Yeah, that's one of the possible symptoms of having the wrong tuner type set. Now all you need to do is figure ot what the right one is. I'd suggest a visit to the IVTV mailing list archives and searching for the tveeprom line above. Try 57 for both which may give you slightly better results...

Looks like tuner 57 will let you use a few more channels but not all of them.

The IVTV mailing list is starting to show some activity about the pvr500 problem but nothing is definate.

thanks... Hopefully we will figure this out..

I think I am going to remove and install ivtv to see if that is the probem..

I'll let you know how that goes.

snake

I tried all the newer drivers and patches.. No luck.. Looks like version 0.5.0 might fix it but it is more than I now how to do REquires compiling other things.. not just ivtv.. I don't know how to do that..

snake

snake3061, how do you use the old "options ivtv tuner=47,47" trick? For what it's worth, I'm having the same problem with my brand new DVR500's! The dmesg output for all four tuners (two cards) is "tuner: type set to 4 (NoTuner) by ivtv." I've not dragged a composite input to it yet -- that'll at least let me know the card works.

In the meantime, anything new? Would trying to extract the firmware from the CD's that came with my cards be any good? I'm also using A26, and I'm willing to recompile things if someone holds my hand just a wee bit...

Oh, for the sake of "progress," I'll report that (1) the 57,57 trick (whew, I figured it out) is getting me some channels -- I don't know how many yet, though. I also see troubleticket at IVTV for the Samsung tuners. I see over on the gentoo-wiki that maybe we should options cardtype=6 for autodetect, but it doesn't mention Samsung tuners. Don't see that it should make a difference. I'll try the firmware, too.

I have tried 6 it's don't work at all.. I just install the newest 4.1 driver. same result..

snake

I have a PVR-500 with the Samsung TCPN 2121P30A. This is my first myth setup, and boy was this card a big dissapointment - after I got everything set up software wise, the picture is still crappy! I started with tuner-type 57 because I read it in some howto. That worked ok for up to channel 66 (but some of the high channels like 60-66 were just copies of another channel).

I decided to try all the NTSC tuners, and I did manage to get all the channels working, albeit with some fuzzyness on quite a few of them. They are all watchable, but it definately ruins showing off mythtv to my friends. The tuner type I am using is 66. Also working somewhat (i.e. better than a fuzzy B&W output) are 9, 31, 57, 59.

I spent some time looking at the tuner.c and tuner.h from ivtv. It looks like the tuner settings are just configuration values and the code is the same for all the tuners, so maybe the config could be tweaked to make this tuner work.

The common thread among tuner type selections that work with all the channels (I only get up to 99 from comcast, and not a lot of channels in the higher numbers) is that "band switch bytes" are 1, 2, and 8, and the tuner-types that don't work with all the channels are 1, 2, and 4. They all (both the tuner-types that work with all channels and only to 66) have a "config" byte of 0x8e. I haven't tried anything yet, but maybe altering the uhf/vhf switch thresholds while using the 1,2,8,0x8e settings could help? Perhaps flipping some of the bits in the config byte...

Oh ya, fine tuning with ivtv_tune didn't accomplish much with tuner-type 66, although after i tuned far enough in either direction it would get really bad looking.



Here are my notes about tuner types (ripped from my modules.d/ivtv). I know they are vague, I was testing all the NTSC tuners and wasn't feeling up to writing a ton. I didn't write anything about types that only worked for a couple channels. Also, I might have missed testing some of the types.

-------------------
#doesnt work over chan 60
#options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=57,57

#pretty decent and goes to high channels
#options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=9,9

#pretty good up to 99.. fuzzy at lower channels
#options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=31,31

#ok at lower channels onl,y about as good as 57
#options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=59,59

#works at high channels, kinda fuzzy
options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=66,66

Wow! Fantastics work! I can't wait to try these out.

Hey looks like tuner 9 works great for me.. I only need up to 99 channels. I didn't see any channels that were bad at all.. Just the ones that are always bad.. lol.

I am using the newer 4.1 ivtv drivers also..

Snake

Is the fuzziness something that the fine tuning in mythtv-setup could take care of? And then... how the heck do you use it in practical terms, since (you know) you can't see the picture you're tuning?

I'll try the 9 just as soon as I can safely reboot -- In a manner of speaking, I'm working blind anyway, being that all I currently have is the computer monitor...

How do you do the options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=9,9. I am new to knoppmyth and linux and don't know how to do anything. Does anyone have a link to a tutorial or something that could help me out. Anything would be great.

You use the MythWeb interface from another machine, tweak the tuning, change the channel so it take effect, tweak it again, ... Search for a semi-recent posting by me that mentions "fine tuning" for more detail on what the units are and what reasonable step sizes are. Memory says that 125 (kHz) is about the smallest meaningful step. If you feel ambitious, the wiki could use a FineTuningHowTo page...

From a terminal on your box or via ssh, do this:

pico /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv

That'll let you open the config file for ivtv (it took me a while to find it, too, spurred on by this very thread).

I added this line before the line that begins with "install...":

options ivtv ivtv_std=1 tuner=9,9,9,9 tda9887=0,0,0,0 ivtv_debug=1

I have four tuners... so use only 9,9 and 0,0 if you have a single card.
I don't know what the other options do -- I copied this line basically from another howto somewhere else...

I guess I didn't say where to put is.. lol

Yep..

vi /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv

All I added was :

options ivtv tuner=9,9

You can do both though..

I reinstalled again and am using the normal drivers again and everything seems fine.

I think the 4.1 driver worked better but I can't get them to load by default because the firmware has changed naming structure. I just would not load on boot. I could modrobe ivtv after I rebooted and it worked every time.

snake

It seems that the latest stable release of the ivtv driver has fixed the issue with the Samsung tuners. That would be great!
I'm referencing to a recent post in this forum, not to the original changelog.
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7947

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