Digital recording quality

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

If it skips *in the same place*, it will demonstrate that it's the PVR's
recording, not the play-back, which is at fault .... am I right Sir?
[that's a quotation, not addressed to you personally Richard ]

It could also be a perfect recording of a faulty signal.

Ermm - I don't think so, since my wife watched the film (via the PVR) as
it was being recorded, and she noticed no skips.

I've just watched 40 mins of the recording, and it was skipping all the
way through. I replayed it, and as far as I could see it skipped *in
the same places*.

So this looks like the PVR is not recording Film4 properly, doesn't?

I ought to repeat that this phenomenon doesn't happen on all channels;
we've noticed problems with ITV4 (for example) as well, sooooo this
seems to imply that we have trouble with "Multiplex COM6 - ARQB - Arqiva
B" ??

The thing I don't understand _now_ (amongst others) is why we can watch
the problem channels OK *through* the PVR, but the PVR's recording is
corrupted.

Grateful any further comments!

John

On 23/01/2013 18:47, Another John wrote:


[1] The skips are usually a small fraction of a second but as you know
even that is enough to seem like a major disruption to a continuous
stream.



Are you recording content at 50Hz and playing back at 60Hz?

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Another John wrote:
In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

If it skips *in the same place*, it will demonstrate that it's the PVR's
recording, not the play-back, which is at fault .... am I right Sir?
[that's a quotation, not addressed to you personally Richard ]

It could also be a perfect recording of a faulty signal.

Ermm - I don't think so, since my wife watched the film (via the PVR) as
it was being recorded, and she noticed no skips.

I've just watched 40 mins of the recording, and it was skipping all the
way through. I replayed it, and as far as I could see it skipped *in
the same places*.

So this looks like the PVR is not recording Film4 properly, doesn't?

I ought to repeat that this phenomenon doesn't happen on all channels;
we've noticed problems with ITV4 (for example) as well, sooooo this
seems to imply that we have trouble with "Multiplex COM6 - ARQB - Arqiva
B" ??

The thing I don't understand _now_ (amongst others) is why we can watch
the problem channels OK *through* the PVR, but the PVR's recording is
corrupted.

Grateful any further comments!

If what you mean by "through the PVR" is that the TV is decoding the
signal via the pass through coax, then it could be because the modern
receiver in the TV is better than the old one in the PVR.

I haven't had sky for more than a decade, but until a couple of years
ago I sometimes used the old grundig box for the free channels - some
of which often just didn't work well. I assumed the dish needed
realigning or something - but never got round to trying as we also had
dvb-t. When the old CRT TV finally got replaced with one that has DVB-S
and T/T2 tuners built in I plugged the same dish into it and all the
channels work perfectly.

If you mean the PVR is recording and also decoding and then outputting
via scart to TV I have no idea.

In article ,
alan wrote:


[1] The skips are usually a small fraction of a second but as you know
even that is enough to seem like a major disruption to a continuous
stream.

Are you recording content at 50Hz and playing back at 60Hz?

Duh heck?!?? :-D

Sorry: I have not the faintest idea!

John

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

If it skips *in the same place*, it will demonstrate that it's the PVR's
recording, not the play-back, which is at fault .... am I right Sir?
[that's a quotation, not addressed to you personally Richard ]

It could also be a perfect recording of a faulty signal.

It could be, or it could be a fault in the recording, or it could be a
correct recording of something that the player cannot play (some
peculiarity of the data). The opposite would be a lot more
informative: if it doesn't fail in the same place, the data stream was
correctly received and recorded, and can be correctly decoded.

My Panasonic TV with attached USB disk occasionally has non-repeatable
playback errors resulting in several seconds being skipped; I suspect
a bug somewhere in its USB disk handling as there are also
occasionally other failures consistent with that. It's rare enough
not to be too annoying.

-- Richard

If it's an under-powered spec problem, when it isn't having to record,
it has time to do everything else like update the EPG, or whatever,
but when it's recording or playing back, it's hasn't the throughput to
do everything, so it stutters of the recording or playback.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:38:01 +0000, Andy Furniss
wrote:

If you mean the PVR is recording and also decoding and then outputting
via scart to TV I have no idea.
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On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:47:11 +0000, Another John wrote:

SNIP

Of course the signal to the TV (a new-ish Sony with its own tuner) comes
through the PVR (an old-ish Wharfedale).

It's taken me this long to realise that when I watch films on the TV on
(say) Film4, they don't [noticeably] skip; whilst when I watch the PVR's
recording of the same film, it skips frequently. [1]

SNIP

[1] The skips are usually a small fraction of a second but as you know
even that is enough to seem like a major disruption to a continuous
stream.

Ah I suspect this is know problem with Wharfedale (badged Vestel) PVRs.

I suspect you have a Vestal T825 chassis which with older software can
exhibit the reported problem after DSO.

See http://www.vestelpvr.futaura.co.uk/T825.php

Richard

In article ,
Richard wrote:

Ah I suspect this is know problem with Wharfedale (badged Vestel) PVRs.
I suspect you have a Vestal T825 chassis which with older software can
exhibit the reported problem after DSO.

See http://www.vestelpvr.futaura.co.uk/T825.php

BLIMEY! Give that man a coconut! As I've just put in that forum,
Richard, thanks to you it looks like I've reached my destination!

We bought the Wharfedale 160 DTR HDMI at Argos in December 2007 (I learn
from digging out the documentation). It *does* have the latest software
(v13.0), although this was installed long before our DSO (we were the
last, in September 2012).

I have joined the relevant discussion group and input all requested
info: I'll see what further developments, if any, take place.

Thank you SO much! Like most of us in Usenet, I hate mysteries, and at
least now there's no mystery, even if there's also no fix!

Cheers
John

"Paul D Smith" wrote in message
...
"Another John" wrote in message
...

Howdy

I posted a question related to this last November, describing
how
"post-switchover" our digital reception seemed to have
deteriorated in
the ITV-associated Muxes(?). (The thread was "Quality
post-switchover.)

Various explanations and solutions were suggested, and I've
tried
looking at some of them, in particular I checked the manual
tuning of
the relevant stations, without much effect.

However in the intervening weeks I'm coming to another
conclusion: that
the "digital skipping" seems to occur *much* more on recordings
made by
our PVR.

(You may call me an idiot for not observing this before. Please
do.)

Of course the signal to the TV (a new-ish Sony with its own
tuner) comes
through the PVR (an old-ish Wharfedale).

It's taken me this long to realise that when I watch films on
the TV on
(say) Film4, they don't [noticeably] skip; whilst when I watch
the PVR's
recording of the same film, it skips frequently. [1]

I hadn't thought it likely before now, but is it possible that
I need a
new PVR?



Yes.


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