Weak TV Signal Issues

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sorahl

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Weak TV Signal Issues

#1

Post by sorahl » Thu May 10, 2018 3:53 am

Running win 8.1 with ceton 4 infinitv card.
I get that Low TV signal message on recordings only. When i watch the program live (while recording to test) i don't get the error, when i watch the file back I do get the error.
to be clear. my SNR is about 33 with a +3.8 dvmb on avg
i have updated the codecs.
I have one splitter between the inbound cable from the ONT and my Ceton.
I'm at my wits end. getting Low TV Signal msg on 1 hr show recordings up to 4 times per recording.

anyone have ANY IDEA????
john

atlupo

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#2

Post by atlupo » Sat May 12, 2018 8:07 pm

Another possibility you might consider for your weak TV signal error is the hardware in your InfiniTV card. I’ve been using these cards since their first release and several years ago I had a card where only one of the four tuners gradually degraded and then failed completely – the other three were perfectly fine. The problem first appeared as sporadic pixelation and eventually gave weak TV signal errors. This one tuner died over the course of several months. I’m not sure how the InfiniTV card assigns tuners to either watch live or record but this drove me crazy for a while as some live TV and recordings were fine and some showed the weak TV signal errors. Finally, I was able to troubleshoot which tuner was failing by recording 4 shows simultaneously, noting which tuner was recording each channel (using Ceton diagnostics utility), and then checking which recording showed the errors. Then re-running Media Center TV setup and manually excluding the failed tuner finally gave me a stable system where I could reliably record without problems (but, of course, with only 3 tuners remaining available).

Also, a note about signal strength. I’ve seen recommendations that signal strength should be between -5 and +5 db; and that a stronger signal (> 5 db) is not always better. In the past I had poor signal strength from my cable provider and I installed several splitter-amplifiers (various Viewsonics VSMA models) just to get everything working. But later on when my provider improved the service to my house the InfiniTV card started having problems again until I removed one of the amplifiers from the line. Just make sure signal strength is good but not too good (in my experience no more than 10 db will be handled well by the InfiniTV card). Currently, I have only one main 8-way splitter amplifier for all the cable runs in my house. A couple of times these amplifiers have died and immediately I saw pixelation and weak TV errors in the recordings – and signal strengths after the amp died were down below 0 db. I would say keep the signal between 0 and 10 db and that should be good enough for these tuner cards.

cwinfield

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#3

Post by cwinfield » Sun May 13, 2018 11:56 am

Your snr is low. Needs to be ≥35. Check pigtail connection. Possibly rethink wiring replace splitter. Seach for cetonsignals for a file that checks all channels and frequencies to look for potential signal problems.

CoteRotie

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#4

Post by CoteRotie » Wed May 30, 2018 4:24 pm

Also maybe think about replacing your coax cables if you used cheap Rat Shack (or equivalent) cables. Really good quality cables can give you a bit more S/N.

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