I am experiencing a lot of jumpiness while watching live TV. I have scoured the forums for help on this issue. I have tried everything I have seen to no avail.

I know that DMA is enabled on both of my drives as well as 32-bit I/O. That did not solve my problem. I am mostly just looking for ideas on anything else that could cause this issue.

I wouldn't say that recordings are perfect, but they are a LOT better than live TV. Definitely watch able. I am also having some small issues with the OSD making things jumpy while it is up, but I found the post on fixing it. (Something to do with the transparency)


On a side note, how difficult is it going to be to get TV out working on my old herc card?


(Please note I understand how much better off I would be with a PVR250... In the semi-distant future I plan on getting one... For the moment, cash is an issue)

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P4 1.6GHz - 512Mb Ram
Pinnacle PCTV Studio/Rave
Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT (Out to VGA)
Onboard Sound + Nick
Maxtor 40GB & 20GB (Low i know, but its a test system)

Very. I don't know of anyone who has done it. Most of us are using Nvidia (motherboard or card) or Via (motherboard) for this with one or two people who claim to have it working with some ATI card.

As for your jerkiness... If you can "ssh" into the box and run "top" while watching live TV you can tell what's chewing your CPU. At first glance, you should have enough horsepower there for a SDTV software encoder card, so that may actually be the video card too... Other things to check... Run "hdparm -Tt /dev/hda" and the same for /dev/hdb too. However I'm betting on the video card. This is one of those cases where throwing a relatively small amount of money at the problem can make it go away: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814164046

first place I would look is at XF86Config-4 file and I will believe that you will find you are using the vesa driver which means no xv which will make things jumpy. you will need to find the proper driver for the herc card if one even exists.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Thanks a lot guys. I have other cards laying around i could try, the only other one i have with TV out is an ATI Radeon 7200, which i knew had issues. I may just get the card you suggested tjc if i can't find the drivers.

All i needed was pointed in the right direction

_________________
P4 1.6GHz - 512Mb Ram
Pinnacle PCTV Studio/Rave
Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT (Out to VGA)
Onboard Sound + Nick
Maxtor 40GB & 20GB (Low i know, but its a test system)

Definitely try the Radeon and take careful notes. If you get it working, a good "How To" writeup would be a major commmunity service.

One step at a time Im not exactly a new Linux user, but im not a "L337 4D/\/\|/\/" either.

Though i think i will give the radeon a shot, given the results, i will be sure to let everyone know how it works out.

_________________
P4 1.6GHz - 512Mb Ram
Pinnacle PCTV Studio/Rave
Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT (Out to VGA)
Onboard Sound + Nick
Maxtor 40GB & 20GB (Low i know, but its a test system)

Having met and corresponded with a bunch of 'em ovr the years I'm here to tell you that real Unix Ubergeeks don't have to resort to writing nonsense like that (they can usually be more obscure to the uninitiated without it). That's just a weak imitation of a terse and idiomatic coding style by a bunch of pimple farming wannabes and posers.

You know someone is the real deal when they zip off a clever and elegant chunk of shell/awk/sed/perl/python/C/C++/... to solve a problem in the blink of an eye. If they're really good, it'll be clear, obviously correct, and even documented. Spouting off about how '"elete" they are generally doesn't even occur to them (they think it should be obvious to anyone whose opinion matters), and should usually be counted as a sign of an attempted snow job.