ok , got new case and ebay mobo today...

rebuilt the box in a prettier case (coolermaster atcs 620)

and its rebuilding the kernel as per instructions as we speak.

thanks for that walkthrough on updating the kernel,
I didn't realise it was that easy to do, thought it was something for the linux supervillains.

Having removed a load of unused devices from my kernel I have now managed to shave a good minute and a half from the boot up time.

Forgive me for being pedantic but for those who may be as linux illiterate as me:

I had to edit /etc/lilo.conf by scrolling down and changing the reference to the kernel image from:

/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11.9-chw-2, to
/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13

Then, to "run lilo" it's as simple as:

# lilo

Doing
# nano /proc/version

Now indicates that I am running the 2.6.13 kernel

Hi,

Ok, just go me a Nova-T card and hit a problem detecting it, so not even got to the problem most people have when scanning yet.

When I go to

Mythtv-setup
Capture Cards
Select DVD device

Two times out of three I get:

could not open card#0
Device or resource busy

However I have had this detected as a NOVA-T, there is no reasoning for when it is and isn't detected though, just temperamental. I have tried switching to a different PCI slot and removing my wireless cardbus card (which I think uses the same IRQ as ndiswrapper). No luck.

I've tried this with a fresh install of knoppmyth and also with a fresh kernel compile as per the instructions on this post. Either way it is just temperamental. Is this a known problem that recompiling the kernel should solve? If so, maybe I didn't do it properly, otherwise... any ideas???

If I do lspci (standard R516A kernel) I get:

14.0 Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP
14.2 Conexant unknown device 8802 (rev 05)
14.4 Conexant unknown device 8804 (rev 05)

When loading up I get...

Cx2388 Blackbird Driver 0.0.4

On the actual card I can see....

=================
DVB-T 90002 Rev C176
Assembled In Malaysia

DVB-T 2K/8K
CX 22702-25
45000400
0435 Phillipines

Conexant Broadcast Decoder
CX23882-19
FF2409 4
0407 Korea

============

Yes I have expereinced this and I think I know a solution.
When you reboot the linux box the mythbackend takes control of the card and thats why you get the device busy error.


Solution - try this logged on as root

# ps -afe | grep -i backend | grep -v grep

this should give you the process id of the backend

then type

# kill -9 <process_id>

where <process_id> is the process id you got from step one...

you can now try to scan for channels.

When you reboot the bakend should restart


Give that a go and see if it helps....

Ok, nice one

That did the job nicely.... cheers!

Having done that I have set up RadioTimesUK and run mythfilldatabase successfully. I have also managed to scan properly, by:

# cd /usr/local/dvb/dvb-t
# dvbscan uk-WinterHill | tee freeviewchannels.conf
# nano /freeviewchannels.conf

I then wrote down 5 different sets of numbers for the scanned frequencies and went back to mythtv-setup.

I went to Channel Editor, Advanced and created 5 New transports, each with:

Bandwidth: 8MHz
Inversion: AUTO
Trans: 2K.
Hierachy: none
(And then each transport set to one of the 5 different frequencies.)

It seemed to scan nicely and added a load of channels to my channel list (although some are duplicated).

So, I go to mythfrontend and go to WATCH TV but I get a black screen before returning back to the main menu. If I press ALT+TAB then I see it it is attempting to connect to 127.0.0.1 but then gives up after 5 attempts.

Any ideas?
I've been messing with my /etc/network/interfaces file as I seem to remember that this caused the same problem when I had a PVR-350 when trying to get my wireless card to work.

Excellent - great you made some progress...
glad I was able to help someone - I was beginning to feel a bit of a spare tool in this forum !

Next thing to look at is to make sure the start channel for the card in a valid channel from your tuned list (eg 1 is a good choice) (this is the fourth icon i think in the setup screen - cant remember what its called) - make sure the channel number is not blank, also make sure you have a decent aerial connection - mine was rubbish till i got a new rooftop aerial.

Ok,

Tv aerial on the roof is pointing straight at Winter Hill, perfect reception on analogue, and had digiboxes working before. Also tried starting on different channels.

I read that permissions have to be set right and the driver must be a certain one. I suspect this may be my problem given that on bootup I see that the blackbird 0.0.5 version is loaded. Also my output when trying to WATCH TV is somethin like....

--------
Failed to find network interface eth0
SIP Cannot register:proxy, username or password not set
Connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1.6543
Using protocol 15
Taking too long to be allowed to read...
Couldn't read file: rbuf://127.0.0.1:6543/cache/cache/ringbuf1.nuv
Changing from None to LiveTv
Decoder not alive, and trying to play
Changing from None to None
Remotefile::Read::Read()failed in Ringbuffer::saferead()
---------

On another note... having recompiled my kernel, my wireless card no longer works with ndiswrapper. I get to "hardware detected, driver present". However it won't run "ifconfig wlan0 up" or "dhclient wlan0".... perhaps something in the kernel that I should have enabled that isn't done by default?

Also, what happens if you have BBC1 and BBC1 NW both set to channel 1? Do they conflict? Does one take precedent leaving the other redundant? Do they work in conjunction with each other?

have you tried killing the backend and restarting it in an xterm window by doing
# mythbackend

if you have permissions issues they should show up here.

also check that the xterm is running as user mythtv (ie. NOT root)

if you have run the backend previously as root it will have created files the user mythtv wont have privilege to overwrite - got caught out on than one myself.

