I'm trying to install R5A22 on a machine with 1 HD3000 card, and I'm dissapointed that the current KnoppMyth release does not result in the HD3000 working "out of the box" as I hoped.

The first issue is that the although the card seems to be detected correctly, settings for the card must be manually entered into the mythtv-setup screens (wouldn't it be possible for the computer to do this for me?). Since I don't know what device the card is on, I take the default (dev/video32). This turns out to be incorrect (e.g. Channel Scan tab doesn't work), so game over until I discover the correct device number (I'm working on it, but any hints are welcome).

The second issue is that instructions and various computer messages are printed to the screen and scroll off before I can read them. I didn't see any indication of where to look after installation or configuration for these messages.

Both of these isses may be covered in install documentation, but not that I saw in the KnoppMyth pamphlet or the (latest I could find) EFF instructions. Are there current and complete HOWTOs on how to get the HD3000 working on R5A22? If not HOWTOs, a collection of forum messages to read? If not that, any quick advice on getting me up to speed (device number, what command to test for signal strength before starting MythTV, etc.)?

Thanks, Dara

I'm disappointed, you didn't read my old anouncements that state the HD3000 works out the box. This was old news several releases ago, shall I continue to annouce this with every release? The 3000 uses the DVB driver, again old news....

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I did read the changelog where it says that the DVB drivers for pchdtv were added in April of this year, but haven't read previous release notes. I certainly didn't intend to annoy a developer by using the word disappointed, I guess I have to work on my word usage. I do appreciate the availability of KnoppMyth and believe me, I don't enjoy all the work it takes to get Fedora (using the Fedora Myth Howto) to the point I'm at in KnoppMyth in 10 minutes after putting the CD in the drive.

The "out of the box" reference I was thinking of was the comment on mythic.tv's description of the HD-3000:

"as of KnoppMyth R5A22, it works out of the box with DVB drivers!"

(disclaimer: I sent them an email to change this quote from what it used to say – something like it will work out of the box with the "next version" of Knoppix)

Ok, maybe my definition of "out of the box" is wrong, but I would say it means I don't have to download drivers (I believe this is true), and whatever knowledge can be learned during auto detection (e.g. nvidia card type, pchdtv card type both properly detected in my install) is applied to the program that uses it (KnoppMyth doesn't yet populate the card data base in MythTV, though I think it would be a useful feature in the future if it isn't too hard to code). Cesman, what do you mean by "works out of the box"?

Again, I don't like to be a whining user, so if anyone can point me to documentation or good forum posts (I have been browsing) for both installing R5A22 and configuring MythTV for use with the HD3000, I would be grateful.

Dara

I mean, the pcHDTV 3000 (as well and the 2000 and the Air2PC/AirStar) should be detected and just work (barring hardward conflicts/issues). The drivers and firmware(s) are include so all one has to do is configure MythTV using DVB. Don't tell MythTV it is a pcHDTV, tell it to use DVB.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

well I suppose it would be nice if knoppmyth could just read your mind and setup your zap2it account with the proper zip and lineup along with everything else, but we are not quite at that point in the computing world just yet. so yes you still have to go through all the steps of mythtv-setup. They are fairly simple. what it sounds like you are getting confused by is the card setup knoppmyth now uses the dvb drivers which means you setup the pchdtv card as a dvb card not the pchdtv option. granted that option being there is a bit confusing, but it's a part of mythtv, maybe sometime in the future it will get removed as everyone moves over to the dvb drivers.

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

Xsecrets

Was that really necessary?

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MythRig: Shuttle SN41G2 + PVR-350->TV + KnoppMyth R5Beta7

(typo in my last post: Knoppix > KnoppMyth)

I'm perhaps getting closer. I found http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... 3000_HOWTO which gave me some new info. I've stopped the backend and set the capture card to be a dvb device as cesman advised. I need to figure out if the channel 4_1 is really coming in (it's pretty strong), but I wonder if there is another problem before that, since when I restart the backend I get:

Starting up as the master server.
2005-10-30 20:35:44.465 New DB connection, total: 2
2005-10-30 20:35:44.469 DVB#0 Using DVB card 0, with frontend pcHDTV HD3000 HDTV.
2005-10-30 20:35:44.473 New DB connection, total: 3
2005-10-30 20:35:44.475 DVB#0 ERROR - Could not find dvb tuning parameters for transport 0
2005-10-30 20:35:44.476 DVB#0 ERROR - Failed to get channel options for channel 4_1.
2005-10-30 20:35:47.824 TVRec: Timed out waiting for lock -- aborting recording

So I guess I have to figure out what dvb tuning parameters are next.

As far as reading my mind goes, I can see why my zap2it info isn't filled in automatically in the mythtv-setup pages, but I would think the card info could be (if you don't like what is there, you could always change it). But if no one thinks that would work (or that it would even be an improvement), then I guess I won't see that feature in the future.

Dara

In order for card info to be filled in, we'd need to know exact details about one's card(s). While it is possible, it becomes a question of should we? What if a user has a bttv tuner and a HDTV tuner? Should we make the assumption that the HDTV should be card 1? While we'll continue to strive for ease of installation and configuration, some things are best left to the users to decide.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

My answer would be as long as a) it doesn't pose too much difficulty to code and b) it doesn't inconvenience experienced users, then yes.

I would think one way to do avoid inconvenience is to offer an option after install to display a list of the probed hardware and show the auto-detected best guess at all MythTV config screens (ideally you'd allow editing at this point) which of course can be changed when running mythtv-setup. If the option wasn't selected, the current behavior would remain unchanged.

Perhaps I should read a page that discusses KnoppMyth R5 (and on) goals. Then I'd know if what I'm suggesting is moving in the wrong direction.

Dara

My two cents...

I certainly expected for the hd-3000 to be the selected card from the list. It was in the list and was easy enough to change, but I still expected it to be picked in version 16 and 22. This si just a matter of defaulting. And it is already defaulting to somehting like video32, so it not like it is being left blank. And if you have multiple tuners, then yes you should go with the one that will be most likely on a new install. And right now I would guess that would be the hd-3000. Of course this is all under the assumption a list of cards can be detected.

Keep up the good work,

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GA-K8NS-939 Ultra
AMD 64 939 Venice 3200+
1GB RAM (2 512MB DDR400 184PIN DIMM )
HD3000
2 160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.7s
MSI Nx6200ax-td128 video card
Cooler Master Cavalier 2 - 350W PS
BenQ DW1640

Thanks,

Chris Lopeman

This thread has strayed off-topic. It is going to stay the way it is.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

OK, back on topic. My HD-3000 card is now working (not quite as fluidly as my Comcast DVR, but I don't think I have XvMC running yet and my processor is only 1.8 GHz). I'm not sure what I did wrong to get the error messages on my last post, but this time, channel scan in mythv-setup worked perfectly, and after picking a signal that has a high strength as the initial signal, I'm now watching Nova in HD.

I'll try to recreate the steps I did from the beginning and submit my notes to the Wiki. The old R5A16 HD3000 HOWTO is much too complicated for what I had to do (which in the end was very little - I just needed to know a few changes from the defaults).

I look forward to R5.

Dara