HELP with Marvel TV Tuner!!!

[Livius]

Hi all! I have a Marvel G200 (European version), with TV Tuner (and memory) addon. I use a cable company to receive television programs here in Romania (a PAL country). My problem is that some of (actually, most of) the channels that I am able to receive with the Marvel lack sound. While I have sound for the likes of CNN and TV5, I do not have sound for e.g. Cartoon Network, PRO7, RTL2 or Discovery. Do you have any idea why this happens? I've noticed that you may choose the audio frequency from the Properties/General/Advanced tab of the PC-VCR but my only option is FM. Is this a standard for PAL television or are there other options as well?
Secondly, what exactly changes when you change the country settings? Is there any difference from the settings for two European countries that use the same broadcasting standard (e.g. PAL).

Thanks,
Livius

[MariusB]

Salut!

Eu am un RRG200, dar e cam acelasi lucru.
Am sa scriu totusi in engleza pentru a nu face ..."opinie separata".

I have an Millenium G200 + RRG combo installed on a Gigabyte-BXC + PII 450 + 128 MB RAM + SbLive! and I experienced the same problems. I have also cable TV (RCS).
The first time I have installed the card everything was OK, I had sound on all the channel that RRG was capable of tunning, even if they were less than the channels that I am able to tune with a normal TV.
After a while I moved the PC to anothe room where was another antenna cable (I have a splitter). The surprise was that in the new location my RRG refused to tune any channel. I tried all the settings in the PC-VCR, but nothing helped. I then open the PC case and I changed the PCI slot of the RRG and after that I installed again all the software. That solved the problem, even if I don't explain myself why. So, try to reinstall the drivers and try to change the position of other PCI boards that you may have.
Also, I think that the sound problem could be related to the quality of the signal that is emmitted by our cable TV providers (you noticed that even on a normal TV the quality of the broadcast is better for the foreign channels, maybe the ones that has sound on your Marvel?). You can try to adjust the settings in the registry, in the Software/Matrox.../TvTFreq table you can make small adjustments for the frequency of each channel, but after each change you have to close and restart the PC-VCR. You can also add a new entry in TvTCountries copying for example the entries for Italy. Anyway, I tried this and I don't think that helps much. The norm in Romania is PAL BG FM standard and I use Italy for country code. I tried to ask RCS for a table of the frequencies for each channel but they didn't want to provide me one. If you can ask them, maybe you will have more luck.
Try also to use a normal antenna (not CATV) or try to go to a friend that has a different CATV provider. This way you can see if the problem is related to CATV provider or the installation of the card.
I don't know if this can help, but is better than nothing. Succes!

[Livius]

Hi!
Thanks for the answer (Multzam!). Since my CATV provider works so very well with the usual TV Tuner, I do not see why it should not work with the Marvel. The only explanation that I see is that the Marvel only allows for a shorter bandwidth, especially where sound is concerned.