WinTV Theater with only occasional sound- any tips ?

[Dirty Harry 0]

Just got myself the Hauppauge WinTV Theater (mod 498) PCI card. Works great except for the sound. The sound is sporadic, most of the time the wintv2000 and win32 apps start without any sound. Switching channels, swithing to fullscreen or mute/unmuteing a couple of times turns on the sound. On the other hand, if the apps start with sound (rarely) the sound stops after switching channels etc.

In device manager the VFW drivers show up fine, no exclamation marks but the properties for the Audio one show "no drivers loaded for this device" but I think this is normal.

 

The TV card is OK, I've tested with another one too.

 

Any tips anyone?? Anybody have a similar combo working ?

 

Essential specs:

 

ABIT KA7-100 with AMD KA7 Athlon 800

256 MB of PC133 SDRAM

Hauppage Win/TV Theater (model 498) PCI, driver 3.09 (3.06 also tested) TV system is PAL

Soundblaster Live! 1024, newest drivers and liveware

Asus V-7700 AGP (Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS), 32 MB DDR SGRAM

Cambridge Soundworks speakers,

 

Windows 2000, SR-2, DX 8

 

Thanks,

 

H.

[kEViNoPolY 1]

Probably you should try the new WDM driver für Hauppauge tv-cards. Yesterday I posted an article on our's homepage about the new available drivers. I'm sure you'll find out how to download even it's all in German

 

http://www.3dwin.de/main/article.php?sid=1088

 

Greetings,

Kevin

[SHS 0]

There old hehe I know where to get the very latest and there not for the WinTV-D or the WinTV-Theater.

[kEViNoPolY 1]

So where from?

[Dirty Harry 0]

I'm reading and reading but fail too understand what Great Advice our Great Administrator SHS is giving in his message. Dear SHS, could you explain to a clueless mortal helpseeker what those dear magic words of wisdom mean ? I'm happy to learn that you know (but don't tell) where to get the very latest drivers that are not for my card, but what precise piece information did you attempt to share ?

 

kEViNoPolY's tip was much appreciated, yes it did change things, lots of sound this time(pink noice, occasionaly even the real thing) but the picture turned red & green. This seems like the way to go, I'll keep on testing. It seem that different video drivers react differently, last test was with Nvidia 12.90. Sigh, there are an endless chain of WinTV/Nvidia/Soundblaster driver combinations left to test...

 

Meanwhile, if someone has some advice or can confirm that this combo really can work I'd be grateful for a post.

 

H.

[pr-man 1]

Guys im running Win2k pro and have a WinTV theater and the sound has always worked great but I am using the latest VFW drivers off the hauppauge website. I do video capture with my card as well as TV, did I not read that the VFW drivers are much better than the WDM drivers for Video Capture?

[SHS 0]

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/sw_wcst.htm#wdm

[pr-man 1]

SHS which is better for capture under win2k? WDM or VFW drivers for my wintv theater

[SHS 0]

Depend on the size you went capture at if only plan on VCD 352x240(NTSC) 288(PAL) size I think WDM are better but you still need a fast drive & fast CPU and lot of memory and **** load of drive space.

One other thing I like to point out the con and pro win doing AVI capture.

Pro:

Verg good quality

 

Con:

1: Take a ton of space "5min eat up 2.1gig of space", I can see it now that user trying to do 2hour and he dosen't know that he need 50gig is needed.

2: That dosen't count the space you need for editing the video if it need it, There go his whole day shot down the tube just doing

this hehe.

3: Take a long time to convert over to VCD "30 mins for ever 5min but that depend on the speed of the system", He about ready to shot somebody at this point in time and I don't blame him one bit.

 

 

That why I want Hardware MPEG Capture.

