[mythtv-users] Remote Mythfrontend Problem

[Steve Milner]

Thanks for the quick reply Nick

On 15/07/09 11:02, Nick Morrott wrote:
> Those problems still look like being due to a poor quality TV signal.
> Absolute signal strength is not the best artiber of whether you'll
> have a perfect picture. If you run Kaffeine instead of MythTV, do you
> still see vidoe and audio glitches? We need to try and determine where
> the issue lies.

I have very little experience with Kaffeine, but I will try to inhale 
some knowledge to see if I can get it working. The tip that signal 
strength may not be indicator of perfect picture is worth of note. I 
doubt this is relevant, but I will mention it.

Is it possible the signal is too strong. I live about 8 miles away from 
Emly Moor, up on a hill near Holme Moss and I have line of sight to the 
transmitter. I live in a conservation village and I have to the aerial 
inside the loft, so I bought a very big one (The signal is split with a 
passive splitter) but on the original aerial it was quite a small one 
(also in the loft)

> Running MythTV, can you watch LiveTV on the backend system _and_ the
> frontend system and do you get the same problems?

I have not tried this experiment. The new location for the backend is 
headless. I will lug a monitor up there tonight and see what the quality 
is like. It will be difficult for me to examine both at the same time 
since they are physically in differing locations in the house but I can 
make a general comparison one after the other.

> Does the LiveTV OSD
> give you a high bit error ratio figure (BER) whilst tuning?

That's interesting. How do I get that displayed?

> Do you see
> lots of mpeg2video errors in the frontend logfiles when playing a
> recording or LiveTV session where you see picture breakup and audio
> glitches? These can all be indications of poor signal strength.
>
> Errors may be like:
>
> 2009-07-15 08:16:45.602 [mpeg2video @ 0x5a3c7b0]ac-tex damaged at 29 25

I don't seem to have any frontend log, but I guess if I start 
mythfrontend from the command line there will be an option to switch on 
logging.

> Finally, do you have problems on all channels, or only those on
> particular muxes (a breakdown of channels per mux can be found at
> http://www.dtg.org.uk/industry/dtt_channels.html).

Now this is very interesting. My experiences would suggest that some 
channels suffer less than others. but I would need to do more 
experimentation. Last night I was getting the problems watching Rambo II 
on ITV4 with a quoted signal strength of 72%

I'll do some more experiments tonight and get back with the results.

Regards,

Steve