[mythtv-users] PVR-150/500 and bttv?

[Greg Woods]

On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 17:01 -0400, Michael Tiller wrote:

> I don't know if the BTTV card just sucked (it was a Win-TV card) or if
> there was some kind of interference with the PVR-150?!?  If anybody
> knows of a reason why the presence of the PVR-150 should make the BTTV
> signal suck and knows a way to address the problem, I'm all ears.

I tried to use a pcHDTV-3000 in the same machine as a PVR-150, and had
the same problem: the PVR-150 looked great, the signal for the 3000
sucked. In my case it turned out to be a signal strength problem. I was
trying to split the signal, and apparently it degraded it enough the
3000 was sensitive to it. The 3000 worked fine without  splitter. I
ended up with the same problem when I switched to a PVR-150 and a
PVR-500. The 150 worked great, the 500 had problems with low numbered
channels. Again the 500 worked fine without the splitter, so I ended up
using just the 500 and putting the 150 into my front end system (solves
my problem getting the Streamzap remote I bought to work on the front
end, since the Hauppage remote works fine with the 150). 

You might try plugging the cable only into the bttv card and removing
any splitter you might have had to get both cards connected, and see if
the bttv card works better then. 

In my case, it's just too long a run. I don't have a cable outlet in the
computer room so I had to bring it through the wall from the living
room. It's a 20 foot cable and there's just no way I can put a splitter
at the end of such a long run. I tried using a signal amplifier and it
helped only a little and the signal on the second card was still not
good enough. I  tried swapping cables to rule out a bad cable. I'm
assuming that it's just not possible to put a splitter at the end of a
long run.

--Greg