[mythtv-users] mpeg2 playback quality captured with PVR-150

[Brian Wood]

Chandi Bernier wrote:
> John,
> 
> Is there a signal booster in the PVR-150? The signal level is perfect in my
> TV which only is a splitter away from the PVR. But it only does the bars on
> 2 channels out of 25. 
> 
> What scares me the most is the pixelisation and other artifacts.
> 
> You were right. I've got some messages in the dmesg.
> 
>> ivtv0: All encoder MPEG stream buffers are full. Dropping data.
>> ivtv0: Cause: the application is not reading fast enough.
> 
> Could that be the cause?

Yup.

> 
> 
> Brian : What settings are you using ? deinterlace ? decoder? Bitrate ?
> 
> I'll try to play a good looking mpeg with my setup to see if the quality is
> good.
> 
> I've played a PVR-150 captured mpeg on my laptop computer running windows
> and it was alright. Not great but it did not look as bad as on my TV. 

That pretty much proves what the previous question asked.

Your CPU should be OK decoding MPEG2 SD, but you don't have LOT of headroom.

Make sure everything that doesn't have to run isn't. A lot of distros
start unnecessary services. Consider running a lightweight desktop, not
something like KDE.

Make sure your disk system is working properly, with DMA etc.

Make sure you're using the best video drivers for your card, nVidia's
binary drivers is you have one of their cards.

The comment about high bitrate perhaps straining your system is valid,
you might drop down to 6000 (I run 6000, kernel de-int, standard decoder
and DVD resolution, though none of those would cause your described
problems).

beww