 

SHS Unofficial WinTV-PVR

http://shs-tv.m0ss.com/

SHS Unofficial 3Dfx FAQ & Download for Windows 2000-XP

http://www.ntcompatible.com/3dfxfaq.shtml

SHS Unofficial SBLive! WDM Drivers for Windows 98SE-ME-2000-XP

http://shs-sound.paraknowya.com/

[Ultrix 0]

Here is something else you can try, its called "DScaler". Its a tv viewing application that has a built in line doubler and a bunch of deinterlacing filters, along with noise reduction and some other filters. All i have to say is WOW. It makes standard tv look like a digital tv, and on a copmuter monitor it really shines. Im running the latest build of Dscaler (3.20) and the older versions of the WDM drivers on hauppauges page (the ones before the new ones that were posted yesterday. IM in the USA so im running NTSC (WinTv Theater). In the hardware setup i selected "Standard BT878" as the chip and "Phillips NTSC" as the tuner. Do a channel scan and be amazed. There is no remote support but if you are clever you can rewrite the ini file from the ir32.exe installation to get the hauppauge remote to run dscaler (i havnt gotten time to do it, but ive had the remote running winamp). if you have any knowledge of computers you could probably figure it out, it is very straightforward. Dscaler can be found here:

 

http://deinterlace.sourceforge.com

 

check out some of the screen shots, its preety amazing.

 

Ultrix

[Dirty Harry 0]

Thanks for the tips guys,

 

well, the new WDM drivers (2.26 /July 24th) were really different, they load fine and turn the WinTV app into a automatic re-booter. Just start WinTV and the machine reboots. Handy, but not what I was looking for. The beta version of them worked however, but left me with the sound problem.

 

The new WinTV app (3.21) in combination with the WDF drivers work best, about 80% of the time. Oddly enough it seems evry installation turns out to be a little bit more or less effective and it seems that having the sound controls on the desktop improves the results.

 

Anyhow, along came Ultrix with the phenomenal Dscaler tip, works really well and has sound every time. Great freeware app, altough it doesn'thave as glossy interface as WinTV. Just have to figure out how to name the channels though...

 

Next week I'll get a new mobo (KG7 is coming!) and do a fresh install, lets see how that turns out.

 

H.

[pr-man 1]

SHS which WDM drivers work with the WinTV Theater? I accidently tried the ones you linked to and everytime i ran anything the computer gave me a stop error

[SHS 0]

Yes Dirty Harry WDM drivers (2.26 /July 24th) are just find how ever the think new WinTV2000 what makeing the automatic re-booter or it could be the drivers it self try using DScaler.

With WinTV2000 I get this error ever time Connecting VCap and XformTree Filters: HR=0x80040207

Yes I had heard other getting reboot even under XP hehe may have something to do with msvcrt.dll.

But if I install 2.24.19198 & use the latest WinTV2000 everthing is just fine.

Note: It not 3.21 it real 3.29

pr-mant as I said before there not for the WinTV-D or WinTV-HD or the WinTV-Theater you can use the VfW drivers.

[SHS 0]

If you download 2.26.19205 the other day get the new that where post last late nigth it should be 2.26.19206.

Ops I look like it now 2.27.19206 hehe

[pr-man 1]

I downloaded the tweaked wdm drivers for the chipset my theater uses. will they work with the WINTV Theater?

[SHS 0]

I ask them if add support for the WinTV Theater in the new WDM drivers but as far I know it no.

[Ali 0]

try the latest DirectX8.0 and 8.0a. it did fix my ATI TV tuner that is part of my ATI A-W-I 128pro. i hope that helps (oooh i like the smiles:D )

[Ultrix 0]

I have a wintv theater and this is my experience. I used the old 220 wdm drivers that didnt support the wintv and they worked fine. The feature that was lacking was controlling the onboard audio decoder (it decodes dolby pro logic so its special). The video however worked fine. Under audio options, there was no advanced tab to configure the prologic. So, when i changed channels, the audio would flake out. However, I was using a vcr as my tuner, running a rca line for video and plugging the vcr's audio right into my soundcard, bypassing the broken audio support. These new drivers do have the advanced audio button to configure the dolby prologic and i have had no audio glitches like before, so i am gonna say they offically support the wintv-theater.

 

Ultrix