[mythtv-users] DVB-T tzap versus mythtv 0.19 - HDTV and BER

[Peter Watkins]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 09:53:41AM +1100, Doug Scoular wrote:

>     I'm hoping to go through the source this weekend to see
>     if I can figure out what the problem is. I also posted on
>     the LinuxTV DVB list and they said that the values
>     returned from a DVB driver for signal should be ignored
>     as the scale is not linear and varies from driver to driver.
>     BER and UNC being a better measure. As per this from Patrick
>     Boettcher:

> > OTOH, I repeat myself here, I don't see the reason, why MythTV is 
> > taking the Signal strength into account and drops a receiver from the 
> > list, when it is zero. In DVB we have much easier values to see if the 
> > stream is maybe garbled or not and this is the UNC and BER.
> >
> > Maybe it is worth for mythtv to add an option to disable the 
> > consideration of signal strength and SNR when using it with DVB.

I've heard that some DVB devices -- perhaps most notably the PCHDTV HD2000
and HD3000 -- do not support BER. Here's a web page with more details:
  http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DigitalTelevisionDVB

In my experience with MythTV 0.19 and an HD3000 as a DVB device for 
capturing OTA/ATSC, the signal strength % displayed when tuning an ATSC
channel has appeared to be useful/accurate, e.g. I can tell a difference
between a 70% signal (noticably pixelated) and an 85% signal (pretty good).

-Peter