QBOX-S2 picture quality problems

[jsb]

Hello

I have an acer revo running windows 7 and thought a qbox would provide a good picture in WMC. Unfortunately not so good thus far, so I hope I can find help here !

TBSViewer (version on the CD that was shipped) failed to find my qbox - but I downloaded the latest from the website and that has now picked up the device. One issue resolved. I've also managed to get DVB-Link configured to manage TV chanels in WMC.

The real issue is picture quality using both TBSViewer & WMC. My Qbox is locked and finds the channels OK, but I don't get a great pciture with regular pciture break-up/pixelation. The picture is miles off what I get with my freesat box, and I was hoping for something much closer.

I'm a newbie to "TV on the PC" so I apologise for not having any great knowledge of what to expect or how to fix it, hence I am grateful of your help.

Do you think the issue is hardware or software ? Is there anything I can do to get either TBSviewer or WMC working better ?

As a newbie, I'm not fully sure how to update QBOX drivers or codecs. So if anyone suspects those could be at fault - some simple instructions would be appreciated

Thank you for your help in advance ! - fingers crossed this can be resolved.

[cody]

hello, i believe the issue with video codec or the video renderer and/or some issue with your video card drivers, because the picture should be better than your set-top-box, because usually computers has video hardware of much greater quality than what set-top-box can offer. so, please, provide specification of your computer hardware.

[jsb]

Hi Cody

The machine is an acer revo 3610 - with a dual core intel atom 1.60ghz, 2gb Ram, Windows 7 64-bit

The graphics are Nvidia ION - which says that I have the latest driver installed.

The DVBlink has integrated the qbox into Media Center Ok - with regards to channels, epg and recording. But the problem is the picture quality - I get intermittent pauses/stuttering followed by jumps in the transmission (which I don't get at all on the freeview sat-box) i.e. bits missed, there is also noise/pixelation in the picture which although is not constant is extremely frequent - more than I would expect.

Hopefully it is a set-up issue, rather than a hardware fault

[jw300]

I have the same set-up with an extra 1GB of RAM.

I had problems with WMC, especially with HD channels, but what appeared to be video problems were actually audio-related. HD channels wouldn't play at all - this was related to Dolby Digital sound (AC-3), which I disabled in the WMC TV-Audio settings e.g. by selecting "Auto" levels. I don't remember if SD quality was OK before installing a new audio decoder (see below), but it's OK now. I haven't used WMC a lot so far, but PQ seems good enough now, though HD does pixellate occasionally.

Unlike WMC, TBS Viewer lets you choose decoders and renderers - make sure you choose the "EVR" option in the latter to use the graphics hardware acceleration. Again, I had video problems - especially with HD audio decoding - but installing and selecting a new codec cured that. That fix may also have helped WMC. Just do a search for "AC3filter".

[jsb]

I have the same set-up with an extra 1GB of RAM.

Unlike WMC, TBS Viewer lets you choose decoders and renderers - make sure you choose the "EVR" option in the latter to use the graphics hardware acceleration. Again, I had video problems - especially with HD audio decoding - but installing and selecting a new codec cured that. That fix may also have helped WMC. Just do a search for "AC3filter".

Thanks - I will try TBSViewer again tomorrow.

Has anyone tried the WMC Codecs from Shark007 ? if so were they any good