[mythtv-users] bad analog recordings from PVR-150

[Alan Marchiori]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:08 AM, jedi<jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 04:14:26PM +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Alan Marchiori<alan at alanmarian.com> wrote:
>> > I added a pvr-150 just for the heck of it.  The recording quality is
>> > really bad, however.  Almost like there is something wrong with the
>> > card/drivers/setup it doesn't seem to synchronize to the video
>> > properly.  My old nanalog tv gets a perfect picture from the same
>> > source.
>> >
>> > a short
>> > cat /dev/video0 > bad2.mpg
>> > is located at http://alamode.mines.edu/~amarchio/bad2.mpg
>> >
>> > the ivtv syslog entries are:
>> > [    6.306228] ivtv:  Start initialization, version 1.4.0
>> > [    6.306375] ivtv0: Initializing card #0
>> > [    6.306378] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge card (cx23416 based)
>> > [    6.311990] ivtv 0000:01:06.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKA] -> GSI 17
>> > (level, low) -> IRQ 17
>> > [    6.361458] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
>> > [    6.456485] cx25840 0-0044: cx25843-23 found @ 0x88 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>> > [    6.458640] tuner 0-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>> > [    6.458661] wm8775 0-001b: chip found @ 0x36 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
>> > [    6.530379] ivtv0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
>> > [    6.530414] ivtv0: Registered device video32 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
>> > [    6.530447] ivtv0: Registered device vbi0 for encoder VBI (1024 kB)
>> > [    6.530512] ivtv0: Registered device video24 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
>> > [    6.530514] ivtv0: Initialized card #0: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
>> > [    6.530548] ivtv:  End initialization
>> > [   20.572211] ivtv 0000:01:06.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw
>> > [   20.677881] ivtv0: Loaded v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw firmware (376836 bytes)
>> > [   20.876207] ivtv0: Encoder revision: 0x02060039
>> >
>> > any thoughts?
>>
>> yes your stream appears to be 480x480 pixels. Try 720x480 (I think
>> thats the NTSC dimensions, PAL will be 720x576)
>
>    Increasing your recording bitrate might also help. Depending on your
> source, you may just have a crap signal to deal with (DirecTV) and need
> to be more aggressive with your capture settings.


The source is plain old analog cable tv (ntsc).  I think the signal is
reasonably good because my old tv gets a clean picture.

I have looked through the ivtv docs quickly and don't see any easy way
to change the capture resolution or bit rate.  I assume I will have to
play around with v4l2-ctl ?