After several attempts I almost have this system up and working flawlessly (hardware listed below). I've tried searching around but can't seem to find the right words to get the right results here. Also, I realize that I am using a VIA chipset and an ATI card (for TV-out only, which is working), but I feel like this must be a different or at least solvable problem because I am very close...

The one problem that continues to plague me is frequent (20+% of the time) audio distortion from the PVR-500 on both tuners. This can happen either when I select to view Live-TV, when I change channels, OR viewing a recorded show. This distortion can best be described as very similar to the noise you hear in the cabin of a commercial airliner -- a high pitched static/hiss. If you crank up the volume, you can generally make out the real audio, except on the second tuner. On the second tuner, it actually makes a popping sound (seems like I can get more volume out of this tuner as well under normal circumstances). I can get the distortion to go away by switching channels, and eventually it will become good. I have tried this card in a Windows system for about 24 hours, and suspect it to be good.

Very important to note that this does NOT happen all the time, in fact it's much more rare now that I've fixed some problems (now only happens about 20% of the time when switching channels vs. about 90%). Here's a detailed list of what I've done to get it to the point of working (addressed problems of no TV-out and also very choppy video). I've not done anything other than what is on this list.

What I've done:
- Download and install R5A30.2. Installation appeared to work fine, and detected the PVR-500 right away.
- Edit /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv (needed to do this because I was not getting any video):

- Download and install the latest ATI Linux Proprietary driver. (I believe this is working fine, so not including my XF86Config-4 file unless requested). Note that when I did this, I would get the distorted audio a lot less. CPU usage was almost much lower.

I have NOT done any updates as I'm a total Debian n00b and very new to KnoppMyth (I started on a Fedora Core 3 system with MythTV, but had the same problems, someone recommended I try KnoppMyth -- really like it, but having the same problem). So other than the ATI driver, I've not done anything to update this system from the base KnoppMyth install -- no OS updates, nothing!!

I did do some extra poking around with my limited knowledge of ivtv:

Results of ivtv-ctl --log-status:


dmesg after I do a ivtv-tune --channel=47

^^ That could be part of the problem? It's happening every time I change channels from what I can tell.

I'm in the United States so using NTSC standards.

As I've mentioned, I tried searching here but I must not be keying on the right information, just not finding any results. If this someone has had the same problem and it's been resolved elsewhere, please steer me there and I will check it out. Otherwise, I'll assume this is a unique problem.

Please, let me know if I need to post more information. Also in your responses, please treat me like a dummy and don't assume anything.. I know a little about RedHat, but Debian is very new to me, and I might assume something wrongly. Actual commands to run/try would be very appreciated so I don't have to Google around to figure out syntax.

Hardware:
- Gigabyte GA-7VAX (using onboard sound)
- Athlron 1400
- 512 MB RAM
- 80 GB HD (DMA on)
- TV out card: ATI All-In-Wonder 9700
- Capture card: Hauppauge PVR-500

*** I have also tried on the below hardware, using Fedora Core 3/MythTV (not KnoppMyth) with similar results ***
P3 667
512 MB RAM
80 GB HD (DMA on)
no TV out card (nVidia)
Hauppauge PVR-500

I was ready to point the blam at the mother board since it has a VIA chipset but then I saw you tried it in a different system with the same results.

At this point you should update the ivtv drivers. The wiki has an great write up on doing this. If you still have issues it may be time to try it in a windows box or exchange the PVR-500.

I was having issues with my 500 and the new ivtv drivers resolved them.

using the wiki instructions it took me less than 10 minutes.

Thank you for the reply. I tried updating ivtv to 0.4.2, same story.. maybe a tad less CPU usage also. Also got rid of the i2c warning I was getting. I think at this point I am just going to try this on my P4 and try without TV-out via the Radeon card. If it works I'll just chalk it up to hardware incompatibilities. I'll post my results here. In the meantime if anyone else has any other ideas, let me know!

I'm actually having a very similar problem. had my box running fine with just a pvr-150, had to upgrade ivtv to 4.3 to get that to work properly. I got greedy and purchased a pvr-500 and threw that in there additionally, it was detected fine, just every so often changing channels results in the hiss i'd describe like when an older tv has no signal
I havent experienced it in any recordings yet, but I havent yet experimented a lot with multiple recordings back-to-back

the extra header that came with the 500 wouldn't affect the coax input, right?

System:
Epox 8RDA3+ Pro (nForce2 Ultra 400)
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 (this has always 'just worked' TV out)
300G + 160G ATA HD, no special setup yet, maybe LVM later
768MB RAM
onboard 8ch sound
PVR-150
PVR-500

I remember seeing somewhere about the low-latency message, i'm gonna apply that fix to see if it changes anything

I haven't posted on here for a while but figured I'd throw an update to my problem in as well. I've tried on a P4 and also an Athlon 64 system and still have the same problem. It seems the beefier hardware I go that I am able to get the problem less and less, but it's never gone away (even on the Ath64 system it is pretty bad).

