Kyle you can certainly start playing with very modest hardware!
Has anybody got reasonable results with the ad-detection ?
I find Channel 7 keeps breaking the system so badly that 50% is
unusable.
[eg black screen in mid movie triggers ad detection]
I even set ad-duration to 300 secs to try to avoid
movie|ad ad|movie|ad ad|movie just omitting
^^^^
entirely.
10 is probably the best, but still so bad that I don't use it.
I've tried each and all ad-detection algorithms.
My antenna is a bit iffy, maybe that is to blame ?
Watch performance is a squeek or a block of pixels say once / hour.
Kyle.
You are correct in thinking it is your antenna, most of the time it
is; together with all the bits-n-pieces.
Of course you will have to have reasonably good coax and depending
where you live (or trying to DTV record), that you may be best getting
someone to check your signal strength at the your antenna and at the
end-points ti.e.: where cable connects to your DVB card/TV.
Why? It is my experience that most people have old really crappy coax,
and highly suspect splitters/baluns/connections + you name it. You
can do this yourself if your got a laptop (running either dvb-scan or
scan-dvb. It will tell you the signal strengths for each channel),
with a USB DVB device and you can simply get to the antenna base point.
Measure before the RF Amp (if you have one), after the AMP, at each TV
connection point.
Set up a table with the readings from the best channel received (say
ABC-1).
Say hat your "At antenna (before amp)" = 50db, "After AMP" = 80db. "at
first TV point" = 65db, and at the last of the line TV point = 42db.
This means that there is 80 - 42 = 38db loss between the AMP and the
last TV point.
This tells you where to look for problems (of course this is all
dependent on the type of coax your got, its db/metre loss rating, and
the splitters, taps or connecters used). This is a complete discussion
in itself, which I won't have here because your probably know all this
anyhow.
This is how I found that my system had -42db loss, between two points
just 10 metres in length when I should have had in the range of less
than 10db loss total. According to the cable spec I should have less
than 5db loss, the connectors only 0.5db each (x2) so where was the
signal loss? My 35db loss was caused by two things:
A> a rat had eaten just 3mm or so off one side of the cable near the
splitter,
B> the splitter had gone faulty probably from the last couple of
lightening strikes around the area.
Even thought the cable was only 4 years old, a couple of the connector
(F connectors are the best) where suspect. Fixing these issues
returned the signal strength within expectations (remember every -3db
is half signal loss).
---/---
On the CPU side, of course you can start by using an old at-hand
system as already pointed out to stream and watch. I agree it is the
transcoding to other formats and filtering of adverts that consume
most CPU resources. In true DIY style it is all about - suck-n-see,
At times you will be very surprised how easy you can do it. It is only
if you want to go the "whole hog" - then your need some serious
resources IMHO. My system is/was originally for household backups and
master resource server. As it was on 24/7 so it made sense to use it
as the back-end.
Hope this assists you.
Grahame.
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