I found it quite useful to kill both the front and backends and start them up in two xterms

using alt-tab you can switch between them and hopefully see whats causing the problem.

As far as i know will only get the local variant of BBC1 - thats all i get.

Did you follow the advice about the starting channel? What you are seeing is symptomatic of that problem.

If that is the problem, you should still be able to schedule a manual recording.

You may want to check the backend log file (/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log from memory, or something like it).

Ok,

Problem was with an "incorrect Transport" in the Advanced Settings. When I read the output I could see that was causing it to crash. Anyway, deleted all my channel settings and set up all of the transports again and the did "scan all existing transports".

No more black screen!
Instead... error message "Failed to initialise video"
Output said that XVMC was not detected.

So I disabled "VIA XVMC Decoding" in the "PlayTV" settings.
Voila! It works! Very Pleased! Cheers guys!
Had my mythbox for 4 months and now I see TV feature working for the first time.

Now the to tidy it all up a bit....

1. Picture quality looks pretty good. Room for slight improvement though. I guess I could change from S-Video to a VGA to RGB converter to improve it. I imagine these are easy to setup right without any configuring right?

2. Playback is very good (but not perfect) on ITV, E4 and some sky channels. The BBC channels are very choppy though! Could this be the configuration or can I only blame the weather or the aerial now?

XSecrets said that the "VIA XVMC" decoding feature is pretty good and it ain't working since the kernel upgrade to 6.13. I'm sure I enabled the "VIA chipset" in there, and disabled all the other chipsets whilst I was at it. Any idea what I might have disabled (or not enabled) to get rid of VIA XVMC? And, more importantly, could this be what I need to fix rather than climbing on to the roof to tweak the aerial?

4. Mythfilldatabase. On a similar note my wireless card isn't working anymore since the kernel upgrade. I get something about "flags... unknown device" and "ndiswrapper module not loaded". So I also need to fix this to get tv listings!

In the meantime I reverted to my old kernel to get online and then did "mythfilldatabase". This 'kind of' worked, but mostly messed things up a bit. It seems to have created channels 1-4 with numbers instead of names. Some channels have no data, some do. The EPG is all over the place. Difficult to fathom out whats what now.

Thanks in advance.

Looks like you are moving in the correct direction...

you need to check that

1) all the channels in the setup have an xmltv_id defined

2) that in /home/mythtv/.mythtv/<video_source_name>.xmltv

contains all the channnels you want listings for

you can find the xmltv_ids by doing

****EDIT : MISTAKE -
that should have read

tv_grab_uk_rt --list-channels > channels.list


and then look through the channels.list file with an editor....

here is what i have in my
rt.xmltv file (should be mostly what you need).

channel C1942.radiotimes.com
channel C1951.radiotimes.com
channel C1956.radiotimes.com
channel abc1.disney.com
channel bid-up.tv
channel cbbc.bbc.co.uk
channel cbeebies.bbc.co.uk
channel channel4.com
channel channel5.co.uk
channel choice.bbc.co.uk
channel communitychannel.org
channel digital.northern-ireland.bbc2.bbc.co.uk
channel e4.channel4.com
channel ftn.tv
channel idealworld.tv
channel itn.co.uk
channel itv2.itv.co.uk
channel itv3.itv.co.uk
channel knowledge.bbc.co.uk
channel men.granadatv.co.uk
channel news-24.bbc.co.uk
channel news.sports.sky.com
channel northern-ireland.bbc1.bbc.co.uk
channel plus-1.e4.channel4.com
channel price-drop.tv
channel qvcuk.com
channel sky-news.sky.com
channel tmf.nl
channel travel.sky.co.uk
channel tvtravelshop.co.uk
channel ukbrightideas.tv
channel ukhistory.tv
channel utvlive.com


Hope this is of some use.

Do I get things right here, that to get the new Nova-T to scan with KnoppMyth (R5A16) I have to recompile the kernel (or V4L?)?

And I chosed KnoppMyth before a Debian install because I thought it would be easier... (The friend who recommended me the hardware runs Gentoo, so he wasn't aware of the problems with Nova-T tuning and the Nova-T remote.)

well i cant say for 100% certaintly but i had zero sucess (and it was not for the lack of trying/research) till i rebuilt the kernel....

having said that rebuilding the kernel was not that hard - 1 hour at most.

as or lircd - similar experience ... but if you follow this thread you should miss most of the pain i think... '

Hi,

Correct, if you try to configure the exisiting Knoppmyth kernel you will notice there is no support for the WinTV Conexxant chipset in the Multimedia Device Drivers. So, in order to get that option in there you can either:

A) patch the kernel that comes with Knoppmyth R516A.... or
B) compile a newer kernel - either 6.12 or 6.13 will be fine if you follow the guide on this post.

I didn't like the sound of patching older kernels so I went for 6.13. That said... now I've lost the VIA XVMC decoder and my ndiswrapper module.... but I'm sure it will be worth it in the long run.

Hang on... whats this! A Nova-T remote?
I didn't get no remote with my card!
Have those guys at Linitx.co.uk pulled a fast one?

In any case, this guide below is idiot proof for getting the hauppage remote working on a WinTv PVR-350 card... maybe it works for the Nova-T in the same way.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4609

the nova-t pci should include a remote

see here

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/produc ... atpci.html


if this is the card you have i reckon it should have included a remote.

Was it retail boxed when you bought it ??