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

[Joe Votour]

Jarod,

Well then, I guess I've eliminated the hardware
issues, that's good to know.  :)

Do you have any recommendations on good signal
boosters?  I've actually tried a couple, and they
didn't really help.  Part of my problem is that I have
a cable modem so I have to make sure that I get a
two-way booster.  Although I've said this before,
here's how my signal comes in:
1. Wire into Apartment (no barrel plug on a wall plate
like normal, it's a wire)
2. Two-way splitter, one wire to the TV, one wire to
the cable modem (this was installed by Comcast, my
cable provider)
3. A splitter off of the TV wire, one to the Myth box,
one to the TV.

I guess this weekend (now that I'm finally working
again, yay!), I'll disconnect everything and hook the
MythTV machine straight to the line coming into the
apartment.  Perhaps that will give me enough of a
signal boost to make it usable, in which case, I'll
try putting in another booster to have the signal
behind a couple of splitters (although this didn't
work last time).

-- Joe

--- "Jarod C. Wilson" <jcw at wilsonet.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, Joe Votour wrote:
> 
> > An update on the continuing saga...
> >
> > I decided to try to figure out whether it was the
> > backend or the frontend causing the problems, so I
> did
> > a recording only at 352x480.  The playback of the
> > resulting video was jerky in both MythTV and
> mplayer
> > (with the nuv patch installed) in the same places.
> > Thus, I'm concluding that mythbackend is the
> culprit.
> >
> > I then installed MythTV 0.11 on my Pentium 4,
> 2.4GHz,
> > 512MB RAM, using the same capture card (Pinnacle
> > PCTV), and still had the same problems with
> > rebuffering messages an dropped frames.
> >
> > At that point, I decided to splurge and get a
> PVR-250
> > card, just to see how it helps things (I put it in
> the
> > Athlon XP+ 2400 system I'm using for MythTV).  I
> can't
> > capture at 720x480 or 544x480 (still getting
> > stuttering/pausing, but very rarely) not even
> 480x480
> > works (though this might be the "ghosting" issue
> that
> > is known about).  Maybe 480x480 isn't a correct
> > resolution for the PVR-250?
> 
> That isn't the ghosting issue, and 480x480 is a
> valid resolution for 
> the PVR-250.
> 
> > I'm guessing that the "rebuffering" message comes
> up
> > only during software enoding (from a bt8x8 card,
> for
> > instance), since when I got the pausing with the
> > PVR-250, there was nothing on the console where
> > mythbackend was running.
> 
> I believe you are correct on that one.
> 
> > So, given this, I can only consider that it's one
> of
> > four things:
> > 1. Red Hat 9 is broken, even with a kernel upgrade
> to
> > 2.4.22.
> 
> I assure you Red Hat Linux 9 is not broken. I would
> have suspected a 
> tanked install as a possibility on the first
> install, but since you 
> have the problem on the second machine also, I think
> your install is 
> fine. I've done the install a good 10-20x on RHL9,
> and it always works.
> 
> > 2. MythTV is somehow broken.
> 
> I think not. Works beautifully on RHL9 here.
> 
> > 3. DMA is broken with Western Digital hard drives
> (and
> > the kernel and hdparm lie about it).  All of the
> hard
> > drives I'm using are WD's (I used a 60GB model, a
> > 100GB model and a 120GB model, all 7200RPM, 2MB
> > buffer).  Unfortunately, the only hard drives I
> have
> > kicking around here are WD.
> 
> No, Western Digital drives are some of the best
> supported. I have quite 
> a few of them around here myself. DMA definitely
> isn't broken, unless 
> your motherboard is the culprit (not likely, since
> you have the problem 
> on two different systems).
> 
> > 4. The signal from my cable provider really is to
> > blame.  Unfortunately, this may not be fixable
> (need
> > to talk to the landlord to see if they've looked
> into
> > it).
> 
> Of the four options you suggest, this is the most
> likely. Probably too 
> much attenuation and signal loss on the line. At one
> point, I was 
> running a splitter and a rather long cable to my
> test system, and the 
> signal got bad enough that I saw pauses like you
> describe. Moving the 
> test system to a location where there was no
> splitter, and eliminating 
> an excess of about 35ft of cable cleaned the signal
> up right away, and 
> the pauses were gone. Try to eliminate as much
> cabling as possible. If 
> that fails, you might look into a signal booster.
> 
> > I will say that the picture from the PVR-250 is
> > clearer than that which I got from my Pinnacle
> card,
> > but for $150, I want more than a pretty picture -
> I
> > want a pretty picture that doesn't skip.
> 
> Yeah, the PVR-250 has a far superior picture to most
> low-end cards...
> 
> > I guess we'll see what happens while I watch Live
> TV
> > tonight.
> 
> Probably more of the same... :-(
> 
> --Jarod
> 
> -- 
> Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE
> 
> Got a question? Read this first...
> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
> 
> MythTV, Red Hat Linux 9 & ATrpms documentation:
>
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250
> 
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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> 


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