[mythtv-users] bad analog recordings from PVR-150

[John Finlay]

Alan Marchiori wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:08 AM, jedi<jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 04:14:26PM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
>>     
>>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Alan Marchiori<alan at alanmarian.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> I added a pvr-150 just for the heck of it.  The recording quality is
>>>> really bad, however.  Almost like there is something wrong with the
>>>> card/drivers/setup it doesn't seem to synchronize to the video
>>>> properly.  My old nanalog tv gets a perfect picture from the same
>>>> source.
>>>>
>>>> a short
>>>> cat /dev/video0 > bad2.mpg
>>>> is located at http://alamode.mines.edu/~amarchio/bad2.mpg
>>>>
>>>> the ivtv syslog entries are:
>>>> [    6.306228] ivtv:  Start initialization, version 1.4.0
>>>> [    6.306375] ivtv0: Initializing card #0
>>>> [    6.306378] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge card (cx23416 based)
>>>> [    6.311990] ivtv 0000:01:06.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKA] -> GSI 17
>>>> (level, low) -> IRQ 17
>>>> [    6.361458] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
>>>> [    6.456485] cx25840 0-0044: cx25843-23 found @ 0x88 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>>>> [    6.458640] tuner 0-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>>>> [    6.458661] wm8775 0-001b: chip found @ 0x36 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>>>> [    6.530379] ivtv0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
>>>> [    6.530414] ivtv0: Registered device video32 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
>>>> [    6.530447] ivtv0: Registered device vbi0 for encoder VBI (1024 kB)
>>>> [    6.530512] ivtv0: Registered device video24 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
>>>> [    6.530514] ivtv0: Initialized card #0: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
>>>> [    6.530548] ivtv:  End initialization
>>>> [   20.572211] ivtv 0000:01:06.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw
>>>> [   20.677881] ivtv0: Loaded v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw firmware (376836 bytes)
>>>> [   20.876207] ivtv0: Encoder revision: 0x02060039
>>>>
>>>> any thoughts?
>>>>         
>>> yes your stream appears to be 480x480 pixels. Try 720x480 (I think
>>> thats the NTSC dimensions, PAL will be 720x576)
>>>       
>>    Increasing your recording bitrate might also help. Depending on your
>> source, you may just have a crap signal to deal with (DirecTV) and need
>> to be more aggressive with your capture settings.
>>     
>
>
> The source is plain old analog cable tv (ntsc).  I think the signal is
> reasonably good because my old tv gets a clean picture.
>
> I have looked through the ivtv docs quickly and don't see any easy way
> to change the capture resolution or bit rate.  I assume I will have to
> play around with v4l2-ctl ?
>   
When I set up my PVR-150 I had to change the Default profile in 
Setup->TV Setup->Recording Profiles->MPEG-2 Encoders(PVR-x50,PVR-500) to 
get good recordings. I changed: the video size to 720x480. I use a 
bitrate of 4500 and max bitrate of 6000. I also use an audio bitrate of 384.

Try checking and changing your default profile. The original Default 
profile produced results like yours.

John