[mythtv-users] artifacts in pvr-150 recordings, only recently

Johnny jarpublic at gmail.com
Fri Mar 13 22:13:53 UTC 2009


>> I added the following lines to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file, and it sets the
>> defined latency ($LAT) to any SATA and IDE pci devices (as matched by the
>> egrep pattern.
>>
>> I use HEX value "b0" as stated in a link that was posted to the mvpmc
>> mailing list.
>>
>> LAT=b0
>> for DEV in $(lspci|egrep "(SATA|IDE)"|awk '{ print $1 }')
>> do
>>    setpci -v -s $DEV latency_timer=$LAT
>> done

I am really stumped and frustrated now. I added this to /etc/rc.local
(I didn't have /etc/rc.d/rc.local), I hope it runs from there. It had
no affect. I also tried running it manually from the command line and
it made no difference.

I figured the card must be bad. So before I bought a new one I put the
card in an old computer I used to use as a frontend. I set it up as a
slave backend, and I set it up to record to the master backend drives
via nfs. I made several recordings over a couple of days, and
everything was flawless. So now I know the card is fine, and I am back
to square one. I put it back into my new system (I even tried a
different pci slot) and the very first recording shows up the same
macro block artifacts. It will record flawlessly for 10 or 15 minutes
at a time, and then the blocky artifacts show up for a couple of
frames. Usually they only appear where their is motion in that frame.
So it must be something going on with the actual encoding on the card.
I would be suspect of some general incompatibility with the
motherboard, but it worked fine in this system for over 2 weeks.

I must have inadvertently changed something with the driver or
firmware, or some other configuration issue with the card, but I don't
know what it could be if this is even possible. The only other thing I
can think of now is some sort of hardware issue with the pci-bus, or
maybe a power issue, but I don't know how to look into these things. I
was quite happy thinking I would just get a new card, but now it seems
a new card would probably have the same problem. I appreciate how
helpful everybody has been. Does anybody have anymore ideas?


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