[mythtv-users] Mechanical cable splitter

Josh White jaw1959 at gmail.com
Tue Nov 20 13:36:58 UTC 2007


What I meant by "instant response" was when you press the button to change
the channel, the channel would change as fast as one could imagine it
changing, rather than 1-2 seconds behind as some tuner cards do (my PVR-250
performed like this when I used it under MS Windows with the included
Hauppauge PVR software, which was much slower than Myth).  I'm not sure what
the cable box lag would actually be if you were to log it on an oscilloscope
or something, but maybe 50-100ms.  This scenario really doesn't come up for
me at all, but my wife likes to channel surf.  So when you change the
channel up 20 times, and then realize you skipped over a channel you wanted
to watch, pressing the channel down button should get you there in a half
second or so.  But if there's too much lag, you'll press it twice or more,
until you see the channel you want to watch, but you'll end up stopping on
the channel below where you wanted to go, and then you over correct the
other way, and it gets frustrating.  Of course, if you accept the
limitations of the technology and change the channel slowly, you can work
with it just fine.  As a machine designer, I know it's kind of a cop out
when you complain that the user isn't using it right.  If the machine is
designed well, it will work as the user wants it to work.  For the last 27
years at least (I'm 27 years old), most any TV I have used was capable of
changing channels about as fast as you can press/release the channel up/down
button, or capable of stopping on the channel currently displayed when the
channel up/down button is held (some older cable boxes excluded).  What I'm
referring to would be on an SDTV or a computer monitor, either of which
would introduce very little delay.  I would care very little if the entire
viewing experience was delayed a second or two (or even a minute or two) as
long as the experience *seemed* instantaneous.  I have no experience
whatsoever (beyond walking through best buy) with HDTVs, so I cannot speak
for what delay is introduced through such a system.
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