Last night I installed R5A12 and got it mostly working (haven't tried IR yet). I don't think I ran into any problems that werent' previously posted.

If others are working to get the PVR-350 to work better "out of the box", then I'll just say thanks, and wait. If I could be of assistance (e.g., write up a detailed procedure, or provide new sample config files, etc.), then I can do that.

Hi,

I'm a linux novice and have been trying to get my PVR-350 working for a week. I've tried every tuner type and every other suggestion I've come across with no sucess. I Downloaded R5A12 and now the card seem to be recognized but I still have no picture, only static. I've also used the ptune-ui to check the channels and I know the card is good because It works with Windoz fine.

I suspect that the ivtv tuner patch my help but I can't figure out how to apply it and then compile the tuner module????

Any help would be greatly appreciate before I pull all my hair out !!!

Thanks

I have the same problem as sandifer; everything appears to be detected correctly, but I only get static when trying to tune.

Same situation:

PVR-350
Fresh R5A12 install
Nothing but static

If anyone finds out why, please let me know.

Did any of you bother to put the word static in the search function of the forum? This is a well known and covered issue. It is an incorrect tuner setting.

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

Xsecrets

I also ran into the static problem with the R5A12 version too (PVR350 model 988/PAL). This was also the case with R4v5, but I think something also has changed.

The trick is to add "tda9887=0", but this doesn't work because the same line contains "debug=1". This is probably an obsolete option and makes other options to be ignored. This is what I did to fix it:


To get the tv-out to change from green to black in R4v5 I used this line at the end of the ivtv file:

This doesn't work anymore though (does anyone know why?)
Manualy setting this value doesn't seem to be sufficient either anymore. When starting tv the GUI returns: "Unable to initialize video."...

I believe it's an 2.4.xx vs. 2.6.xx kernel thing casued by changes to the module loader.

Do a:



and look at the value returned for tuner (Mine turned out to be 47, everyone is set to 2 by default). Change this value in /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv and reboot. That should give you what you want.

If you want TV-Out, you will need to add ivtv-fb to /etc/modules as well.

Here are my notes for installing R5A12 on a PVR350 and to get tv-out to work.

Despite the fact I may pretend like I know what I'm doing below, don't be fooled! Everything included below was dredged from net sources. I'm ignorant myself

1. Sign up for MythTV listing service labs.zap2it.com (this makes installing knoppmyth easier). See http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html for help on this, and also when running mythtv-setup. Deselect the channels you don't plan to view (this speeds up downloads)

2. Install knoppmyth R5A12



For your own sanity, don't use "mythtv" as your host name. I choose "fred". Otherwise searching the logs for myth messages is messy.

Note that the timezone in the install screen is lost, you'll have to enter it again after the reboot.

Since I have a 686 compatible CPU, I selected 686 modules; have IR module. I got an SQL error during this phase, but it doesn't seem to affect the install.

Mythtv setup (use arrows, enter, and ESC to navigate):
General: I have a home network, so I set a real IP addr; 192.168.0.4
Capture Cards:
Select new, choose "MPEG 2 encoder ... PVR-350"
Video Sources:
Select new, pick any name (I used "cable"), then enter your listing service user name and password, and select "Retrieve Linups".
Input Connections:
Go to TV tuner, and enter the video source (e.g., "cable").

Channel Editor can be skipped for now. If you're like me, you'll have to change the "frequency ID" for most of the low numbered channels to get the right labels and programming info since my cable provider renumbers many of them. Using mythweb for this is way easier anyway.

After retrieving your program guide info, the myth screen will come up. At this time a "Watch tv" on my machine yielded only video noise.

Note that the "tuner type" in the knopmyth distribution is "2". Apparently (some?) newer PVR-350 cards require the type to be something else. My understanding is that if you could see the TV display in the previous step, you'll want to use "type=2" below. To find your tuner type:



So I need to use tuner type 47.

