[mythtv-users] Poor recording of races only

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Tue Oct 14 07:38:07 UTC 2014


On Tue, 14 Oct 2014 05:45:43 +0000 (UTC), you wrote:

>Ah.  Ok.  That makes sense.  I will have to contact Ceton then to find out where those number should fall.
>Since you mentioned it.....
>Channel | Tuner 1 | Tuner 2  | Tuner 3 | Tuner 4------------|------------|-------------|------------|-----------TNT       | 2.6/32.2 | 3.6/35.4 | 2.8/39.3 | 2.9/34.1WMAQ   | 3.4/32.6 | 3.4/35.4 | 3.0/34.9 | 2.8/35.4WBBM   | 4.9/31.5 | 8.5/36.4 | 6.6/25.6 | 6.3/34.6BBCA     | 3.3/34.3 | 8.6/33.6 | 2.5/34.5 | 1.4/34.3NBCS1  | 5.8/31.8 | 5.9/35.1 | 3.9/35.2 | 5.3/34.6FS1        | 2.7/31.8 | 2.4/32.6 | 2.5/35.2 | 2.2/33.0
>I also tested tuning one channel on all four.......
>Channel | Tuner 1 | Tuner 2  | Tuner 3  | Tuner 4------------|------------|-------------|-------------|-----------TNT       | 4.0/35.6 |                |               |
>WMAQ   |               | 4.8/36.4 |                |WBBM   |               |                | 8.1/36.8 | 
>BBCA     |               |               |                | 3.0/34.8
>That doesn't seem to show much.  That one high signal reading on tuner #3 didn't change when I retuned all other channels to 0.  However, I could retune channels again on the same tuners and they'd give me highly variable numbers.
>I'm going to contact Ceton to get target numbers.  Then I'm going to connect my tuner card directly to the cable coming in from outside and see what I get then.  Since I don't have a quality meter, the numbers I get from the card are all I have to work with.
>Thanks for the info though.  I didn't even consider that the card had a splitter on it.
>BTW, my signal sucked before.  Not only did I add the amplifier, but I also had to re-terminate several cables.  I had twist on connectors on a lot of cables.  Now I have compression connectors everywhere and that helped a lot.
>Mike

There does not seem to be much consistency in those numbers at all.
Which may mean something, or it may just mean that the card does not
report the numbers properly.  Are they stable with time after it is
fully tuned, or do they vary quite a bit?  Do they vary if you jiggle
your cables?  Do they vary if you touch the metal of the PC case
(introducing yourself into the PC earth as an aerial)?

My experience with my DVB-T and DVB-S tuners with dvbtune is that they
give pretty consistent numbers after they are tuned up, and I think
they are pretty consistent in giving the same numbers when the same
tuner is tuned to the same channel (on the same day anyway).  But it
is a while since I was last playing with dvbtune so I am not entirely
sure of my memory on that.  And my tuners are all scheduled to be busy
in the next five minutes so I can not try them again now.

Proper meters here in NZ are just too expensive to buy for home use.
But if you are living in a big US urban area, it is possible that you
might be able to hire one for a more reasonable cost.  But even with a
proper meter, you would still need to know what the right signal level
and S/N numbers would be for good reception, and that depends on the
card.


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