As far as your problem, it does seem similar, unfortunately I have not had much time to tinker or read up on possibilities. As far as the extra header, I sincerely wouldn't think that would cause any problems, especially with coax input.

Make sure you're updated to ivtv 0.4.3 and the recommended firmware, then run this command to check the codec parameters, and report the results:

Here's what I got.

This may be caused by tda9887.ko not loading and may be the cause of your audio troubles.

move tda9887.ko out of your v4l modules directory and make sure your using the one from ivtv

I've just built a new Myth box w/ a pvr-500 and am having the exact same issue. It's intermittant, doesn't happen every time, but sometimes when changing a channel the audio is screwey - high pitch "snowy" sort of noise, with the real audio very low underneath it, just as you describe. It seems to go away after changing channels a few times. Currently, this only happens on the second tuner, first one is fine.

I also had a PVR-150 in this box when I built it, which I have since removed as a troubleshooting measure. It is interesting to note that with the 3 tuners installed (150+500), I believe I was experiencing this audio issue on both 500 tuners. After removing the 150, it's only happening on the second 500 tuner.

I had upgraded to ivtv0.4.3 to get all three tuners to work together happily, and futzed with a few other things that I didn't document so can't really report accurately.

Specs:
MSI K8N Neo v2 (nforce3 250)
AMD Sempron 2800+
Nvidia 5200FX AGP w/ Composite Out
PVR-500 w/ Phillips tuners
Audio out from mobo

This is a fresh install of 5A30.2 with ivtv0.4.3

I'm about to do another clean install and see what happens w/ just the pvr-500 and the stock 5A30.2 ivtv drivers (0.4.0?). If still having issues, I'll upgrade to 0.4.3 again.

Will make sure to document everything I do this time so I can report back accurately, maybe we can find some similarities in our situations and sort this out.

Cheers,

Chris

Same results w/ clean install of 5A30.2 and just the pvr-500 (no 150).

This happens with ivtv0.4.0 and 0.4.3.

For what it's worth, I documented everything I did. Only getting the bad audio on second tuner of the 500 right now. Think I'm going to pop the 150 back in under this install, and if I continue to get solid audio out of the 500's first tuner, I'll just not use the 2nd one.

I'd be glad to post any other information that would be helpful in troubleshooting this.



-Clean install of 5A30.2

-Go through the initial setup as far as bringing up the network

-SSH into box and check "dmesg |grep tuner:"

tuner: type set to 62 (Philips TEA5767HN FM Radio) by autodetect
tuner: type set to 57 (Philips FQ1236A MK4) by ivtv i2c driver #0
tuner: type set to 57 (Philips FQ1236A MK4) by ivtv i2c driver #1

-Check output of ivtv-detect , get segmentation fault

-Check output of 'for i in 0 1 ; do echo /dev/video$i ; ivtvctl -d /dev/video$i -CYZ ; echo ; done'

-see ivtvctl-1 at end of post

-Continue w/ initial setup, chose i686 packages

-Completed mythtv-setup

-Setup 2 capture cards

/dev/video0 - tuner0
/dev/video1 - tuner0

-setup 1 Video Source (Comcast Cable)

-set input connection for bother capture cards (tuner0 on each) to Comast Cable video source

-Start Myth Frontend

-livetv

started on Tuner 2, sound is bad
switched to tuner 1, sound is fine
change channels few times on tuner 1, sound is fine each channel change, all channels
switch back to tuner 2, sound is bad
after 3 channel changes, sound is fine. 2 more sound is bad. 1 more sound is good. etc etc etc


-follow instructions here (http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=CompileIvtv) to update to ivtv0.4.3

-reboot

-check status of "dmesg |grep tuner:"

tuner: type set to 62 (Philips TEA5767HN FM Radio) by autodetect
tuner: type set to 57 (Philips FQ1236A MK4) by ivtv i2c driver #0
tuner: type set to 57 (Philips FQ1236A MK4) by ivtv i2c driver #1

-Check output of ivtv-detect

driver: ivtv-0.4.3 (tagged release)
card: WinTV PVR 500 (unit #1), bus info 0000:03:08.0, ivtv card #0
hardware: cx25840 tda9887 wm8775 tveeprom
/dev/video0: MPG encoding (links: /dev/video)
/dev/radio0: Radio (links: /dev/radio)
/dev/vbi0: VBI encoding (links: /dev/vbi)
/dev/video24: PCM encoding
/dev/video32: YUV encoding

driver: ivtv-0.4.3 (tagged release)
card: WinTV PVR 500 (unit #2), bus info 0000:03:09.0, ivtv card #1
hardware: cx25840 tda9887 wm8775 tveeprom
/dev/video1: MPG encoding
/dev/vbi1: VBI encoding
/dev/video25: PCM encoding
/dev/video33: YUV encoding

