ATSC TV on Cambridge Linux computer

[sunny-O0WJhd4tT3hg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org (Laura Conrad)]

I just got a pchdtv 3500 card for my TV.  I seem to have it more or
less working.  Some of the problems (funny colored lines and squares
on the picture, funny clicks in the sound, not as many stations as I'd
expect) will probably go away if I get a better antenna.  I'm just
using an old rabbit ears, now.

I live in Cambridge; I can see the Prudential Center (where I hear a
lot of the stations have antennas) from the third floor window.  Does
anyone in a similar situation have an antenna they recommend?  Or one
they found didn't work?  And what store (online or bricks-and-mortar)
would you go to for expertise on this topic?

Some of the other problems probably need either more configuration
time or better hardware.  

     I didn't manage to configure MythTV at all.  The configuration
     program took over my whole screen, and I found it hard to
     navigate, and I couldn't get to a browser window to get advice
     while I had the window open.  If the real program interface is as
     unfriendly as the configurers (both front end and back end), I'm
     not sure I want to bother.  Is there a magic word for at least
     telling it to be in a window, and not full-screen?

     So what I'm running is "mplayer dvb://", with a channels.conf
     file that I created with:

scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB

(This is on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, with dvb-utils installed.  I find the
dvb-utils programs work a lot better than the atsc-tools from the
pchdtv site.  Another thing I learned after more fussing than I wanted
to do: if you're having trouble getting the atsc stuff to work, do
"modprobe cx88_dvb".)

     This works pretty well on the pictures, but some of the sound is
     really garbled (not just a few clicks, but a completely foreign
     language) or really out of sync.  Sometimes when this happens,
     mplayer tells me:

Too many video packets in the buffer: (110 in 8502907 bytes).
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.

    I don't find the -ni option helps with this.  Does this mean I
    need better hardware?  I have a year-old AMD Athlon(tm) 64
    Processor 3500+ system, with a gigabite of memory.  I was hoping
    that would be good enough.  Or do I need to download more mplayer
    codecs?

Anyway, if you've gotten something like this working usably, I'd be
glad to hear about your experiences.

-- 
Laura (mailto:lconrad-O0WJhd4tT3hg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097	fax: (501) 641-5011
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

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