TV Tuners, a tail of woe and a cry for help

[MayImilae]

Anyone here have experience with TV Tuners? Ever since my 3570K upgrade, I haven't been able to get anything good from either of my TV tuners. I use (well, used) DScaler with my TV tuners to make it work, as it was a good program. I don't even have a TV, so I used DScaler and my tuner to play my Gamecube then my Wii through my computer. It worked really well, for years even! I've played through dozens of games with this setup. But now it's derping, and I can't fix it.

I have two TV Tuners in my system, an "encore" Phillips SAA7130, and an ATI TV Wonder 750 PCIe directshow based tuner. I'll go over them one at a time. For those unfamiliar with DScaler, there are two versions, 4113 and 4119. There is also an unofficial 421 version, but I haven't had much luck with it.

SAA7130
The older of my tuners, I used it as my primary tuner even after I bought the ATI Tuner, when it proved problematic. It was always a low quality tuner, but it worked VERY easily, and had a good fast picture for games. Unfortunately, I can't get it to work at all right now. DScaler 4113 seems to think it doesn't have the temporary hardware driver for it (the same files that worked on the previous install, they are signed and should work). Dscaler 4119 crashes immediately when I try to set the video input. Right now, I cannot get anything from this tuner.

ATI TV Wonder 750 PCIe
It has a much better picture, WAY clearer. At least, it was briefly. It's been a pain in the rear ever since I got the stupid thing. All kinds of weird problems. Right now, here's what it's doing. DScaler 4119 doesn't work period, so... yea. DScaler 4113 is able to work with it... sortof. It has some sort of motion blur, it's blurred beyond reason (way more than it should be), not in the right aspect ratio, black bars all around it, randomly freezes the frame every now and then, and worse yet, the contrast is obscenely high. Take and compare these.

Dolphin - http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/5306/r3me01293.png
Wii on the ATI TV Wonder - http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1057/tv2012081522502300.jpg

Not pretty.

DScaler's forums are a ghost town, and they weren't able to help me when I posted problems the past. So, I'm on the end of my rope here, so I come to you guys, hoping someone here can help. Does anyone have any familiarity with tuners? Better programs? Better tuner? A way to make these things actually work?

[NaturalViolence]

So you're telling me you only use DScaler and nothing else to capture and display the content? Why?

I had a TV Tuner many years ago. It was a hauppauge TV tuner. It's so old though that I doubt the sell/support that model anymore. Back then I just used the windows media center application for windows xp. It's built in to most versions of windows vista/7. All you should need to get it working is the drivers for the TV Tuner from the manufacturer.

[MayImilae]

Media Center doesn't work; I haven't been able to get it to detect the composite input of the tuner. Besides, if it's like any of the dozens of TV recording software stuff I've tried, it will have a built in recording lag making it useless for playing GCN/Wii games. Dscaler works well because that function is optional, and off by default.

[NaturalViolence]

Well then that's all I have to suggest. You should probably stop using horribly outdated hardware and software. If you want to know why Dscaler isn't working you'll have to ask other people who have used it (but you said the forums are a ghost town so good luck with that). Switch to a different application, make sure your drivers are up to date, and if all else fails reformat the system and start over. If even that fails then you're going to need new hardware.

[MayImilae]

The hardware isn't outdated and the drivers are up to date. The application is definitely a problem though, but TV tuners are pretty niche...

[NaturalViolence]

Looks pretty outdated to me.

[lamedude]

Try MPC-HC? I think thats what the open device in the file menu is for.