[mythtv-users] Reliability of USB capture cards

[Jason Chambers]

On 25/07/2010 19:35, Keith Edmunds wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:34:29 +0100, lists at purplish-monkey.com said:
>> Do any of the tuners have "Use DVB card for active EIT scan" set in
>> mythtv-setup?
>
> Yes, they both do, although I've just turned it off. Should it be off on
> both?

Its a while since I changed anything (I think it was back just before 
0.22 was released) so I don't know whether you may get different results 
now.

However at the time I definitely tried only having one tuner with active 
EIT, only having one virtual tuner on that tuner, and also adding a 
tuning delay but none of these made a noticeable difference to the 
length of time before I had to reboot again.

There were some other things I found on various web pages that I tried 
too (I can't remember the details now), but in the end the only thing 
that worked reliably for me was to turn it off *on all tuners*.

 > If so, presumably I can no longer use EIT information?

It means Myth won't continuously retrieve the EIT data when the tuner is 
not use recording/watching live TV (i.e. when the card would otherwise 
be idle).

I'm in the UK using the Radio Times* xmltv feed so I don't have to use 
EIT.

However IIRC Myth can still pick up the EIT data when its recording but 
then if you don't record frequently you won't pick up new data very often.

In the worst case the length of time between recordings may be longer 
than the number hours or days that EIT provides in your region causing 
your listings to run out.  Therefore you miss future recordings because 
Myth doesn't have any data, and if it doesn't record you don't get any 
more EIT data and therefore you don't record anything again ... and so on.

* other listings are available ;-)

Regards,
Jason