-Check output of 'for i in 0 1 ; do echo /dev/video$i ; ivtvctl -d /dev/video$i -CYZ ; echo ; done'
-see ivtvctl-2 at end of post

-Rerun mythtv setup, clear capture card settings, and reset capture cards

-Setup 2 capture cards
/dev/video0 - Tuner
/dev/video1 - Tuner

-Set input connection for both capture cards to existing Comcast Cable video source

-Start Myth frontend

-LiveTV

Started on Tuner 2, sound is bad
Switched to tuner 1, sound is fine
change channels few times on tuner 1, sound is fine each change, all channels
switch back to tuner 2, sound is fine
change channels on tuner 2, sound is bad, 2 more chan changes, sound is fine, 2 more sound is bad, etc





#####Begin ivtvctl-1#####
/dev/video0
ioctl IVTV_IOC_G_CODEC ok
Codec parameters
aspect : 2
audio : 0x00e9
bframes : 3
bitrate_mode: 0
bitrate : 8000000
bitrate_peak: 9600000
dnr_mode : 0
dnr_spatial : 0
dnr_temporal: 0
dnr_type : 0
framerate : 0
framespergop: 15
gop_closure : 1
pulldown : 0
stream_type : 14
ioctl: VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL
Brightness = 128
Contrast = 64
Saturation = 64
Hue = 0
Volume = 60928
Mute = 0
ioctl VIDIOC_G_TUNER ok
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x2
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

/dev/video1
ioctl IVTV_IOC_G_CODEC ok
Codec parameters
aspect : 2
audio : 0x00e9
bframes : 3
bitrate_mode: 0
bitrate : 8000000
bitrate_peak: 9600000
dnr_mode : 0
dnr_spatial : 0
dnr_temporal: 0
dnr_type : 0
framerate : 0
framespergop: 15
gop_closure : 1
pulldown : 0
stream_type : 14
ioctl: VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL
Brightness = 128
Contrast = 64
Saturation = 64
Hue = 0
Volume = 60928
Mute = 0
ioctl VIDIOC_G_TUNER ok
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x2
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)
#####End ivtvctl-1#####

#####Start ivtvctl-2#####
/dev/video0
ioctl IVTV_IOC_G_CODEC ok
Codec parameters
aspect : 2
audio : 0x00e9
bframes : 3
bitrate_mode: 0
bitrate : 4500000
bitrate_peak: 6000000
dnr_mode : 0
dnr_spatial : 0
dnr_temporal: 0
dnr_type : 0
framerate : 0
framespergop: 15
gop_closure : 1
pulldown : 0
stream_type : 0
ioctl: VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL
Brightness = 127
Contrast = 63
Saturation = 63
Hue = 0
Volume = 58880
Mute = 0
ioctl VIDIOC_G_TUNER ok
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x1
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

/dev/video1
ioctl IVTV_IOC_G_CODEC ok
Codec parameters
aspect : 2
audio : 0x00e9
bframes : 3
bitrate_mode: 0
bitrate : 4500000
bitrate_peak: 6000000
dnr_mode : 0
dnr_spatial : 0
dnr_temporal: 0
dnr_type : 0
framerate : 0
framespergop: 15
gop_closure : 1
pulldown : 0
stream_type : 0
ioctl: VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL
Brightness = 127
Contrast = 63
Saturation = 63
Hue = 0
Volume = 58880
Mute = 0
ioctl VIDIOC_G_TUNER ok
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x6
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

#####End ivtvctl-2#####

Sorry to be completely flooding this thread, but I just found something interesting.

I did toss my 150 back in the box, and disabled the second tuner on the 500 through myth. Still having the same issue - tuner1 good, tuner2 sometimes bad audio.

I started doing ivtvctl -d /dev/video1 -CYZ each time the audio quality changed and found that the available audio subchannels change when the audio is bad.

Here's what I'm seeing with both a stereo and mono channel.

Stereo channel, audio good:
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x2
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

Stereo channel, audio bad:
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x6
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

Mono channel, audio good:
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x1
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)

Mono channel, audio bad:
current audio mode : 1
(stereo 1, lang1 3, lang2 2, mono 0)
available subchannels: 0x5
(stereo 0x2, lang1 0x8, lang2 0x4, mono 0x1)


The "available subchannels:" string is the only difference in the ivtvctl output between good and bad audio. I find it curious that in both the bad audio instances, the code listed is not included the list of available subchannels.

Perhaps a very dopey idea, but just want to cover the bases (please do not be insulted, as I crewed this up at one point). I'm new, so I don't know any better, anyway

Do you have the i686 module installed? You can switch to it, in essence, without total reinstall of the system. I had stupidly installed the 586 module and was getting quite crappy sound quality. Installed the 686, and all was well. No other changes made.

Again, don't shoot me and don't be insulted, por favor!