[mythtv-users] Fwd: Trouble with MythTV tuning to ABC in Melbourne Australia (and slow :-)

[Stephen Rosman]

I sent this message a week ago to the mailing list but got a message
 that I'd sent a message to a subscriber only list and that I'd get
 a message back from the moderator saying whether it had been
 accepted.

 There's nothing on http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
 saying that it's subscribers only and I didn't get any message back.

 Not complaining - just saying.


 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
 From: Stephen Rosman <fluffyland at gmail.com>
 Date: Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 1:33 PM
 Subject: Trouble with MythTV tuning to ABC in Melbourne Australia (and slow :-)
 To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org


 I can't seem to get MythTV to tune to the ABC in Melbourne, Australia,
  and MythTV seems to be running much slower than it should.

  Systems Info:
  IBM T41
  512Mb RAM
  Radeon 7500
  External 22" LCD Monitor
  WandTV USB2 DVB-T tuner

  Software:
  Fedora 8
  MythTV 0.21 packages from atrmps and  freshrpms repos. (Getting that
  working was a saga in itself)

  Tuning:

  When I try to tune to ABC it says it  can't lock (it gets the L_s but
  not the M).  I can tune the DVB-T device using tzap:

  tzap -c .tzap/channels.conf -r "ABC1"

  and the line in channels.conf corresponding to "ABC1" is:

  ABC1:226500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:512:650:561

  That tunes in and gets the lock - no trouble.

  I've tried setting up the channels for the ABC by scanning and by
  trying to import the channels.conf but neither of those methods result
  in being able to tune in to the ABC.

  I've done all sorts of searches on Google for "MythTV australia abc"
  etc to see if anyone else is having the problem and lots of people
  seem to have had the problem but there don't seem to be any solutions
  that are relevant - they seem to be other issues that are solved by
  the response given on the mailing list, there is no answer or it
  refers to a really old version of MythTV.

  I don't seem to be able to split the antenna (I have another tuner
  card that I'd like to use at the same time, but when I try to split
  the signal I can't get a lock using any method) so I guess my TV
  signal is low - but why would I be able to tune using tzap without
  fail, but not under MythTV?


  Performance:

  MythTV runs really slowly, there is a couple of second delay in
  selecting a menu option and it taking action (just the menus - not
  changing channels, I realise there is a delay in tuning and buffering
  when changing channels).  When I record using MythTV the quality of
  the recording is poor with regular digital artifacts (blocks on the
  screen etc) - this is on SD.

  I can play TV using mplayer and the quality is great.  I can record
  from the device by "cat"ing from it to a file and the quality is even
  better - only having to stream the mpeg from the device to the disk
  and all.  Why would all this work so well using tzap+mplayer but not
  under MythTV?  It just doesn't make sense - Chewbacca was a Wookie -
  but he lived on Endor!

  Would running it without a window manager make much of a difference?
  Everything has either changed or been forgotten since I did any
  startx/xinit tinkering with GDM.

  I'd love to get MythTV working really well so that the other family
  members can watch TV on the system (who don't like "su"ing to root,
  running tzap with the channel they want, opening another terminal and
  then running mplayer on the dvb adapter, full screening it just so
  they can watch TV for some reason) then I could make a really shiny
  theme for it, something using Blender3D, and robots.

  --
  Stephen Rosman