I had a working KnoppMyth system with a PVR-250 card. Bought an HD-3000 tuner b/c I wanted to beat the broadcast flag, and a second tuner seemed like a good idea.

Oops.

So I plugged it in, ran mythtv-setup, and chose what seemed like the obvious options (HD3000 as card type, etc). Trying to "watch TV" hung the system, and recording was shot (even on the pvr-250).

So, I saw that the RA15.1 upgrade had "built in" support or drivers for this card, so I plunged in and did the upgrade. I read in these forums that I needed to set it up as a DVB card rather than choosing the more obvious "HD3000" option, so I did that. I got as far as "editing channels" and saw that it was detecting them. Also then edited the channels as suggested by pasting the bigger numbers from the XMLTV field (eg, "23411") into the "channel" field (eg, "8" or "8-2"). (This step still makes no sense to me)

Save, reboot.....

Same behavior. Black screen, freeze when trying to watch, recording won't work on either card.

I was getting pretty good performance on the single PVR-250 setup, running a Sempron 2800+ with 500M of RAM and LVM proving 360+ Gig of disk space.

Are there any BASIC, STEP-BY-STEP instructions out there on how to
1) put one of these puppies in (okay, okay... plug into a slot and hook up the antenna)
2) make it go
3) then make myth see and use it?

I keep running into advice like "after you've successfully recompiled the kernel and once the linux drivers are running..."

Ummm.... yeah.

I'm not an expert, but I've compiled and installed plenty before, and even built and set up my myth box to begin with. But I'm in over my head on this one Even the pcHDTV site is over my head... separate instructions for "Debian", "Red hat" and "Fedora Core" (at least I know they are distros), but Knoppmyth is... ? So I never know even where to start.

Sadly, the KnoppMythWiki doesn't have a HowTo on this... those are usually pretty good.

any links or advice is VERY welcome!

Advice. Perhaps a search of the forum. Look for a post by a certain human. There is no need to recompile anything to get this card working w/ KnoppMyth.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

If I understand what you did, then it was the wrong thing to do. You should NOT replace the "channel" field with the XMLTV ID. As far as a step-by-step guide, here is what worked for me (these instructions are based on those found in this thread http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4429 )

Kind of follows the instructions here http://www.digitalregime.com/mythdvb/setup/

Do all this as root and install R5A15.1 with the HD3000 in the system (I had problems adding the card after knoppmyth was already installed)

1: stop mythbackend "/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop" (important! virtually not mentioned anywhere!)
2: run mythtv-setup
3: clear channels and capture cards
4: in Card Setup, set up HD3000 as a DVB card. It should recognize that you have a HD3000
5: in Video Source, create a name and download the OTA HD listings from Zap2It that you set up ahead of time (may not be entirely necessary)
6: in Input Connection, connect Zap2It channel setup to DVB card (likewise, not sure this is necessary but I did it)
7: go into channel editor (is that the name?), do a full channel scan, get the channels that your card can receive (Note that the URL above says to create the ATSC channels first, then scan for just those channels. Might be a cleaner way of doing it.)
8: run the script "DVB_fixer.sh" (full path is /usr/local/bin/DVB_fixer.sh)
9: quit mythtv-setup
10: start mythbackend back up again "/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start"
11: run mythfilldatabase (may not be necessary as the script in step 8 should do this).

This worked well for me. Beyond that, I won't be much help. Good luck!

EDITED 24 May 2005: Swap steps 8 and 9 like ceenvee703 suggests below.

Well, I that's the post I had used, which is where I saw this:


and that's how I did the channel replacement with the XMLTV ID... isn't that what he said? Oh, wait... oh, I see now. What's that they say about hindsight?

Your step 8 is different anyway. Much more direct!

Ah, but cesman says it was in there all along, look for human. I'd have seen that if I'd noticed that my search for HD-3000 had a "page 2, 3, and 4". D'OH! !

Too late for tonight, perhaps tomorrow I will start fresh. I did the upgrade to 15.1 with the card installed, so it should be good as far as that goes.

Can't wait to get my mythbox running again. Nearly a week with no Stargate SG1!

Thanks, all for your patient replies.

Red5 posted the appropriate directions.

I wrote the original Step 8: I should have been more specific that you copy the XMLTVID number from the Zap2it channel, into the XMLTVID field of the DVB-scanned channel.

