PVR-150 TV card woes

[Bob Marcan]

Colin Brace wrote:
> On 12/13/06, Daniel Parish <parishd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I use the included script ivtv-tune.pl
> 
> Included with what? I can't find any such perl script on my system. I
> have ivtv 0.8.1 installed from atrpms.
> 
>> Not quite as convenient as the onscreen channel widget
>> called ptune-ui.pl (if memory serves), but I haven't tried that one out
>> since migrating to FC6.
> 
> I'd happily settle for the perl script.
> 
> As an aside, I'm still wondering about the utility of hardware mpeg
> encoding. The raw mpeg stream from the PVR-150 takes up on the order
> of 3 gb of diskspace an hour, so you still need to further encode PVR
> output, either on the fly with mencoder or later with avidemux from
> the humongous disk file. Presumably the latter approach gives better
> results, but is there that much difference and/or is it worth trouble,
> given the middling quality of analog TV input? I also have a Pinnacle
> card, which works well with tvtime, and on-the-fly mpeg2 encoding done
> in software certainly is feasible on my pentium IV box. Thoughts on
> this?
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 

Change bitrate to lower values with ivtvctl.
ivtvctl -h
...
        bitrate_mode  =<#> bitrate mode (0 = VBR, 1 = CBR)
        bitrate       =<#> bitrate (DVD max = 9.6Mbps)
        bitrate_peak  =<#> peak bitrate (must be greater than bitrate)
...

Regards, Bob
-- 
  Bob Marcan, Consultant                mailto:bob.marcan at snt.si
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