PVR 250 and Kworld ATSC -- neither working

[wildbill12]

Good call. I had set up an OTA source on zap2it, but for some reason I didn't have all the digital channels added to the lineup. Changed it, scanned, and they're all there now. Only problem is that many of them are pretty choppy. It's odd that the same antenna works so good attatched to the TV but not so good attatched to the tuner card.

Oh well, guess I'll be looking for a non-eye sore antenna as well.

[jakep_82]

Choppy playback might not be related to the tuner. What are your computer specs? HD requires a fairly healthy CPU to play it back properly.

[wildbill12]

Definitely not a CPU problem, I have a Core 2 Duo 1.86Ghz processor and there's not a ton of CPU usage while I'm watching HDTV through the tuner.

The choppiness is on a channel by channel, tied to the signal. Seems like anything lower than 96% signal and I get some problems.

[scotte]

Glad to hear you got it working. Do you know what specifically it was that resulted in success for you?

I was actually surprised the antenna I put up my roof 15 years ago (and haven't used for about 5 years) works pretty well for DTV. Many of the analog channels are real crappy, but the HDTV is crystal clear. Once I get everything working properly and stable (still a ways away from that - watching live TV generally results in my box locking up hard) I hope to drop my locals off Dish and save $5/month...

[wildbill12]

I guess what finally got it working was deleting the analog v4l tuner side of the Kworld card in mythtv-setup and making sure the antenna was connected to the right input (the top one for me).

As a renter, I'm restricted to indoor antennas. I'm working with more or less just rabbit ears now, so I'm sure I can improve on it. From what I read it looks like http://www.amazon.com/Philips-PM-HDT.../dp/B00022O9VM and www.antennasdirect.com/DB2_Indoor_antenna.html are two that people have a lot of success with so I think I'll give something like that a try.

[jakep_82]

You definitely don't want to set up the card as two separate tuners. Myth will think they are two physically different cards and may try to access both simultaneously. The card can't do that. Only one tuner on the card can be accessed at a time. Recent changes in SVN will allow the analog portion to be setup as a "daughter" card so to speak. That allows switching back and forth between digital and analog and prevents conflicts.

[gizmobay]

You got this card to work with both analog and DVB??? In other words, you have your ATSC/QAM input in the top RF connection and you have the analog in the bottom RF connection. I tried this even with the SVN and couldn't get it to switch.

[jakep_82]

I have one cable going into the top input. With that single cable I get both QAM and analog.

[scotte]

Originally Posted by jakep_82

Recent changes in SVN will allow the analog portion to be setup as a "daughter" card so to speak.

Do you know how to active that? I.e. make the "virtual daughter card" analog inputs show up for mapping? I'm running a version from SVN that should support that (i.e. I've got the new analog button in the DVB card setup). But, unless I install the card both as a DVB card and v4l analog card, I don't get any analog inputs. Having the card defined twice could be why I've got some stability problems on my setup when watching live tv/program guide, and why analog video looks so crappy.

[EDIT: Never mind. I deleted my cards, re-added the DVB card, and this time got the virtual daughter card ok. Thanks!]

[gizmobay]

So you setup the card as a DVB and then click on analog options and setup the analog side and you have one cable coming in to the top RF port for QAM and analog. Do you use the same video source or do you have a separate one? I wonder if I could do this since I have a cable system where you tune the channel to one channel and then the box switches the other channels so I'm not sure how I could scan for QAM channels.