Quest for Skip Free viewing Options

[Guest_G_A_V_*]

I purchased a Vision plust dvb-t pci card, and It is installed in my computer in the study.
I also bought a pair of rabbit ears to recive reception because my tv plug is in the room next the study. Now I would install a jack here but it is not my house (i am renting).
Now the rabbit ears did not provide a good signal (75-80%) and it skipped alot. So I exchanged it at Dick smiths (part #: L4016) for an indoor telesopic tv antenna with built in aplifier, it also has an outlet to an extra tv antenna which i thne plugged in to the plug in the next room for testing reasons.
This still provided only an extra 1-2% but alot better picture, still fairly jerky and with out the external antenna (this was a temp solution for testing) it was un watchable. I also could not pick up the abc channel which i could with the original rabbit ears, so im conviced this antenna is not "digital ready"
So im going to take it back, as far as im aware here are my options:
1) Get a long cable with an amplifier to go into the next room into the outside antenna(this will be around 5m)
2) Try another inside antenna
I have tried changing to the bda drivers, changing codecs, changing software, i have tried just about everything, any one person actually contacted me on here nad recomended a signal of around 90% was required to watch an unskippable broardcast of digital tv.
Does anyone have any suggestions or can comment on my option above ?
Oh i should mention im in sydney north shore suburbs, and I also have been recommended a fracco indoor antenna, anyone know where i can get one in sydney ?

[bear]

G_A_V,

I purchased a Vision plust dvb-t pci card, and It is installed in my computer in the study.

Can you be more specific about your computer? eg Hardware, O.S. Programs etc
Is it possible your pc can't cope?

I also bought a pair of rabbit ears to recive reception because my tv plug is in the room next the study. Now I would install a jack here but it is not my house (i am renting).

Have you considered installing a seperate external Antenna and running a seperate cable into your study? You could also buy a new antenna and replace the old one.

Now the rabbit ears did not provide a good signal (75-80%) and it skipped alot. So I exchanged it at Dick smiths (part #: L4016) for an indoor telesopic tv antenna with built in aplifier, it also has an outlet to an extra tv antenna which i thne plugged in to the plug in the next room for testing reasons.
This still provided only an extra 1-2% but alot better picture, still fairly jerky and with out the external antenna (this was a temp solution for testing) it was un watchable. I also could not pick up the abc channel which i could with the original rabbit ears, so im conviced this antenna is not "digital ready"

Your existing external tv antenna system may be just old or the wrong type, you should check out this site to find your local digital tv channels.

http://www.dba.org.au/index.asp?sectionID=22

While digital TV is a wonder, it introduces more headaches for the TV serviceman than analogue tv. When you use rabbit ears, you risk loosing some signal headroom and this can cause your card to be more affected by impulse noise from external sources etc.(Refrigerators should be shot)

Oh i should mention im in sydney north shore suburbs

There are a number of forum members about in sydney that would be better placed to say what your receiption is like but a good external antenna using quad shielded coax cable is the way to go. You can use a TV booster if you want to help distrubite the RF signals around the house. This can also help reduce the impulse noise from the household whitegoods but it is best placed close to the antenna and make sure it has good shielding, also initally set it to low gain incase you overload it.

Also make sure you have sufficent ventilation inside the PC case, the cards bit error rate increase with heat, best check how it behaves on cold start compared to hotest part of the day. (You may need an extra fan) Forget the Quality reading as you have already guessed, the signal strength indicator is ok, but the quality doesn't tell you things like poor multipath etc.

I have tried changing to the bda drivers, changing codecs, changing software, i have tried just about everything

The BDA drivers only work with a small number of programs, two of these (DW & WS) you can find on this forum. I would suggest that you record some of your TV programs using the Twinhan software (DTV 2.421 seem to be the most stable), copy them to a CD and play them back on an other PC. If they play ok then the problem you have is a DS decoder or video/audio driver issue and can be usually rectified by a number of tricks using a direct show Filter Manager and updating the graphic drivers.

Dan.

[Guest_hifipenguin_*]

So im going to take it back, as far as im aware here are my options:
1) Get a long cable with an amplifier to go into the next room into the outside antenna(this will be around 5m)
2) Try another inside antenna

An amplifier will not help unless you have a very long run of cable or have more than about 3-4 points. The best solution in your case would be to get some quad-shielded cable (from Dick Smith) for the 5m run from the external antenna (this should cost about $20-$30).

Another thing to be wary of is the issue that I'm dealing with: SATA.

If you are using an nForce2 motherboard with on-board SiI3112 SATA controller and SATA HDD, then you are likely to have problems. I haven't found a resolution for this yet, but I've heard that getting a Promise PCI add-on card (~$150) can fix it.

Lastly, I've heard that WiFi can interfere with the DVB signal - there are workarounds for this, but you may need to Google it.

[Guest_vswtan_*]

Try looking out for an "active" rabbit ear indoor antenna. The power supply that comes with the antenna boasts the signal strength significantly that my quality and strength were always 98% or above.
Bought mine at K-Mart for $25 in Melbourne.

[Guest_G_A_V_*]

thanks for you help guys, i neded up getting an exchange, and the new card is working much better. I got a high quality 10m cable for dse and im using that atm, though because its so thick its hard to hide and very hidious, i might try the "active" antenna from kmart to see if that will provide a better picture. With the long 10m cable im getting about a skip every 60seconds, and 79-80% strength. I do have a wifi card and what i tried doing is moving my gfx card and wifi cards to the top of the mb, and just the tuner card at the bottom, it helped a little i think, i might do a little search on wifi cards interfearing, but i tried disabling it in windows to look for improvement, couldnt see any, i dunno if the card is still active its its disabled in windows though
I really apprciate the amount of help i got on this forum, thanks again guys