Nevertheless, if Human's scripts do the trick, that's absolutely the easiest way to do it (although I suppose you'd have to quit out of mythtv-setup first in order to run the script, so you'd have to flip Steps 8 and 9).

I also found that I needed to add IVTV to /etc/modules above the drivers for the hd3000. This loads the pvr-250 before the hd3000. I have seen that others do not need to do this, but I needed to do it.

When you get it working, post how your live HD is. I have an AthlonXP 2600+ with 512mb ram as well and live HD is a little choppy. If I record it and watch it later, it's perfect though. The processor is at 91% when I'm watching live, but on my AthlonXP 3200+ it's only at about 75% and plays smooth (so I may just buy another 3200 chip).

I will absolutely post the results when I get it going, along with any observations, troubles, etc.

Sadly, I have to travel for the next couple of days and will not likely get to it until Friday or Saturday. But I'm eager to get to it!

Well, I got anxious so I stayed up late to give it a shot. So hopeful. Following the steps 1-11 above to the letter (except for switching 8 and 9) It all seemed to go so well until I tried to actuall use it again. Then I got the same old behavior (black screen, front end lockout.)

Noticing the post about IVTV being added to /etc/modules, I looked in that file and found no IVTV referenced at all. The end of my file was:

ipv6
md5
dm-mod

So I stuck in IVTV as such

ipv6
md5
ivtv
dm-mod

and ran "update-modules" and rebooted.

No change. Tried a few variations with caps, earlier placement, etc. No difference.

I then realized that since the upgrade I hadn't been seeing the "nvidea splash screen" I used, to, so figured I missed a step or something. The wiki said to go to the /usr/local/bin directory and execute a script there (though which of the two available install-nvidia-xxxx-debian.sh scripts to use I had no idea... so I guessed the higher number... 7xxx and I got the splash).

But still, black screen on trying to watch tv, with frontend lockout (had to kill from the command line).

I saw a post with a "workaround" where he recorded it, then watched the recording, I tried that... but the new recording shows up RED in the list, and nothing plays when I select it.

So now I'm really stumped.

Am I best off tanking my programs (or watching them) and just doing a virgin install? Or will I face the same fate?

At least the wife still has her Replay (yuck!) Once this works I'll ebay that sucker.

Edit: I also get this behavior if I have NO channels at all, and just try to use the composite video in from an old VCR to digitize some tapes... so I don't think the real issue is the channel guide. Hmmmm....

OK, I've been poking around the KnoppMythWiki, and the only thing I can think of is maybe I picked some wrong choices when doing the original install or upgrade?

I believe I chose the later kernel (2.6? rather than 2.4?) and the the i686 rather than i586 instructions after the first reboot. I am using a Sempron, so I think that's right.

I didn't install the XvMC drivers, hearing that it only helped with an MPEG2 hardware DEcoder, which I don't have, and causing trouble otherwise.

Were any of those bad choices?

those choices are all correct other than the fact that knoppmyth does not give you a choice of kernel. you get a 2.6 kernel.

Was there a problem in there somewhere?

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I'm not aware of there being any problems from the install... no errors, anyway.

I'm really stumped. Is it perhaps the card itself being bad? After all, even if I remove the card from the list of cards in Mythtv Setup, it still screws up the PVR-250 from working. Basically, even though the channel scan seems to work, if this card is physically in my machine, the mythfrontend won't tune anything (even the tuner that works otherwise).

When I remove the card, the other card works fine.

Have you even said what kind of cards you have? I have a hd3000 and pvr250 and they work great together right out of the box. Have you checked to see if the cards are sharing an irq?

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I had a similar problem with my set-up (2x HD3000 and 1 PVR500). I tried lots of things, but the thing that finally worked was rearranging the order of the cards in MythTV. This is what worked for me:

I did this all as root
1) stop mythbackend
2) run mythv-setup
3) answer yes to clear your capture card settings and no to clear channel settings (unless you want to rescan your channels)
4) set up the PVRxxx first, then set up the HD3000
5) set up the inputs to each card
6) exit mythtv-setup
7) restart mythbackend

Maybe you already have your PVR250 set as first in the list. If so just ignore this, but it may help someone else.

could be something to that my pvr is first as well. never tried to set it up any other way.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets