[mythtv-users] Strong signal, ugly artifacts...

[Jonas Kvinge]

> The issue is your 4.8 dB SNR. This is very weak and means your signal is
> very noisy. A good reading will be 10dB or more. You should be seeing a
> low BER starting at around 6dB however bad weather will cause you to
> have signal drop outs. You need to check antenna pointing, all the
> cables (water getting into the cable will ruin it even if it looks great
> so if you have any outside cable connections that are not waterproofed
> (covered with a boot or wrapped/painted with coax sealant) I would redo
> those connections and check signal strength again.
> 

I'm using a Hauppauge WinTV Nova HD S2 card and mythtv shows 83% signal
and 4.6dB SNR. I thought 4.6dB was too low too and asked a guy at a
local satellite shop, he told me that it depends on what/how it actually
reads it, if it reads it after demodulation or not, so I plugged in the
decoder from my provider and it showed signal level 72% and signal
quality 81% and then I asked him again and he told me my signal was good
and normal. He told me the reading from the decoder I have should be
accurate. I got all channels working in mythtv including all HD
channels. If the signal had been that low I think I would have seen
digital artifacts too, right now it's raining and it's fine too.
Previously I was using a Technotrend S2-3200 card, the signal strength
was the exact same but I had digital artifacts on all HD channels, and
could not find all of the channels, turned out there were problems with
the linux driver, I found other people having the same problems with
that card.

Jonas