[mythtv-users] Quick and dirty workaround

[Matt Morgan]

Bruce Markey wrote:

> Matt Morgan wrote:
> ...
>
>>>  "If specified, the tuner will change to this
>>>  channel when the input is selected.  This is only
>>>  useful if you use your tuner input with an external
>>>  channel changer."
>>
>> Thanks. So I should put "3" in that setting? I don't really 
>> understand what that tip is trying to tell me.
>
> It says that if you have an external channel changer (which you
> do in the cable box) and you've connected it to the tuner input
> of your capture card (which you still haven't fessed up to) then

You're right, that's what I've done. I didn't realize it made a difference.

> always make sure the capture card tuner is preset to this channel
> and pass the real channel to the "External channel change command".
>
> So, if a scheduled recording or channel channel change is asked
> to go to "20", set the capture card tuner to "3" and pass "20"
> as an arg to the external channel change command. If it needs
> to go to 42, set the capture card tuner to "3" and pass "42" to
> the external command.

Thanks. I guess it seems strange to me only because I can't imagine why 
I wouldn't want it to do that. In other words, shouldn't mythtv just 
default to that, when I'm using an external channel changing program? 
That's a rhetorical question, don't worry about answering it.

>>  I don't want the tuner to do anything, I just want it not to get 
>> involved.
>
> But you got it involved when you wired it up that way. Unscrew
> the coax to the tuner input and run an s-video cord from the
> cable box to the s-video input of the capture card instead. No
> RF interference, better quality, no tuning involved.

I guess you're saying, if I did it that way, mythtv would know that I'm 
tuning wih the external tuner and not try to tune on the TV card. Wihch 
would solve my immediate problem, the one you're answering. But in the 
scheme of things, that's a pretty small problem comapred to my overall 
tuning issues (or so I thought). Now you have me interested, though.

The only reason I used coax is because it's, as far as I know, the only 
way to get output from the cable box with only one cable. Because 
S-video does not carry audio. And I like the tidiness of having only one 
cable. And then my tuner card (PVR-250) doesn't have other audio input, 
at least I can't see any, so I didn't know where to plug in the 
audio-out component cables anyway, if I used S-video for the video.

But, I do have slight quality issues. The picture is not quite as sharp 
as regular TV (although it's pretty good). What's more of a problem is, 
when there's motion on the screen it doesn't track well. Sporting events 
look like dream sequences or something. It's not like it's jumpy or 
anything--it's hard to explain. Do you think switching to S-video would 
help with that? I assumed it was either my slightly-old video card 
(Nvidia GeForce2 MX 400 64Mb) or the fact I've got only 256Mb RAM on a 
not-terribly fast computer (1Ghz PIII).

> In the meantime, you do want it to do something; you want it
> to be sure it is tuned to "3" any time that it is asked to
> start recording.

Got it! Thanks a lot.

--Matt