View unanswered posts    View active topics

All times are UTC - 6 hours





Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 6 posts ] 
Print view Previous topic   Next topic  
Author Message
Search for:
PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:03 pm 
Offline
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:29 am
Posts: 24
Hi all,

Just did a fresh-from-scratch install of R6 to my three year old knoppmyth box which was acting up with freezes and other glitches. Everything seems cool now, thanks to all who worked on this!

Before you read on, I am a total noob, and only know what I'm able to piece together from searching. Outside of my knoppmyth / mythtv / LinHES experience I have very little linux knowledge, so please take this into account if I mention something that doesn't sound right.

Ok, so I have two Pinnacle PCTV HD cards and they work just fine, but I just read that there's a new firmware out which SIGNIFICANTLY cuts down on the tuning time for channel flipping. Right now it takes about 5 seconds between changes, supposedly the new driver cuts it down to like half a second or something crazy cool like that. (Also, I'm secretly hoping that I can pick up audio on the NTSC tuner, since we have a local low-power analog station which won't be going digital and we'd love to get, currently I get picture but no sound)

I downloaded the new firmware, which is dvb-fe-xc5000-1.6.11, and just dumped it in /lib/firmware, and moved the old dvb-fe-xc5000-1.1 file out of there. Shut down, waited an hour, booted up... cards were now unable to tune anything in myth-setup, much less in "watch tv" of course.

dmesg shows the old firmware being looked for and being unsuccessful, no mention of the new. Also, if I just let the box sit at the main menu a few minutes, it would freeze up hard with no apparent provoaction, requiring a cold reboot (i.e. power button for 10 seconds). It did this with backend running and without. I think it even did it once from the mythwelcome screen. But I digress...

I put the old firmware back in /lib/firmware/ got the new firmware out of there and all is well again, after re-doing everything in myth-setup.

Sooo, how do I use the new firmware? Do I need to update v4l as well? The mythtv wiki, when mentioning the new drivers for this card says:
"UPDATE: As of May 5th, 2009, there is a newer version of the firmware version available here. The latest v4l-dvb tree REQUIRES this version be used. "

I was thinking this doesn't necessarily mean the new driver won't work with the previous v4l , just that the new v4l requires the new driver. Was I wrong? If so, which of the v4l upgrade how-to's is best for R6?

I found these:

1- http://linuxtv.org/repo/

2- and the mythtv wiki instructions themselves which say:
"To download the latest v4l-dvb tree, simply select the bz2 or gz link on the top left of the page, then build them via running "make" followed by "make install" ("sudo make install" if you are not logged in as root).

3- or the ones in the knoppmyth wiki? Under the HVR950 How-To... these are quite relevant because this is in fact my same card, but dunno if these instructions apply to R6 in the same way.

I don't wanna mess up a great thing here.

Thanks!

Jester


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 10:28 pm 
Offline
Joined: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:12 pm
Posts: 1194
Location: SC
I have a HVR-950Q and am running the new driver and firmware. I have put in a FlySpray ticket to get this to be available in R6 by default. Until then what you need to do is basically like your #2.

I am assuming you are logged in as the mythtv user.
You will need to install make as R6 doesn't come with it by default:
Code:
sudo pacman -S make

Download the v4l-dvb tip and decompress:
Code:
wget http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb/archive/tip.tar.bz2
tar xvjf tip.tar.bz2

Change directory to what ever the v4l-dvb tip decompressed and make:
Code:
cd v4l-dvb-xxxxxx
make

That will take a little while, when it is done do:
Code:
sudo make install

Download the current version of the firmware and copy it to the /lib/firmware directory. The version you listed above was either and older version or missing some characters:
Code:
cd ..
wget http://www.kernellabs.com/firmware/xc5000/dvb-fe-xc5000-1.6.114.fw
mv dvb-fe-xc5000-1.6.114.fw /lib/firmware/

Reboot and it should now work.

The tuning time is greatly reduced. However I still have had no luck getting analog to work in myth. Analog does work in mplayer and TVTime but for some reason not in myth for me anyway.

Britney


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:20 am 
Offline
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:29 am
Posts: 24
brfransen wrote:
The version you listed above was either and older version or missing some characters


Yeah, I did a quick cut-paste and didn't realize the paste dropped a few of the digits at the end... sorry to any future readers.

brfransen wrote:
The tuning time is greatly reduced. However I still have had no luck getting analog to work in myth. Analog does work in mplayer and TVTime but for some reason not in myth for me anyway.


Great, the tuning is right on the verge of not being tolerable right now, so this is great news. I'm actually considering putting in a pvr-500 I have laying around just for that one low-power analog channel I'm interested in... :roll:

brfransen wrote:
Until then what you need to do is basically like your #2. Britney


Thanks so much!!!! I'll post back to let you know how it went...

Jester


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 11:33 pm 
Offline
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:14 am
Posts: 1343
Location: Orlando FL
I am curious as I could never get my PCTV HD to work with R5.5. I would like to know if more people are having better luck with R6


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 7:58 am 
Offline
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:07 am
Posts: 1532
Location: California
Hi, I'm the person that wrote the original "HowTo" in the knoppmyth wiki for the HVR-950 and Pinnacle tuners. I'd like to try the new firmware for the Pinnacle card -- can someone provide me a link to where that new firmware is located and any articles that talk about the requisite v4l driver version, etc. Thanks!

Mattbatt, I have two R5.5 machines using the Pinnacle cards.

_________________
Marc

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:31 am 
Offline
Joined: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:12 pm
Posts: 1194
Location: SC
http://osdir.com/ml/linux-media/2009-05/msg00533.html


Top
 Profile  
 

Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 6 posts ] 


All times are UTC - 6 hours




Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 25 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group

Theme Created By ceyhansuyu