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PostPosted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:46 pm 
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Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:50 pm
Posts: 26
Location: New Jersey, USA
I installed R5D1 and got it more or less working with a cheapo
bttv card (NTSC us-broadcast), the exception being the whole
LIRC thing. But I wanted to see if I could get DTV out here in
the boonies, so I bought and installed a pcHDTV-5500.

I found I had to have two capture cards defined (even though I
only have the one card, the 5500, installed) -- one a V4L analog
card and the other the DVB card. I did a channel scan for each
of the "cards", and tried to watch live TV. I can only see a 16:9
letterboxed blue screen. No on-screen controls, no sound, nada.
Escape leaves live TV mode as normal. If I look in recordings, I
see that I've recorded some NTSC analog TV, and the thumbnail
shows the content, but if I try to view the recording, I get the same
blue screen.

Further, if I try to run aumix -I to try to fiddle with the sound card
settings, it pisses out lots of kernel complaints and crashes. Machine
continues to run fine, but aumix crashes reliably. Cutting and pasting
error messages is a trial because as far as I can tell, knoppmyth doesn't
have a regular browser, and the mythbrowser is so hampered as to
be useless.

I've been using Linux for several years now, so am no stranger to
it, but I'm a complete noob when it comes to mythtv.

Any help appreciated.

Bill

P.S. Machine is a no-name Via motherboard with Athlon 2400 or
something and 512 or 1024 Meg or ram, 250G IDE drive, on-board
video, sound, ethernet, etc.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 7:45 am 
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Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 11:50 am
Posts: 102
wfdudley,

I think this belongs in a 'help me' topic rather than a Tier 2 "it works".

However,

Put cx88_alsa on your blacklist, which is in /etc/hotplug/blacklist. The cx88_alsa module is boogered, and doesn't play nice with anything else. Also, it won't affect your HDTV at all, since its just there to add audio to your NTSC feed, eliminating the external plug to your sound card (not the HDTV mpeg, which already has the audio encoded). NTSC doesn't look so good on this card, I don't really know why- but its all washed out. So use your other card for the NTSC stuff.

Next, check

http://www.checkhd.com/aw/welcome.aspx

before you even try to get any HD. Its much easier to get your channels list from here (and of course zap2itlabs) than to manually scan, because the DVB driver does NOT contain the correct code for channel strength scanning.

Lets start there and see what you get. Remember that your card numbers will change when you add a new card, so what was video0 may now be video1.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:23 am 
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Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:50 pm
Posts: 26
Location: New Jersey, USA
That did it. I should think that the knoppmyth installation would
want to have cx88_alsa in /etc/hotplug/blacklist by default, no?

The UI seems to have changed. Now, entering a number and
pressing <Enter> doesn't change the channel. Sometimes I
can change the channel by using the up/down arrow keys to
"browse" to another channel, and then hit <Enter>, but sometimes
nothing happens.

My signal strength is real marginal here. I don't think I'll get ANY
digital TV channels, for example. Is that why the channels don't
change reliably?

I've put both my tuner cards in now, with a splitter in the antenna line
so both cards get signal. I didn't bother to set up the second NTSC
tuner (the one on the pcHTDV-5500 card).

Thanks,
Bill


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:19 am 
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Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 11:50 am
Posts: 102
Glad it worked. Can't tell you how much I banged my head before finding that killing the cx88_alsa module was my problem.

Next, Can you provide more info about the problem? What I'm looking for is video hardware and x setup specifically, and what tuner and channel you're on. Are you getting a picture? Can you go to the program guide and pick out a channel?

Note that you will not get nice smooth HDTV live playback on a 2400 unless you use XVmC, which usually means Nvidia drivers and 24bpp in Xfree86. Nvidia's XVmC gets really PO'd when you send it scrambled mpeg streams, so you might be completely outta luck in a low signal strength area. Recording should be fine though.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:54 pm 
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Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:50 pm
Posts: 26
Location: New Jersey, USA
Further investigation suggests that the problem is that mythtv won't
change channel to one with weak signal, at least not by typing it's
number followed by <Enter>.

Here are relevant bits about my hardware:

from dmesg:
CPU0: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+ stepping 02
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xde802000, 00:40:ca:52:9a:1f, IRQ 16
lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8375 [KM266/KL266] Host Bridge
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
0000:00:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 02)
0000:00:08.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 02)
0000:00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder (rev 05)
0000:00:09.1 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [Audio Port] (rev 05)
0000:00:09.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [MPEG Port] (rev 05)
0000:00:09.4 Multimedia controller: Conexant CX23880/1/2/3 PCI Video and Audio Decoder [IR Port] (rev 05)
0000:00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266]

I have the driver in XF86Config-4 set to "savage".

I can go to the program guide. From that, I can go to my "strong"
channels, but cannot visit the "weak" channels. I think the whole
problem here is that my signal is so marginal, especially after I
put a splitter in to allow feeding both capture cards.

I'm just using the NTSC card (not the NTSC part of the HDTV-5500)
because I haven't found any digital signals yet.

Bill


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 9:30 am 
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Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 11:50 am
Posts: 102
You can swith to the HD5500 from the bttv card by hitting 'y' while watching. The on screen guide will tell you it can't successfully tune if that's the case.

Here's how to tell what's going on: Exit mythtv's front end, and open up an xterm. ps -x, then kill -9 the mythbackend

run mythbackend from the command line, and right click on the desktop and 'restart'. Tune some TV channels. Then exit the fron end again and you'll have some reports on the mythbackend xterm to work with.

You can also find these messages in /var/log/mythtv/ I think.


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