[mythtv-users] pcHDTV-5500 Audio problem

[Brad Sawatzky]

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007, Colin McGregor wrote:

> On October 1, 2007 12:20:29 am Brad Sawatzky wrote:
> > On Sun, 30 Sep 2007, Colin McGregor wrote:
> > > I am attempting to get a pcHDTV-5500 card up and running in a machine
> > > with two existing analog TV tuner cards  The analog cards work fine. The
> > > pcHDTV card is connected to a small rabbit ear style antenna and gets one
> > > channel (CBC-HD in Toronto). The HD picture looks great, but the sound is
> > > just so much static.
> >
> > Any chance you have AC3 (and/or DTS) passthrough set in
> > 'Setup:General:Audio'?
> 
> Yes, that was it, thanks. Now the question is, when watching the HD picture 
> breaks up every few seconds... I will be shopping shortly for a better TV 
> antenna (my analog tuners are on cable), anything else I should be on the 
> lookout for?

Hmm, that could be a lot of things.  I had no end of trouble getting OTA
signals to display well.  I'm only a few miles from the transmitters but my
apartment is located in the worst possible place and I can't get a line of
sight from any window or balcony.  I had good signal strength but multipath
reflections killed me.

Some rules of thumb:
  - you don't need a special 'HTDV' antenna, anything that will pick up UHF
    signals will work
  - bigger is better, outdoor is better, higher is better,
  - amplified can actually be worse than unamplified (noise gets boosted
    too), only go amplified if your signal strength is really low
  - if your transmitters are clustered, directional antennas are usually
    better than omni antennas (less multipath noise)
  - if you're doomed to place the antenna in a location with lots of
    reflections, try pointing the (directional) antenna all over the place.
    (I was only able to get a decent signal for one channel by pointing my
    antenna at a building across the street that was 150degrees away from
    the transmitter direction.)

Stuttering can also be caused by a slow video card.  If the CPU is pegged
during playback then try getting XvMC working, it makes a huge difference:
  <http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC>

> Thanks again for the setting info.

Glad I could help,
-- Brad