[mythtv-users] Nova-RD-500 Tuning issues

[Nick Morrott]

On 02/04/2009, Tom Fotherby <tom at tomfotherby.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I need your help. I have just bought a brand new Nova-TD-500 card and have
> found the signal strength (and therefore picture quality) to be
> unexplainably low when watching live TV. There are significant image
> artifacts and glitches. Does anyone have a list of steps to debug this
> problem. This is what I've tried so far:
>
> 1) Plugged co-axial cable directly into TV (i.e. not via MythTV) -> Get good
> picture therefore no problem with cable.
> 2) Tried a antennae signal booster -> No luck.
> 3) Tried DVB in Kaffeine and Xine as well a MythTV -> All give bad TV image.
>  4) Tried pugging the co-axial cable into socket 1 then socket 2 then socket
> 1 and 2 (this card has two inputs for some reason) - My TV signal strength

The previous TD500 card had a feature (unsupported in Linux) that
enabled both inputs to be combined to produce a stronger signal when
tuned to a channel.

> doesn't get over about 56% and I get different results depending on what
> socket I plug the coaxial cable into. If I plug it into the bottom input
> (the one closest to the IR port) I seem to get a slightly better signal on
> one tuner but ZERO-SIGNAL on the other but if I plug it into the top input I
> get equally poor signal on both tuners.
>  5) Looked at whether DMA is on -> Yes, I'm using a SATA HDD.
> 6) Experimented with the "force_lna_activation" and "buggy_sfn_workaround"
> module options -> No luck.
> 7) Compiled with VDPAU and checked CPU usage with "top" -> CPU usage is <5%
> so no performance bottleneck.
>
> If I can't think of anything else I'm going to take the Nova-T card back to
> the shop as faulty?

First check:

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-T-500#WinTV-NOVA-TD-500

and determine which model you have. There are unsupported (old, badged
"Diversity", uses DibCom USB chip) and supported (new, uses Via USB
chip) versions of the NovaTD-500 card. If it's a newly purchased card
I'm guessing it's the supported TD variant.

The NovaT-500 cards are no longer manufactured but work well (in my
experience). If you have the new supported NovaTD-500 card, a 2.6.27
kernel is required.

Other than that, you seem to have covered most of the obvious bases.
Do you have the most current firmware installed?

Nick

-- 
Nick Morrott

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