[mythtv] Re: Whats wrong with myth

[Lincoln Dale]

Hamish,

i know you're in Melbourne - i'm also in Melbourne also.
i wonder how much of this may be related to a less-than-ideal aerial?

i had previously dabbled with Hauppage WinTVs - analog capture cards - 
which worked relatively well.
the only channel which wasn't great was Channel 31.

with a DVB-T card, reception was nowhere near as good.  signal strngth / 
SNR was around 30-40%.

i bought a new "decent"  higher-gain antenna from Radio Parts 
(http://www.radioparts.com.au/ProdView.aspx?popup=1&Product=00720351) and 
replaced existing cabling with quad-shielded cabling and F-type 
connectors.  this increased the digital signal strength / SNR to around 85-90%.

At 06:11 PM 20/03/2005, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
>Specifically:
>- Seven HD has choppy audio with audio buffer underrun messages to
>   the console at a rate of a few per second. I'm using ALSA drivers
>   and Myth's ALSA audio support.

SEVEN HD works fine here (Malvern East).
i'm not using ALSA - am using OSS.

>- ABC HD (which is different from ABC in the US, please note!)
>   works OK if I go directly to it when starting HDTV, else the audio
>   is choppy. I get some ffmpeg errors spit out on the console every
>   few seconds even when the audio is working fine; they are ac-tex
>   errors and the like.
>
>- SBS HD has breaking picture and audio, with lots of ffmpeg errors.

i get occasional errors with SBS.  haven't looked into why.

>I didn't try 9 or 10.

both 9 & 10 work just fine.

>It doesn't appear to be CPU-bound; if anything while watching Seven with
>breaking audio (but OK picture) CPU usage seems lower than other stations.
>I have an XP 2600+, GF4 MX440 video (not using XvMC).

XP2800+ as backend here & part-time frontend.  uses a cheap ATI card (R220 
based i think).

>I have been content with the digital SD stations until now but recently
>bought an HDTV, so would like to get this going at some point. I can
>help debug but don't know where to start.

while i've found HDTV to "mostly work", its pretty much irrelevant in this 
country at present.
while i have now just procedure a lovely 24" Dell LCD monitor (1900 x 1280 
resolution), there ain't ever going to be anything better than SD for the 
forseeable future in the living room with the trusty 68cm TV. :)


cheers,

lincoln.