Not so good quality

[Bruno Cappelletti]

Hey everyone, I read a lot of topics here but I can't find an answer to my problem.
I see people saying that Pixelview PlayTV Pro is a very good card, I have it and I don't really like it.
I started using the native drivers and TV software that came with the card and I know they suck.
I started using iuVCR to capture vids and shows and also watch TV but I've never liked the image quality I get. It was supposed to look better than the image quality from the TVs in the house, at least equal, right? But it's not.
I tried several drivers versions and now I'm using BtWinCap, which are much faster when opening iuVCR or scanning the channels (these are the only things I noticed using this drivers).
I always think that image quality is not good cause the cable is broken, or the cable TV here is not so good, or something like this, but if I use RCA cables and my VCR as source (using an original VHS) I get the same image quality. So I can only think that the problem is the card quality.
I was thinking of buying the Pixelview PlayTV MPEG2, which seems to be much better on prolink/pixelview site review. But it's still 8bit and even cheaper than the PlayTV Pro I have.
Can anyone suggest anything to me?

[jggimi]

Testing with composite video was a good idea. You've eliminated the tuner as being the problem. But you may still have trouble from interference -- for example, the PC may not be very well grounded. If that's the case, interference may come from lower freqencies (such as 50/60Hz), and effect other components than the RF tuner.

After checking ground, you might try moving the card to a different PCI slot, there have been reports that this can sometimes help reduce interference.

[Bruno Cappelletti]

I've done that.
I'll try again tomorrow anyway.
Thanx for the reply.

[Arachnotron]

I was not happy with my TV card at first as well. (Terratec Cinergy 400) since my TV looked ok but the card was terrible. I found out in my case the cause was the weak antenna signal. When I employed an RF amplifier, the picture quality of the card became even better then on my TV. Apparently the tuner in my TV was better able to deal with a weak antenna signal.

The only problem with that is that it does not explain why your VCR looks crap too. :(

By the way: you do know that VHS will always look worse then TV, since VHS has a much lower bandwidth then TV, which means much less detail. A VHS cape will look blurrier and noisier then a good TV cap.

You could also try a DVD player for a clean and high resolution signal.

[Bruno Cappelletti]

I was thinking of buying an amplifier but I totally forgot it. I captured some vids here on 640x480, using PICVideo Motion MJPEG codec (I didn't have enough space to use huff) at resolution 19 and iuVCR, than encoded using TMPGEnc with "noise reduction" and "deinterlace double" filters, and it´s not so bad. I can´t say the SVCDs I encoded look perfect, but it´s good. I didn't change the PCI slot yet but I'll do it.
Thanx again.