[mythtv-users] Capture card with best tuner - BT8x8, SA713x or PVR-250?

Richard Lee-Morlang rick at webtownis.bc.ca
Sun Aug 24 01:47:33 EDT 2003


On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 11:42, Joe V wrote:


> It's possible that the OS is doing something else, I
> suppose, but I boot into run-level 3 and start MythTV
> from there (using a .xinitrc).  I've removed as many
> of the services as I could using ntsysv (Red Hat 9).


Essentially the same thing I did, though I ended up booting into
runlevel 5 and using gdm's autologin and so on from there. Still, if
it's a system that's basically dedicated to myth, you shouldn't be
running into that sort of trouble with your hardware.


> The pictures that I took, those were of the TV.  It
> was like that before I even started building the
> MythTV box.


Then it sounds like your best course of action would be to try to
eliminate as much signal noise as possible in whatever ways you can.
(Building management, cable company, etc..) 


> As for the capture card, I've used two different ones
> - a LeadTek Winfast 2000 XP Deluxe (which seemed to be
> pretty bad), as well as a Pinnacle PCTV Rave, which
> seems to be a bit better.  That's why I was asking
> what kinds of cards/tuners people are using.


Can't offer much help here, since the card I use seems to work great,
and I haven't had any need to try any others. (Though I've got a PVR-250
on my shopping list. ;-) 

I can say that I was really disappointed with the SAAxxxx TV-encoding
chipset though. Don't have the exact chipset handy, but I could look it
up if anyone wanted to know.


> One thing that could be a cause of the problem is that
> on both the Leadtek and the Pinnacle cards the coax
> barrel connector isn't part of the tuner itself, it
> connects to the tuner (it's a slide-on connector,
> looks like a composite connector).  I'm thinking that
> this might have something to do with it, but I don't
> know how many cards actually are like this.


My WinTV has the whole tuner unit, including the connectors, as part of
a shielded housing built onto the card. Though I can see the setup you
have possibly adding some more noise, if your picture isn't
significantly noisier since you added your myth setup, I doubt you'd
solve your frameloss problems with a different connector housing design
or a different hookup configuration. :-(


> Now then, one final question for you...  If you look
> at the console, do you see any "rebuffering (X,Y)"
> messages (where X and Y are numbers)?  Depending on
> the channel I'm watching, I see these messages
> anywhere from every 10 seconds to every 10 minutes
> (sometimes I get a few of them every 10 seconds and
> then they go away for 5-10 minutes).  In order to keep
> track of the times, I modified the RingBuffer.cpp file
> to print out the date/time.


Yes, I've seen them, though by the looks of the recent console output on
my two frontends, it only happens when I go into cutlist edit mode. It
might be happening on my remote frontend during regular playback too,
I'm not sure. I'll keep my eye on it.

Rick
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