[mythtv-users] Image Quality PVR-500

[Brian Wood]

On Feb 19, 2007, at 8:47 AM, J. David Maino wrote:

> I would love to be able to pretend that I knew what all this means  :)
>
> I found the option in Mythtv to do deinterlacing, but that does not  
> seem
> to have helped. What are the other modes you're talking about? I  
> have an
> Athlon 3200+ in this machine with 1.5gigs of ram. Not going to win any
> speed contests, but it's not terribly slow either.
>
> I also figured out how to finetune the channels, which helped with the
> coloration of the one tuner. So now I have 2 tuners that look nearly
> identical on each channel, but from channel to channel the quality can
> vary greatly. On some channels the quality is fine (I say fine, but
> considering I'm used to my old ATI TV Wonder VE, take that worth a  
> grain
> of salt), but on others it's just bad. Do I need to go through and
> finetune each individual channel? It seems to mostly be the lower
> channels that are poorer quality, so I don't know if that may give  
> clues
> as to what's going on.

Problems on the low-band (channels 2-6) are often the result of bad  
connections, either poorly-crimped or loose connectors or broken  
shields etc.

Trying to not get too technical, the higher frequencies can sometimes  
"jump the gap" better than the lower ones. A terrible way to describe  
it but sometimes useful.

Make sure you have the proper connectors for your cable, properly  
crimped (ie: not with a pair of pliers) and the connectors are either  
very finger-tight or just slightly wrench-tight.

The connectors on capture cards are sometimes hard to get at well  
enough to be sure they are tight, sometimes easily cross-threaded.

Also you might try connecting a TV set to the exact same connector as  
your card to make sure the problem is not actually in your cable  
system or home wiring.