[mythtv-users] TV Screen Scrambled

[Alan Calvert]

Nick Morrott wrote:
> On 06/05/07, Alan Calvert <cal at graggrag.com> wrote:
> 
>> I'm dealing with a very similar set of issues, but on a different card (saa7134).
>> Rather than the Mythtv GUI and X display sizes, I'm highly suspicious that the
>> problem lies in the capture resolution settings:
>>   <http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.3>
>> NTSC settings are well covered, but PAL settings not so well. And to make it
>> worse, the default settings in Recording Profiles->Software Encoders (v4l based)
>> come up as Width 480, Height 576, which doesn't sound quite right to me.
> 
> For PAL, 4870x576 is the standard resolution for SVCD (the NTSC
> equivalent is 480x480). If using a software capture card, you may want
> to test capturing at 720x576 (i.e. PAL DVD resolution) and see if this
> improves things.
> 
> Nick

Cool, thanks Nick, appreciate your input. You've led me to learn a little about display
resolutions (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution>). With my saa7134,
480x576 produced the famous "blank screen on Live TV", while a PVR-150 coped just fine.
With the saa7134, various other settings that seemed potentially reasonable produced a
thoroughly scrambled screen, similar to the OP's report. He's using a different card of
course, but for me, 720x576 eventually sorted it nicely.

cheers, and thanks.
Cal

4870...? 480.