Replace /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv with the following:



Note the only differences are the tuner type, and the addition of the "/sbin/modprobe ivtv-fb" additions on the install and remove lines.
Reboot. When prompted, enter the root password, choose "no" for all "reset" questions, and then just exit mythtv-setup without changing anything.
You should now be able to see live TV on your monitor, and hear it through your sound card.
Next get TV out to work. In case you have difficulty, these are the resources I used:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php
http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/archive ... _help.html
http://membres.lycos.fr/badzzzz/

The X windows FB device driver no longer appears to work, so you'll need the pvr350 ivtv device driver.



Now, configure X11. You'll need the output from the following commands in the next step:



The "0a" in the "000:00:0a.0" is the key part. Your's will depend on what PCI slot your card is in. You'll use this in the "BusID" line below.



The first number on the /proc/fb line is the frame buffer device number in the "/dev/fb#" below. Most likely it will be 1.

Now backup your existing X config file, then update to the PVR350 sample, and customize it for your configuration:



Here are the changes I had to make to it.



You'll need to make similar changes. Note that the "Option" line should be *added* to the same location where the current option line is, so it looks like:



I couldn't figure out how to get the ivtv driver to use X screen 0, so this means you have to update the gdm "[servers]" entry to use screen 1.



R5A12 appears to be missing the launch of the IR remote daemon. Add the start of it to bootmisc.sh:



When X restarts, you should get the knoppmyth login on your TV. I haven't figured out how to get myth to auto start on screen 1. You'll need to "right click" and select "Apps/graphics/mythtv".

At this point, you should be able to view TV on your TV, but it will be *very slow*.

Go to "utilities setup"/setup/tv settings/playback, and navigate to the screen with "Use the PVR-350's TV out/MPGEG decoder", and select it. Watching TV should now work!

The following may very well be specific to my configuration, so if you are happy with what you have, stop now.

My screen had parts clipped off when viewing the menus so to get display sized properly I did the following. Note you have to use the right and left arrow keys to adjust these, and they appear to be TV specific.



Ref: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/m ... sers/47047

Get DVD decode to work (as root):



The DVD playback appears to be better with the newer IVTV driver than the old FB driver, but my machine (Asus a7v133, Athlon 850) is still a bit underpowered for this to work smoothly on some DVDs.

Wiki for starting samba (access from MS windows):

http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/inde ... SambaHowTo

For starting ntpd (time synchronization):

http://knoppmythwiki.homelinux.org/inde ... onizeHowTo

Thank you very much alarson, your notes have helped me out a lot. I have been banging my head against the wall for a while......

BTW, to get mythtv to start when gdm does, just create a file name .xsession in the mythtv user directory, and add the line "/usr/bin/mythfrontend &".

Thanks for your detailed post alarson. I have made the changes you detailed above as I am getting static on my PVR 350. My tuner type was 1. When I saved /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv and rebooted I wasn't taken through the mythtv-setup again, I was taken straight to the mythtv frontend, and I still have static on the live tv. I have it connected through an arial and have tuner selected as the default input for the video source.

Any idea why Im still getting static? Is the fact that I wasn't taken through setup again after rebooting significant?

What did you get when you did:



I don't think the absence of running the setup was the problem (but like I noted, I'm just guessing on all this stuff). If your tuner is set properly, and you have the input source selected properly, I'm not sure why it would fail. There are several resources that allow you to debug tuner problems. You'll probably want to start with Jarods howto for FC2 http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

I got:



so I set my tuner type to be 1 in /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv

Thanks I will take a look at the howto.

I'm stuck.

Every time I try to get the TV out driver to work X11 refuses to start up.
I have a type 47 350. I can see all the channels past 60 on the monitor.

The TV just displays a green screen.

This is what I got while following your instructions:
fred# lspci | grep -i itv
0000:02:0c.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)

fred# grep -i itv /proc/fb
<nothing. Absolutely nothing>

I'm sure this is where it's screwing up but I dunno. I can't find anything called itv anywhere on the machine. Because of this I wasn't sure what to put on the Option "ivtv" "/dev/fb1" line so I left it alone.

On the BusID line I was also confused. I tried

BusID "0x02:0x0c:0"
BusID "02:0x0c:0"
BusID "0:0x0c:0"

None of which worked.
Help!

You first need to fix the green screen before proceeding with fb etc. In this topic are possible things you can try and there are other topics about the green/purple also, try to find and read those too.