Hi guys,

Going nuts here !

I bought a PVR-350 as I thought it would be a simple case of adding it to the system, boot up, answer some questions and done.

It always has been, except from the fact when it scans for channels it finds nothing! I have a coax cable plugged into it that definitely is transmitting a signal. I choose to use Tuner as the source.

I followed a few guides on selecting source, inputs etc.

2 things from this.

1) could it be that I am in a PAL country and need to set something ?
2) How can I trouble shoot this easily ? How can I get back to the TV card set up to scan for channels again once I have left that section of Knoppmyth ? A reboot doesnt get me there.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

See this wiki page. It's the central troubleshooting reference for tuner issues. http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=BlackScreenWatchingTV

Awesome!!

cheers

Followed that page. It just confirmed everything I did was correct.

Any further instructions ?

PS I found that I should set the confiig located at /etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0 to have IVTV_TYPE = to PAL. But hasn't seemed to make a difference.

That's broken due to this:

Poke around with v4l2-ctl -d0 -Sl (-d1 for /dev/video1 etc.) to see how you card(s) are set up. If the card is set to the wrong standard I'll post a patched version of /etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params for you to try.

Video input : 1 (S-Video 1)
Video standard = 0x000000ff
PAL-B/B1/G/H/I/D/D1/K

Looks right apart from the S-Video part. I have coax plugged in, so Tuner is needed, is it not ?

Here's the top of /etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params



Looks different to what the command gave us.

You're looking at the fallback for when nothing is specified under /etc/sysconfig/ivtv.

Try poking in a default input like this:

This should really be coming from your defaults in mythtv-setup. Have you gone through that for this card? Did you remember to setup an input connection for it?

So I should edit "/etc/sysconfig/ivtv" ? "/etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params " is the fallback ? Where do i poke in "v4l2-ctl -d0 -i0 " in a terminal and then run the setup again ?


I did all that wiki said, which is what other tutorials said, so have done it a few times.

The setting in the /etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0 file is what is used for video0. If there is nothing in that file it "falls back" to the default setting built into the set_ivtv_params script. What I was say was that if you've got it set in cfg-0, then the default in the script never gets used.

As for the v4l2-ctl command, yes, just run it in a shell/terminal session. It sets your card 0 to input 0 which should be the tuner.

Ahh great thanks.

How come I have this in my /etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0



Yet v4l2-ctl -d0 -SI returns:


???

Well, the # starts a comment, and the set_ivtv_params is not working in R5E50. That's why I suggested running that v4l2-ctl command by hand.

BTW - I've posted a patched version of set_ivtv_params in the R5E50 upgrade hints thread.

Still nothing when scanning. I don't believe it.

One would never need set_ivtv_params if they set /etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0

Correct ?

What next can I try ? Any logs anywhere giving back more feedback ? Should I set the --log-status argument to v4l2-ctl ?

No. My explainer must be broken this wekend...

set_ivtv_params is the script (which just means an interpreted program) which runs when the system starts up to apply initial settings to all of your PVR cards.

/etc/sysconfig/ivtv/cfg-0 and it's siblings are configuration files which are used by that script. The script has builtin defaults which it uses if there are no settings in the config file for a particular card (cfg-0 for /dev/video0, cfg-1 for /dev/video1, and so on...).

If there is a setting in the config file the script uses that. If there is not a setting, it falls back to the default value built into the script.

Is this getting any clearer?

I think your explainer is in tack, its just me being thick and meticulous about this all.

I think it was this comment that had me thinking that the set_ivtv_params script was superfluous.

I'll try your patched script, thanks. But is it not possible to set all that this script sets with the v4l2 command ? I set it to use tuner 0 with your command and then did the channel scan [with backend shutdown] and still not a single channel.

Whats the best way to troubleshoot this ? A way to enable a more verbose output ?

I might try not using the tuner, but an external one and use the composite inputs perhaps.......