[mythtvnz] Nova-T 500 working with Freeview HD

[Aaron Drysdale]

Tortise wrote:
> Still why not go for DVB-T as it needs more people using it to get it
polished!

Well I did go with DVB-T in the end - I was on my way home with a new
Nova-T when these emails came through about just using a splitter.
People at my work had completely put me wrong about dual LNB
requirements for multiple tuners. Still, they are pretty happy now that
I have corrected them.

Freeview HD is going well, the biggest problem I had was learning about
multiple tuners, video sources, and inputs - and how they relate to each
other. The two minor inconveniences I have now are:

1. Slight blockiness on my HD channels when using the Nova-T tuner,
almost as though the bitrate has dropped off momentarily. Only happens
for a few seconds every 10 minutes or so, and I have put this down to
problems with VDPAU which I'm assuming will gradually improve as nVidia
release new driver versions. (I'm using an 8500GT Silent with 512MB
memory - it could be that the card is slightly under spec'ed to give
perfectly smooth playback 100% of the time I guess.)

2. EIT data on the DVB-T card isn't all coming down. I get perfect EIT
data on the DVB-S, but lots of gaps in the guide data in the other
tuner. I thought that the guide would pull the best information from
across the tuners, or give you the option to only use the information
from a particular source, but it doesn't seem to work like that. I think
I need to take the step to using XML data from somewhere - people from
my work have been singing its praises telling me that if I use this data
I will get proper categories and more consistent naming. Any links to
where I can look at this?

Early days yet, but I am more than happy with the improved video quality
and I think it will get a high WAF. (Time will tell). No crashes in the
few hours it's been used in earnest.

Aaron