Four different questions

[htpc_user]

OK, I have 4 separate questions so I decided to ask them all in one post.

1. For a while I’ve been having a problem on my son’s PC.  He has MCE 2005 and whenever I schedule a recording using the guide, it tries to record every showing of that program.  So for example if I set it to record a show at 8:00 on Nickelodeon East, it will try to record the show again at 11:00 on Nickelodeon West.  Then it gives the error, “(Name of program) could not be recorded because no signal was available”.  How do I stop it from trying to do this?

2. In his PC he has a PVR-150 that does the recording.  Now I used to use this card in my own HTPC until I got the HVR-1600, and I thought everything looked good.  I read others’ opinions saying the picture quality was not very good.  Last night I tried it out on a program with real people (not a cartoon) and it looked downright horrible on his 37″ LCD.  I used to use it on a 50″ rear projection and it looked fine, but the picture on his LCD was bad.  Black or dark areas looked really bad and peoples’ motions looked bad, too.  The signal is coming from a DirecTV receiver by S-Video and it’s going to the TV from an X1800XT video card by DVI to HDMI cable at 1280 x 720.  Is it the quality of the PVR-150 or something else?

3. What is the status of playing ISO Blu-Rays on PCs at the moment?  I’ve read different things about this version working; that version not working.  It’s not a big deal to me; heck, I don’t even have a blu-ray drive yet.  But I plan on getting one soon.  My main reason for asking is for my “backyard theater” set up.  I thought that if I get a blu-ray drive for the HTPC I could make some ISO’s and copy them to the Backyard PC’s hard drive and then use a virtual drive to mount them.  I already have PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 and AnyDVD HD.  I also have DVD Fab HD Decrypter.  But what are the chances of getting the ISO to play (assuming I meet all the hardware requirements).

4. This afternoon I tried watching the X Games on ABC on the local digital station through my HTPC (HVR-1600).  I had already been watching on the DirecTV receiver (on the local OTA digital channel) and according to the meter I was getting about an 86% signal strength.  But I switched to the HTPC ’cause I hadn’t used it for a while to watch OTA.  But the picture started breaking up.  So I had to switch back to the DirecTV receiver for OTA.  Normally I use the receiver to tune in the highest signal strength and then switch to the HTPC ’cause Sage’s meter is, to me, unreliable.  So, in my opinion the tuner of the HVR-1600 is not that great.  What ATSC tuners for the PC pick up stations the best?  How’s the new Fusions?

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