I have finally got a decent process down for making my setup work, thanks to this message board, this great distro, and a few other linux sources. My setup is below:

Intel P4 2.4GHz
MSI 865PE Neo2-LS Motherboard
512MB generic RAM
Creative DVD Player
Hauppauge PVR-500MCE tuner
pcHDTV HD-3000 tuner
Creative Sound Blaster 16 PCI
MSI Geforce FX-5800 (Loud bugger, might eventually look for a 5200)
No Remote (Yet)

With this setup, I am able to get all 3 tuners (PVR-500 x 2, HD-3000) and the DVD player working with not too much work...

1.) Pop in the Knoppmyth R5A16 CD and follow the standard install (manual or auto, whichever you prefer)

2.) For nVidia users: After rebooting, Knoppmyth will go to the desktop and bring up a terminal asking for your root password. Ignore this for now and press Ctrl + Alt + F1, this should kill the desktop and bring you to a login prompt.

3.) Log in using root and your admin password

4.) Run the nVidia install script (##### is the number of the driver that you want.) This not only installs the nvidia driver, but also extracts your kernel, so you don't have to do this later.


5.) After the nvidia install finishes, the desktop will boot back up and bring back up that terminal asking for the root password again. Ignore it again, and press Alt + X, this will bring up another terminal window.

6.) The ivtv steps are for the PVR-500 card In this terminal window, change to the mythtv home directory if you aren't there already, then download and extract the latest stable ivtv driver (0.4.0).



7.) Change to the ivtv/drivers directory, make and install the driver


8.) Change to the ivtv/utils directory, make and install the utlilities


9.) Place the Hauppauge CD that came with your PVR-500 tuner in the CD/DVD drive, mount the cd, and copy the HcwMakoA.ROM file to /lib/modules


End PVR-500 steps

10.) Close that terminal, put the password into the original terminal (If you have closed it, you can either reboot your machine, or shut it down for 5-10 minutes like you will do anyways shortly). This will run you through the mythtv setup program.

In the card setup, set up your tuners as follows:


In the Source section, download your listings as you normally would.

In the Connections section, connect the DVB to your digital source, your /dev/video1 (Tuner 0) to your Analog source, and /dev/video2 to your Analog source.

In the channel editor, scan for channels using your DVB card, choose Terrestrial or Cable, based on whether you are using OTA or QAM HDTV. (I am using OTA, so I can't guarantee this will work with QAM).

Once you have your channels scanned in, press finish, and escape out of the setup program. The terminal should now automatically download your zap2it listings.

11.) Once the terminal is finished, it should automagically open up your Myth Frontend. If you have the HD-3000, close MythFrontend one more time. Open a terminal (Alt+x) and type in
This fixes a difference between the zap2it channel listings, and the way mythtv stores channel numbers. Once the DVB_fixer script has run, your Digital channels will be separated by an underscore. (Ex. 31_1).

If you are extremely lucky, everything should work now. If not, shut off your computer for 5-10 minutes, this allows the tuners to reset, and upon booting back up, loads the new firmware.

12.) Knoppmyth does not support playback of CSS encrypted DVD's out of the box, and to avoid any problems I will not mention how to get that working here. I will say that the information is out there, and it only takes just one .sh command.

This is the process that I used to get my system up and running, your milage may very, etc. I hope that it can be useful to others.

If you find any blatent errors or obviously missed steps, let me know. I am writing this the morning after getting it working, so my brain may be a bit foggy.

~Matt

Ok...as a total newb, what number should go into the #####'s?

I think you have the best explanation of what I need to do, I'm just not getting it though.

Thanks

Press <TAB> a few times and youll see.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Cesman has the best solution, you will learn to love the <tab> feature. If you are typing somthing unique, and press tab, it will complete it for you. If you are typing something non-unique and press tab twice, it will give you the choices of what is available. For example when you are copying the sound firmware from the cdrom, instead of typing:



you can just type:



and that saved you almost 2 dozen or so key strokes. Just one of the many fun things to learn about linux.

~Matt

Thanks cesman--that tab did the trick. It looks like I've got 7174-debian.sh.
Unfortunately, after it extracted, installed and restarted, I've got a black screen .

I'll go with a new install tomorrow--too late to mess with it tonight.

This is a common issue, and reinstalling will just get you back to the same place. A quick search for "black screen" or "blank screen" should turn up directions on using Ctl-Alt-F2 to get another virtual console and editing your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.

I decided to start from scratch with mbelly's guide, he has similar MB etc.
Here is tonight's experience, maybe we might be lucky and add just a few extras to mbelly (I hope).

