[mythtv-users] Screen Flicker Issues. Frustrating!

[David Bosiljevac]

Hi all,

I've been having a screen flicker issue with my Myth setup since I got it up and
running a couple of months ago. The flicker happens whether I watch live TV or in
recorded programs. It also exists in any exports that I make to DVD or SVCD. It's
not persistent, but sometimes it gets worse and other times it's not to be seen.
(And it's not part of the cable TV signal, as I can watch TV on a regular set with
no flickering.)

I've tried so many different things, but nothing seems to work. It's just getting
frustrating.

My setup is as follows:

Hardware
- AMD XP 3200+
- 1 GB memory
- Asus A7V880 motherboard
- Western Digital 120 GB UDMA hard drive (operating system drive)
- 2 x 120 GB Western Digital S-ATA hard drives (striped, RAID-0)
- Hauppauge PVR-250 video capture card
- Asus Radeon 9200 video card

Software
- Debian Linux - kernel version 2.4.27 custom compiled
- Myth 0.16
- ivtv 0.1.9
- Hauppauge firmware 1.18.21.22168 (latest non-beta firmware)


Here's what I've tried so far to isolate the problem:

I tried setting ivtv up with the "No ghosting" option ---
Get rid of double vision or image ghosting:
no-ghost: test_ioctl --set-codec-params=dnr_mode=0,dnr_temporal=0)
--- No luck!

Originally, I had the operating system and video capture data on the two striped
serial-ATA drives. I went out and bought a regular UDMA drive and threw the
operating system on it, and kept the S-ATA drives strictly for the video data.
Again, no luck!

I downloaded the latest firmware for the Hauppauge card, loaded it, then reloaded my
ivtv drivers. Still, no luck!

I tried moving the Hauppauge card into a different PCI slot in the system. Alas, you
guessed it, no luck!

I'm at wits end trying to figure out what the problem could be.

I'll see if I can post an example screen capture or video clip of what the problem
is. I can't guarantee it though.

Has anyone had any sorts of problems like this? I thought it might be hard drive
performance, but I don't think that's it (although I'm not ruling it out).

Here's my hdparm results:

--> operating system drive
krusty:~# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1320 MB in 2.00 seconds = 660.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.02 seconds = 55.63 MB/sec

--> raid drive (myth capture data)
krusty:~# hdparm -tT /dev/md0

/dev/md0:
Timing cached reads: 1380 MB in 2.00 seconds = 690.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 238 MB in 3.00 seconds = 79.33 MB/sec
krusty:~#

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Dave