[mythtv-users] Prb with HD3000 HDTV and Comcast cable

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Tue Sep 2 21:53:53 UTC 2008


On Tuesday 02 September 2008 04:53:33 pm Jim Marshall wrote:
> I have an Intel p4 2.8 gHZ machine (hyper threading is disabled - ASUS
> P4S800X-D motherboard), with 1 gb RAM, with a WD 250MB SATA HD and an
> nVidia GeForce 6200 fanless video. The machine has 2 pvr 150's installed
> and 2 pcHDTV HD3000 installed. The 2 pvr 150's are hooked up to comcast
> cable (no cable box) and work great. One of the hd3000 is hooked up to an
> over the air antenna and works fine. The other HD3000 is hooked up to
> comcast cable (again no cable box), I am having problems with this. It
> seems to pick up the channels without any trouble (QAM256) but when I try
> to tune into the channels it is very choppy, both sound and video.

I have similar problems. In my case, I've found that the reception is OK for 
about half an hour after a cold boot -- and I mean cold (room temperature). 
Once the temperature of the computer (or maybe just the HD3000 board) rises, 
the quality of the signal drops to the point of unusability. I did some 
research on this ~1.5 years ago and I found that there are a lot of problem 
reports with this board; apparently it's very fussy about the other hardware 
in the computer. Sometimes it works fine, but other times it doesn't. FWIW, 
I've got a system with a Biostar PT880 motherboard that uses a VIA PT880 
chipset. I suspect, but am far from certain, that the HD3000 just doesn't 
like my VIA chipset. I've tried swapping the power supply, the video display 
card, and other components with no luck, although the problem was marginally 
worse with one nVidia video card than with a couple of other video cards I 
tried.

My own solution was to replace the HD3000 with an AverTV A180. This board 
works flawlessly in my computer. I've still got the HD3000. Currently it's 
unused, but I've used it as an NTSC-only tuner in the past, and I'm keeping 
it with the idea of eventually putting it in another computer to use as a 
slave backend, but I've not gotten around to that yet.

-- 
Rod Smith


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