Boot knoppmyth automatic install, latest cdrom, md5summed etc.
Choose i686, time zone etc.
Followed all operations including new xterm windows, su or user mode etc.
All went well including Nvidia 7174 drivers until the wget ivtv-0.4.0.tar file operation. I eventually burned to a cd from another pc, got it in the correct directory, the make && etc. went ok. The lan works, they must have changed the file location on the website or something. I eventually got it from the ivtv.org website in this directory:ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/archive/0.4.x/ivtv-0.4.0.tar.gz.

Set up my card (well it set itself up in some places) as a DVB ATSC and bcast-t. Sees itself running as card 0. Defaulted it to a known strong channel.
Now when hitting watch tv, I get many seconds of black screen, and it dumps me back to menu.
Oh, and Zap2it account comes through ok with my ota-t hd zip etc.
I will now go on googling here and elsewhere. I don't want to do the stop backend, change or do modprobe and other newbie incompetant stuff. Mbelly did it so why can't I?
I have it down pat how to wipe the drive and get to this point in a few minutes.

2.4 gig p4
Intel 865 type board with stapled on lan, sound, disabled video.
HD-3000 (one for now have 5 more waiting in the wings.)
seagate barracuda 160G IDE, not SATA (went thru that 1st time long ago)
FX-5200, 128M noisy fan (thought I was getting fanless.. pictures on Newegg website, reviews etc., beware b4 u buy).
700+MB memory
Vanilla CD-ROM for now. (aware I must watch out for unneeded dvd player files till I install one).

In past installations, I've gotten as far as seeing ota sd and hd display, freeze, crash, sometimes record, etc. This is by manually stopping/starting backend and digging a deeper newbie hole. Even tried Jarod's FC3 install in the past, and a lot of help from Dorphell last year got it sort of running. So I believe hardware is functioning.

_________________
Mythic Dragon V1.0, R5F27
--
Stars Up, Lights Down...
Be a good neighbor, shield your lights, save electricity, and be more secure. Darksky.org

The ivtv drivers are actually for the PVR-500 that I have. The HD-3000 should work "out of the box" with R5A16. You need to set it up as a DVB card, and connect it to your zap2it files.... and then...

Aha!! A step I missed, after myth setup finishes, you need to run This fixes a difference between the zap2it channel listings, and the way mythtv stores channel numbers. Once the DVB_fixer script has run, your Digital channels will be separated by an underscore. (Ex. 31_1). I will add that to the above post.

~Matt

yes i found the ivtv was not needed a few mins ago..
I will try try the DVB fixer thing now, and if no go, I will start from fresh Thanks for a great simple guide (so far )

Update: DVB must be run as su or root. I am starting from scratch with my notes. So when exactly do you run the DVB fix thing, after one of the reboots, just befor clicking "watch tv" for the first time?

_________________
Mythic Dragon V1.0, R5F27
--
Stars Up, Lights Down...
Be a good neighbor, shield your lights, save electricity, and be more secure. Darksky.org

No problem, feel free to keep posting any questions or concerns. As you can see, I miss things.

~Matt

P.S. - If anyone knows an expert on modelines, I really could use some help getting my box to work on my HDTV instead of my monitor.

I missed your reply I just came out of editing my post with:

Update: DVB must be run as su or root. I am starting from scratch with my notes. So when exactly do you run the DVB fix thing, after one of the reboots, just befor clicking "watch tv" for the first time?

_________________
Mythic Dragon V1.0, R5F27
--
Stars Up, Lights Down...
Be a good neighbor, shield your lights, save electricity, and be more secure. Darksky.org

If you are starting from scratch, do it right after mythsetup finishes and downloads your TV listings.

If you have a current install, you can run it at any time, just make sure you change to root with your administrative password first:


Give Live TV a try after that runs. If it is not working, try shutting down for a few minutes. If that doesn't work... we'll have to think of something.

Hope that helps.

~Matt

Gather the specs. for the monitor, the desired resolution, and visit this page: http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl

no, just the black screen then dump back to menu. Guess I'll do what tjc above says about searching for black or blank screen. I am fading soon, will poke around here a few mins more,then unplug the unit overnight.
Oh I noticed an error somewhere "could not create something /.qt" whizzing by in all my installs. will search that too.

_________________
Mythic Dragon V1.0, R5F27
--
Stars Up, Lights Down...
Be a good neighbor, shield your lights, save electricity, and be more secure. Darksky.org

This can be ignored safely. Your problem is most likley that the TV doesn' t like any of the available video modes. I had to steal and later generate modelines that my TV liked. See this: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=XF86ConfigForFX5200HowTo

The special bit is the four modelines provided, 2 for 640x480 and 2 for 800x600, all four work with my rather finicky TV. The default /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 doesn't contain any modelines that work once you set the recommened:

You can prove this to yourself by reading /var/log/XFree86.0.log