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Horizontal lines after years of service
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20586		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  Axxel [ Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Horizontal lines after years of service
After years of 'flawless' service (apart from a non responsive system once in a while), I'm now having recordings with horizontal vibrating lines.

I'm not sure how to call them but it are approx. 1 cm high horizontal lines and the bottom is moving to the right. Not every scene is troubled by it, but very many are. And they are not consistent in number or place. There not moving vertically, but seem to appear and disappear.
And also sometimes there's a flickering 5 cm black bar on the top of the screen. If its there, it stays there the whole recording.
The input signal is being split, one side is going to the PVR, the other to my TV.
The picture on my TV is ok.

What I tried:

Directly connect the cable to my PVR (without splitter)
Searched the forum extensively
Updated ivtv to 0.7.4
Cold booted
Watched old recordings, they are ok. So I assume it's a recording issue
Changed the resolution in the recording profiles from 480x480 to 720x576

My configuration:

Compaq Deskpro EN
PIII 1 GHz
256 MB RAM
250 GB SATA HD
PVR350
R5D1
ivtv 0.7.1

The PVR TV-OUT is connected to my LCD TV using Scard.


Where should I be looking for?
Author:  graysky [ Wed Nov 25, 2009 6:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
My PVR-250 has one or two lines right across the top that look like static. Kind of annoying, but the thing is nearly 7 years old now.
Author:  Axxel [ Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:21 pm ]
Post subject: 
So you say it's a hardware issue?
Author:  goofnrox [ Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:04 am ]
Post subject: 
graysky wrote:
My PVR-250 has one or two lines right across the top that look like static. Kind of annoying, but the thing is nearly 7 years old now.


This is likely the closed captioning information.

From the CC wiki "For all types of NTSC programming, captions are "encoded" into Line 21 of the vertical blanking interval – a part of the TV picture that sits just above the visible portion and is usually unseen."

This part is usually cut off by overscan.
Author:  Axxel [ Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:52 am ]
Post subject: 
But my lines are all over the place and not in every scene.
Author:  goofnrox [ Tue Dec 01, 2009 1:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
Axxel wrote:
But my lines are all over the place and not in every scene.


I was just referring to grayskys lines at the top. Those are normal. I would guess yours is a hardware fault, but that is just a guess.
Author:  graysky [ Tue Dec 01, 2009 2:16 pm ]
Post subject: 
@op - one thing I observed while playing around with a different motherboard is that some are nosier than others. For example, my PVR-250 looks fine in its current MB, but when I place it in a totally different machine and video capture, it had more horizontal lines of noise in the captured video! I'm wondering what will happen if you place your capture card into another PCI slot on the same board and try a capture... any improvement?
Author:  graysky [ Sun Dec 06, 2009 3:28 am ]
Post subject: 
goofnrox wrote:
graysky wrote:
My PVR-250 has one or two lines right across the top that look like static. Kind of annoying, but the thing is nearly 7 years old now.


This is likely the closed captioning information.

From the CC wiki "For all types of NTSC programming, captions are "encoded" into Line 21 of the vertical blanking interval – a part of the TV picture that sits just above the visible portion and is usually unseen."

This part is usually cut off by overscan.


Have a look at this youtube video. This is from a capture. It's choppy because it's been xvidcapped through vnc and it's also just a little preview video from mythfront. You can clearly see the lines that I'm seeing.
Author:  goofnrox [ Sun Dec 06, 2009 9:23 am ]
Post subject: 
graysky wrote:
goofnrox wrote:
graysky wrote:
My PVR-250 has one or two lines right across the top that look like static. Kind of annoying, but the thing is nearly 7 years old now.


This is likely the closed captioning information.

From the CC wiki "For all types of NTSC programming, captions are "encoded" into Line 21 of the vertical blanking interval – a part of the TV picture that sits just above the visible portion and is usually unseen."

This part is usually cut off by overscan.


Have a look at this youtube video. This is from a capture. It's choppy because it's been xvidcapped through vnc and it's also just a little preview video from mythfront. You can clearly see the lines that I'm seeing.


That looks exactly like the output from my PVR-150. If you watch a scene without any dialog, you will notice that it gets much less "staticy", since there is no CC information there.
Author:  graysky [ Sun Dec 06, 2009 10:14 am ]
Post subject: 
I see... so your recommendation is to add overscan until it's no longer visible?
Author:  goofnrox [ Sun Dec 06, 2009 1:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
That would be how a "normal" TV would deal with it. I just ignore it, since I watch very little that isn't digital anymore, which does not have this type of encoding.
Author:  grante [ Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:14 pm ]
Post subject: 
graysky wrote:
I see... so your recommendation is to add overscan until it's no longer visible?


You can also just shift the playback up a couple lines. I geneerally just ignore it.
Author:  Axxel [ Tue Dec 29, 2009 3:22 am ]
Post subject: 
Just to have a complete story here:

Quote:
I would guess yours is a hardware fault, but that is just a guess.


You were right goofnrox. I've put the card in my new system and the lines are there again. So my encoder is down the drain, the decoder is still fine btw.
Author:  Greg Frost [ Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:08 pm ]
Post subject: 
I dont think it is a hardware fault at all. That is probably the closed captioning data. On a normal TV, that would not be seen because of overscan. As suggested by grante, there are options in the playback profile that allow you to scale/shift the playback image to remove this from the screen.
Author:  goofnrox [ Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:38 pm ]
Post subject: 
Greg Frost wrote:
I dont think it is a hardware fault at all. That is probably the closed captioning data. On a normal TV, that would not be seen because of overscan. As suggested by grante, there are options in the playback profile that allow you to scale/shift the playback image to remove this from the screen.


I think we determined what graysky was seeing was the CC data, but axxels original problem was much worse and all over the picture, defiantly not the CC data.

Something that occurred to me though, is this a hot case? I've had in the past where the chip set on the encoder card would act funny if it was getting too warm...
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