an ATI Radeon 8500 with ATI ALL Wonder PRO tv tuner.  I am running Windows XP (with SP2)...in case this makes a difference.

Would upgrading my hardware make a difference even though  it doesn't appear that anything is wrong?

I'm not using any splitters or going through my vcr.  Just my digital cable box straight through to the tv tuner.

Any suggestions?

[DocLotus]

Hi again Yorri;

Boy; this seems to be our day.

I went through the same thing with analog cable (poor image quality) then digital cable (better image quality), then DirecTV satellite (the VERY best).

There are four possible outputs from a cable (or satellite) box, one is very poor and the other three are very good to excellent.

1: Single RF coax output... carries both video and sound; poorest quality in both video and sound (no 5.1 surround sound).  Stay away from this one.  It is considered as only a basic connection and usually has a poor, sometimes fuzzy image.

2: Composite video output... separates the video and sound.  Has much better quality in both video and sound.  Is quite usable for everyday viewing.

3: S-Video... like Composite it separates the video and sound.  Better quality in video and much better quality in sound (has 5.1 Surround Sound).  On a computer, I do not see much picture quality improvement over Composite video output, but it does have real 5.1 Surround Sound. This is the one I am using and am very happy with it.

4: Component Video Connection... breaks the video into three separate components. You must have a Component input box and is most often used with HDTV.  This is the very best image possible.

Do you by chance live in an apartment?  I do, and had nothing but problems with so-called digital cable.  Only channels above 100 were actually digital.  All the channels from 2 through 99 were still analog and carried all the problems of analog.

I finally bit the bullet and got DirecTV and am now in hog heaven.  DirecTV is the very best, on ALL channels and is VERY reliable.  I also saved so much money with DirecTV that I got Showtime for DirecTV and still had enough money left over to get SBC DSL.  Boy, that was a deal.

[DocLotus]

Yorri;

One other thing...

A few months ago I bought an ATI TV Wonder Pro tuner card to use in combination with my ATI A-I-W 9600 Pro video / TV card.  The two used together provides a picture in a picture capability providing you have two separate TV signals coming in (no splitters).  I have two DirecTV satellite boxes and wanted the P-I-P feature.

I noticed several things about the ATI TV Wonder Pro tuner...

* The image quality was not nearly as good as from the 9600 Pro.  It was less clear, and had less saturation of colors.

* The P-I-P feature was an on again off again problem.

* Overall I was so dissatisfied with it that I returned it to Amazon as defective.

As I have said many times, I have NEVER had really good results with any separate TV tuner card.  My best computer TV has ALWAYS been from a video / TV tuner combination.

Separate TV tuner cards require either a video card pass through (which degrades quality) or uses some of the features of DirectX to work.

[yorri]

Well I have done my research now and realize that the more powerful video cards and better tuner cards give better results.

Media Center also doesn't give as much flexibility with settings therefore we cannot fine tune for best setup (unlike software like SageTV for example)

I would never go with AIW because it doesn't have hardware encoding. You will always get better results with a card that had hardware encoding (unless you have a very very fast CPU - I think people have best results with over 3Ghz....when the CPU can't keep up, you get worse quality.

I had the same problem with DVD, as soon as I got more powerful cards and faster CPU, the quality improved and it is as crisp and clear and bright as on my regular tv now.