Windows 7: Bad channel quality

Video playback with standard definition television doesn't look good at all with my setup.

My monitor resolution is 1680x1050, my tv tuner is AverMedia M780, and my video card is HD 4850.

Does quality of the channel have to do with the video card or tv tuner? Does it always look this bad with standard definition on a monitor? It looks so much better on just a regular tube TV.

I just got my wife's system going with an HDHomeRun dual-QAM tuner, and a Happauge 950 as an analog cable tuner. Any digital channel (SD or HD) looks very clean with rich color. So far, the SD analog stuff looks like crap. It's noisy and washed out. My system down stairs is using two Hauppauge 1950 boxes as analog tuners and the results are far better.

So it's many things that effect picture quality. It's digital verses analog for the most part for me, not SD verses HD.

Bye.

My card has dual tuners, but I'm not sure which one to use for my cable. There is a lot of different "networks" to choose from when plugging in the coaxial cable to the digital tuner or analog tuner. How do I know which is the right one?

I do pick up some HD channels that I'm not subscribed to when I have the coaxial cable hooked to the digital tuner, why is this?

Is the video processing for TV done on the tuner or video card?

I'm guessing you may want to connect both tuners with a splitter so you can get both the standard analog and QAM channels. I can't tell from the information I saw for your tuner card if each input has a separate function. That is, one input is for analog and the other digital (QAM). Most cable companies send clear QAM for the over-the-air networks, and often will throw in some of the digital, or HD, versions of standard analog cable channels. If you go to:

hdhomerun/channels - Silicondust

and enter your ZIP CODE, it will show you what to expect from over-the-air and clear QAM where you live. The digital channel numbers and program numbers shown are what you need to set up MC7 to receive the free QAM channels.

For QAM reception, there is no processing. The recording is essentially the raw MPEG2 transport stream sent over the cable with a simple wrapper to make MC7 happy. Analog requires processing. Some tuner cards, like the ones I have, do the processing in their chip set so the PC doesn't have to. This helps a lot if you have many tuners. I have four QAM tuners and two analog. Monday nights are a busy time with lots of recordings. I never miss my favorite shows.

Bye.

I tried plugging in the coaxial cable to the digital, and when I did scan for TV channels in Windows Media Center I picked up only 16 channels (some of them HD)

Are the channels I get with a regular TV digital or analog? I really want to get as much channels I can without having to switch my cable from analog to digital and rescan (which takes like 30 minutes)... guess I would need a splitter?

Yes, you need a splitter.

Those 16 digital channels you got are the clear QAM channels your cable company supplies for free, mostly because they are required to by law. MC will merge the digital and analog channels together in one Guide. You may have to use the Edit Channel feature to associate the correct Guide data with your QAM channels using Edit Listing.

Bye.