1) Is there any easy way to measure my signal strength? I asked my in- house electrical engineer, but he did not know a lot about analog signaling. I'm a sw engineer myself, but don't mind getting down and dirty with a multi-meter. 2) Are you using a PVR-500 with this setup? Are you seeing any snow or lines in the picture?
- Haavar On Dec 2, 2006, at 7:22 PM, John Drescher wrote: > On 12/2/06, Haavar Valeur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I got a PVR-500, and I'm having some problems with the picture > quality. > I think my signal is pretty strong from the cable provider. When I > turn off the internal amplifier on the card (in the kernel), I get a > snowy picture on some channels and a pretty good on others. When I > leave the amp on, I get distortion lines on some channels others are > fine. It seems to me the problem could be solved here, but there is a > lot of tuning and recompiling the kernel to be done. > > Are you sure that some cards are more sensitive than others, and > it's not that peoples cable signal is different? If there is a chance > I could get a better card, I could return this and get another one. > > I am not sure of this but I can possibly do some testing on my non > amplified signal. > I'll explain. When I first connected my cable modem to my cable > line my signal was > below standards around downstream channel power of -13 dBmV and a > upstream > channel power of > 60dBmV. With these signals I was experiencing a > lot of problems > with my modem (disconnects and poor speed). I complained a few > times to the cable > company but they were not much help and since I bought my modem and > did not rent > one from them for $5/month they were giving me a hard time. So I > did a little homework > and shopping on eBay and in 1 week and $35US I had myself a quality > cable modem > amp. With the 4 port amp installed instead of the main splitter > inside of the house on > I was getting around 0dbmv downstream (which is ideal) and around > 35dBmV upstream > in my computer room which is 2 floors above the cable amp. Two > years later my signals > are a little stronger downstream power of around +6dBmV right now. > But anyways I could > easily put the original splitter back on the main and test. With > this setup I estimate my > downstream power to be around -6dBmV. > > I'm getting the best PQ on most channels by padding the cable with a > 3 way slitter and leaving the internal amp on (as it is in the 2.6.18 > kernel). I padded my signal by connecting my cable from the wall into > the output of a 3 way splitter and connected my computer to another > output (nothing on the input). I've ordered actual signal pads > (attenuators) and a ground breaker to see if this helps. > > This is exactly what I did to get the best signal. > > John _______________________________________________ ivtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://ivtvdriver.org/mailman/listinfo/ivtv-users
