Thread: Padding Video Input to DVR

Hi!

I just bought a Hauppage PVR350 card for my PC, and the picture has a lot of grain on most channels both as viewed on the PC screen OR output from the card to a TV. I've read that this can be caused by too hot a signal coming into the card (sensitive Samsung chips), and that an attenuator/pad may be required. My modem is working fine, but I don't know how to get the signal strength from it - I've got a router between it and my PC.

The cable into the attic is about 150 from the box outside. I have one splitter in the attic which goes to a single TV (picture quality on all channels is good here) and then a wall jack another 20 feet away. I then have a splitter at that wall jack, which has short cables (6 ft. or so) to connect to my cable modem and the input to the video capture card. So, with these cable lengths and number of splitters from the junction box to my video card - does it make sense that a pad between the wall splitter and card would actually improve the video quality for a sensitive video capture card? How can you tell how much to pad - 1, 3, 6, 10 db? Is there such a thing as a variable pad? If I just threw in a long coil of cable (20 ft.) or a few splitters between my video card and the splitter at the wall jack, would that achieve the same attenuation result as using inline pads?

Thx!

With all of those splitters I can't see why your signals would be too high. Do you have a house amp? You can get grainy pics from to low of a signal also. Seems as though you have a loop system in place and I doubt your signals are to high. You need levels before thinking of a pad.