[mythtv-users] From ATSC/v4l to DVB on pchdtv, almost there but channel lineup won't import

[Brad Templeton]

On Mon, May 29, 2006 at 08:01:18PM -0700, Joe Votour wrote:
> The reason in the commit log (and I remember this
> well, because I was bitten by this commit myself) was
> that it is to prevent channels with marginal (or
> non-existant) signal strength from being put into the
> lineup.  My guess for this is because I've read on the
> list (though have not had problems myself with this)
> that MythTV has problems with weaker signals.  (I
> wouldn't know how strong the signals I have are, since
> I'm using a FusionHDTV 5 Lite, and the kernel outright
> lies about the signal strength).
> 
> Now that you mention it though, I just noticed that
> I'm missing 9.4 (one of the PBS channels) as well,
> most likely because of the time of the day that I did
> the scan.  This is only a minor annoyance for me at
> the moment, but one nonetheless.
> 

There is indeed some history of this.  In fact, some time ago
MythTV would go so far as to crash to black screen if accidentally
tuned to a dead channel.  That happened to be my first experience of it,
not a great one.    Good thing I stuck with it.   However, the right
answer is to handle the poor signal well, not to try to avoid it, I think.

Indeed, most people would say that if a signal is weak for whatever
reason, they would rather have a garbled copy of a show than no copy at
all.   One of the problems that was still in myth when I was tracking
this issue was that if there was a signal problem at the start of a
show, the entire show would not be recorded.   In the earlier days of DTV,
little off-the-air periods were not unknown.   It's gotten better.

(I once called KBHK-DT's engineers because I was not getting their
signal and thought I had a problem.  It took a long time to get through, because
nobody at the station knew of any problem.   When I got to the actual
engineer he said, "Yeah, that transmitter's been down a day."  Made me realize
there were not a lot of people watching OTA DTV back then.)

The real analog world is of course chaotic.  Signals come and go, and
vary.  Cables get knocked and kinked and weather comes, and station engineers
make mistakes.   As much as you can, you want to expect the worst and be
robust about it.

I'll keep re-scanning and doing manual updates to get all the channels working.
Then re-disable all the boring channels in languages I don't understand.

Thanks for the advice though.