Well I finally have most things working. I'm even happy with the audio sync and playback (I moved the speakers to over the monitor and it seems better). However, the picture has diagonal bars on it. Sort of like a ghost lines. I searched for "diagional" and stuff like that but didn't fins anything. Is this a know issue? If yes what should I search for?

In case you guys forgot its a PVR-250 model 980 that only works when I set tuner type=2 (well I should say that 17, 39 and 44 that other people use does not work), if you can recommend other tuner types I am willing to try it.

This thread suggested checking the antenna cables for interference.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/25415#25415

By the way you might have more luck searching for "diagonal".

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Yeah, I had that sort of artefact with a bttv card and it changed when I moved the antenna cable around. I'm not sure what the troubleshooting steps are to actually get rid of it.

Thanks. It looks like the other guy I have a motherboard that's causing the interference (I tried all the other options, and the card does not have those lines in another computer).

Thanks

I assume you've tried the likely culprits of switching CATV cables, different PCI slots, rearranging things, cables, etc with no effect. Do you have a CATV cable amplifier or splitter inline? Sometimes changing inputs w/cables can help.

I hope this is not a nice way of saying that your P4 based PC is not suitable either because of the EMI problem! D'oh!

There is always the PCI EIDE option with the new motherboard.

I would not be surprised if some of the older PCI boards were not generating interference. Have you tried swapping some of them out?

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Andrew,
Once again thanks, no the cable feed is fine, when I unplug the cable from the PVR-250 and plug it into a TV the TV picture is fine (obviuosly the TV is off when the PVR-250 is on).

I tried moving cards around to no avail. I don't think its the other old cards in there since the AMD system while having jerky playback did not have the diagonal lines.

At lunch today I will buy the PCI EIDE card, and try it out tonight. Time is getting short though. The reason I started this is that I am moving on Friday. I'm an early adopter Tivo user who switched to DirecTivo 4 years ago. However at the new house I will use cable again (long story) and rather than buy Tivo boxes I want to use Myth. My problem now is that rather than packing this weekend like I should have I spent all my time trying to get this system to run.

That is definitely a risk of KnoppMyth & MythTV as it combines two really great things into one even better thing ... sort of like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup.

Better focus on the move. You can live OK without TV and/or MythTV but sleeping outdoors in the winter is no fun.

Good Luck!

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

Do the diagonal lines move accross the screen? If so, do they stop when you pause the playback? I used to use a scan converter to connect the VGA output to my TV and it caused diagonal lines in the picture (they moved when the video was paused).

You might also want to try the "Spread Spectrum" settings in your BIOS. If it is off, turn it on. If there are multiple settings try all of them. This can cause EMI interference in your recordings.

Nope, it was on the monitor. I think it had something to do with interference from the MB or power supply. I've given up on that board.

I had interference artefacts that went away when I boosted the signal with an external RF amplifier. This was with a signal that looked good when connected directly to the TV using the TV's tuner. The inside of a computer is a harsh RF environment and if you can make the signal stick up further above the level of noise and interference (by amplifying it) you can probably improve the situation tremendously.