[mythtv-users] HDTV on Myth -- is it a "myth?"

[Anthony Vito]

> You don't need a high 80s signal to get a good recording though. My
> *strongest* signals (I live about 20 miles outside Seattle) are in the
> high 60s. All the high 60s recordings are perfect. A few of my stations
> come in with signals in the low 50s, and while I get the occasional
> failed recording due to lack of signal lock, when they do record, 99%
> of the video is perfectly fine (every once in a blue moon, there's some
> pixelization in the video stream where I presume the signal dropped a
> bit).

 I wrote an entry in the pchdtv forum on signal strength and how the
green and red lights on the back of the pcHDTV card relate.

http://pchdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=72&highlight=lights

 I live in Rochester NY. As of a few weeks ago when Fox came online
all the local stations are broadcasting digitally. CBS is the only one
left broadcasting in 480p. Not all the content is HD yet, some of it
is upscaled, but it's getting better. The needed signal strength to
not have errors in the stream varies widely among the channels for me.
Fox "needs" the lowest signal only >50, non-coincidentally it's also
the lowest channel(frequency) at 28... next up is CBS requiring >65 or
so, at channel 45... ABC and NBC are 58 and 59.. I can't remember
which is which... They both require >85 to be decoded correctly.... 
So that driver is doing some crazyness... ( maybe just a simple
normalization by frequency is needed? )

 The common indicator that tells me if I'm pulling in the channel no
matter what station is the lights. If I see any red at all, even a
blink here and there, that station is not going to come it. I believe
that the red light is linked to the error-correction of the ATSC chip,
if the error-correction fails, the red light gets a bit of juice. I
think there are plans to get the LED status out of the driver. For now
I might run some optical fiber to the coffee table so I have the ATSC
decode status close at hand!

Thanks for listening to me rank :) hope it helped.


-- 
Anthony Vito
anthony.vito at gmail.com