[mythtv-users] Corrupted output from PVR-150

[George Mari]

Mark Boyum wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 2:05 AM, Michael T. Dean
> <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>> On 10/24/2008 02:38 AM, Mark Boyum wrote:
>>> I recently picked up a PVR-150 for about $35 to replace the BTTV card.
>>>  Unfortunately I think I may have received a bad card.  The recordings
>>> from the new (to me) PVR-150 look like a really old tv with a bad
>>> v-hold adjustment.  After a bit of searching I adjusted the
>>> pci_latency for my SATA controller to be higher than that of the PVRs
>>> but this does not seem to help.
>>>
>>> My original PVR-150 still seams to work without issue; so I am
>>> guessing that the new card is defective.  I've attached a screenshot
>>> of what the cards output looks like just in case someone else has seen
>>> this and might know how to fix.
>> That cap looks like it's coming from an S-Video input (as it has clean
>> edges) rather than from the analog tuner.  If so, perhaps you need to
>> reboot the STB.  I used to get similar problems with my DISH network
>> receiver unless I rebooted the receiver about 1/mo.
>>
>> Yes, I seriously rebooted my DISH receiver 1/mo--the DISH receiver that
>> I kept connected to my Myth backend that ran for months without a reboot
>> or MythTV restart (and then, MythTV only got restarted on Myth upgrade
>> and the box only got rebooted on power outages).
>>
>> Mike
> 
> Thanks for the quick reply and suggestion.  Unfortunately there is no
> STB involved.  Then clean edges on the cap are due to cropping it down
> in GIMP to achieve a small attachment size.
> 
> It is really hard to describe what the mpg produced by this card is
> doing.  I'll see if I can post a clip somewhere.  My next
> trouble-shooting step will be to make the troubled card the only
> capture device in the system and see what happens.  I'll also attempt
> to access it via other applications to rule out Myth, but I highly
> doubt Myth is the culprit.
> 
> Thanks again,
> -Mark

Check out the v4l2-ctl utility.  This can be used to query and set 
various settings on the PVR-150, like which input it's using, what video 
format is being captured, all sorts of stuff.

Then again, it could be that the myth backend sets all this stuff 
automatically, but I'm not sure.

If nothing else, you could at least use v4l2-ctl to view the settings on 
the old card and compare them to the new one, to see if they are the same.

OR - even better, go into the mythbackend setup, and make sure both 
PVR-150's are setup the same way, especially the correct input for each 
card (S-video, tuner, composite) and that this reflected correctly in 
the 'Input Connections' area.