Ongoing TV Stuttering problem (1 Viewer)

[bfj]

Hi guys,

First of all my system is:

AMD Athlon 1300+
1 Gig Mem
300 gig HD
Geforce Ti4600
Running Windows XP Pro


I bought myself a Pinnacle PCTV Dual DVB-T card and MP recognised it fine and I can view all the channels.

I'm in the UK and when I watch BBC1 or or BBC2 everything is ok, good picture. But channels such as Channel 5 or some of the lesser digital channels seem to stutter like crazy almost to the point of freezing.

It's not MP as this also happens with the software it came with. In fact MP seems to handle the TV better than the Pinnacle software.

I'd just like some advice on what might be the problem.

May be a faster CPU would help?

On my standalone digital box I have max signal strengh but when MP is scanning the channels it only seems to fill about 10 of the little progress bar boxes.

I heard that digital channels come down at different compressions and that some channels take more CPU power to decode?

Also MP seems to take awhile (10 mins) to scan all the channels.

Maybe the TV card is getting interference?

It's fairly near to the gfx card fan so could that have something to do with it ?

I'm willing to upgrade the machine and do whatever it takes but it would help if I knew for sure what might be happening. I'm not exactly sure what specs are minimum for dual digital tv so any experience you guys can give would be great.

Thanks,

BFG

 

[Spragleknas]

First: Make sure you are using Default DirectSound-rendere.
Second: Your graphic-card is not DX9 - which is highly recommended
Third: Not sure, but you have a rather weak CPU - don't know how that impacts DVB-T.

 

[Taipan]

I'm in the UK and when I watch BBC1 or or BBC2 everything is ok, good picture. But channels such as Channel 5 or some of the lesser digital channels seem to stutter like crazy almost to the point of freezing.

It's not MP as this also happens with the software it came with. In fact MP seems to handle the TV better than the Pinnacle software.

I'd just like some advice on what might be the problem.

This sounds suspiciously like the TV signal is marginal - are you able to measure the signal strength and quality with the Pinnacle software? If you are able to, what readings do you get for the poor channels compared to the good channels?

What sort of Tv antenna and lead setup do you have?

 

[bfj]

Hi Guys,

First of all I apologise for the lack of replies, I been extreamly busy recently.

After doing a load of tests and a bit of research into the problem by looking at transmitter information I have decided that the problem must be my aerial.

And although my set top box can receive freeview ok and the signal strength is maxed, it must JUST on the edge of being ok. Reading about freeview it seems you can have a maxed out signal strength but a crap signal quality.

And I think the Pinnacle Dual DVB-T card needs a better quality signal than the set top box does.

Tonight I am going to check my aerial type and the direction its pointing (my transmitter is North West of my house) and then get it upgraded if its wrong.

Will let you know how it turns out

BFJ

 

[skoov]

I have a very similar problem with Film4 and ITVs they stutter like mad on mine. The weird thing on my setup is that when I pull my TV and PC away from the wall the picture improves a lot, although it's still not perfect - I must be getting some interference from something.

I've got the aerial in the loft and the lead comes down to my lounge and then into a powered splitter. From the splitter, 2 go to my media PC and one back upstairs to my bedroom TV.

Last night I put an amp in my loft to see what difference that made - it made a massive difference! I can now watch the ITV channels with no stuttering at all although I still get a small amount on Film4 when I push my TV back against the wall.

Perhaps you have a similar problem to mine with a 'bordering' signal. I think I've read somewhere that the ITV channels are the first ones to go when the signal degrades.

Skoov

 

[bfj]

Hi all,

I just wanted to report that I got a new freeview (dvb-t) aerial fitted with digital grade cable and now everything is spot on

Seems although I have a good strong signal from the transmitter, the old aerial wasnt very good at splitting the digital signal from the analogue signal which resulted in low signal quality.

Now I get perfect reception and the EPG is filled all the time (before it had lots of missing entries).

Thanks for your help everyone

This is the aerial by the way:

My Media Box is pretty much finished.. Had a few problems with getting tv video and audio sync'ed but it seems ok now..

Not managed to get video editing or burning working yet ( I wish this worked a little more easily out of the box).

And the other night while watching a divx movie my hard drive started thrashing for no reason about 10 minutes into the movie and then MP froze so I had to reset the box. Same thing happened when watching TV and I had to reinstall MP again to fix the problem

No idea what the problem was, I hope the MP installation isnt this delicate usually.

Fingers crossed

BFJ