[kwlug-disc] MythTV and OTA ATSC Reception in KW

[Andrew Kohlsmith (lists)]

On March 9, 2009 02:13:09 pm Paul Gallaway wrote:
> So what channels do you get? What antenna are you using? Preamps?
> Amplifiers? Or should I just stop complaining, give Rogers $9/month
> for an HD STB (sometimes I feel as though I am the only "PersonalTV"TM
> hold out!!), get a Hauppauge HDPVR and run MythTV SVN.

I have done a bit of testing in the K/W area. There is no ATSC reachable 
with "normal" equipment in K/W.  I ended up giving my ATSC receiver and a UHF 
antenna to my brother to record Rick Mercer in HD. (he is in Whitby, and 
picks up 8 or 9 ATSC HD channels).

The setup is as follows:
1) his Myth system records Rick Mercer Tuesday at 8pm and I get a huge (4GB) 
MPEG-2 file.
2) I transcode it down to a 2Mbps level 4 h.264 MPEG-4 format file, which is 
about 450MB. This takes about 8 hours on his slow-as-moles-asses-in-january 
Athlon system.
3) The script transfers that over shitty-ass DSL to my house (takes several 
hours, and more if he's got his DSL line tied up with seeding torrents).
4) I use myth_rebuilddatabase.pl to import the file into my backend.
5) Wednesday or Thursday I get to watch Tuesday's Rick Mercer in HD. :-)

My frontend has an nVidia GPU (GeForce 6150 on an Asus M2NPV-VM) but VDPAU 
doesn't support it even though the card can theoretically do it... so fast 
motion scenes tend to skip a little due to the CPU not being quite enough to 
decode 2Mbps h264 720p.

I'd watch more CBC if I could pick it up locally, but alack and alas, it just 
isn't happening yet.

-A.