Sorry for the newbie question... I haven't found a solution yet.

I have my PVR-250 attached to a DirecTV sat box. I had mythtv working fine yesterday, in setup I chose channel 3 as the "default" channel for the card. Then, while playing around with the keyboard commands, I was pressing the up/down arrow keys and it changed channels, but it changed the card's channel, not the STB channels (i don't have my serial setup yet anyway). The PVR250 card's channels goes 2-125 and does not include channel 3.

I've tried rerunning mythtv-setup from scratch, but that didn't help. How do I go about changing my PVR250 card to channel 3 so that I can watch satellite TV?

1) Did you try saying Yes to the "Clear ..." questions? That should give you a clean slate again.

2) The backend may need to be restarted. In an xterm, login as root, and do /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend restart

If you are just using the 250 to grab video from its composite or Svideo input, then I think you need to just connect those inputs in mythtv-setup->Input Connections. That way, it won't try to change channels on the 250's tuner.

Unless you are using both the 250's tuner (Free To Air) and its video inputs (cable box). In which case you need to assign different video sources for the two inputs, and make sure that each one only contains the channels that are appropriate.


Note: I don't have a PVR250 or cable box - I am just advising from my limited knowledge of the way it is meant to be setup.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Thanks for assisting Nigel..

I have cleared both channel and card defaults in mythtv-setup (by answering yes to the first questions). Setup, once complete, tells me to run /etc/cron.daily/mythtv-backend , which I do. i've also tried completely rebooting the box. None of this has gotten me anywhere. I suppose I could try removing the card and reinserting it.


I am using the 250 card to only grab video from the sat. box, but i'm not using s or composite video. Rather I am using the RF cable into Tuner0. This connection is associated with my video source "Directv1", and this was all working just fine yesterday. All other connections are not associated with any video source.

I have a second 250 card installed, and I've been able to get sat. video from it, but no sound. That's a separate problem, which I'll tackle another time.

Aah. OK, so either your sat. box.:

1) transmits to your PVR250 on one frequency (channel), which I think means your PVR has to be pre-tuned to that channel, so that your "external channel changer" script can drive your sat. box's serial port or infrared remote receiver.

2) it re-transmits all the channels it can receive to the PVR250, which means your video source needs to only list the channels which the sat. box is retransmitting.

I am not an expert in this sort of setup, but I suspect scenario 1) is the one that matches your setup. But for now, you just need to get your first card tuned to 3, right?

What I don't understand is why setting "Starting channel" and restarting the backend (or rebooting) didn't fix the problem.

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Go back into the mythtv-setup program and under "input connections" select your input (sounds like tuner0) and hit enter. On the form that comes up there is a place for "preset tuner to channel:" and some other provisions for an external tuner set up.

BTW - Do you have other options for hooking your box up to the TV card, maybe an svideo connection? Doing the reencoding can degrade signal quality and it's better to avoid it if you can.

A few things to check; After you download your channel listing, go into the channel editor and make sure channel 3 exists. (If your output of your satellite uses channel 3). If it doesn't add it. (Make sure if add it that the frequency id is set to 3 also). Then make sure that "starting channel" and "Default channel" is set to 3. Then reboot to see if it comes up. There is a command that you can use to just change the card to channel 3, buti I can't remember what it is. I just use the coax from my sat reciever to my pvr 250.
When you change channels in mythtv (using the coax of pvr card) it will try to change the card's tuner to that channel. There are 2 ways to get around this. 1st is just have only channel 3 loaded in mythtv. You dont get the guide data (but you can use the guide on sat, however all recordings will be setup as "manual". Or you can do it by opening an xterm, type
mysql -uroot -p mythconverg and just press Enter on password. Now type update channel set freqid = 3; (enter). Now every time you change the channel on mythtv it will be changing the tuner to channel 3. You can then use the guide data for recordings, etc. The best way is to get an IRBlaster to send the change channel signal out the serial port rather than to the card itself.
I used to have an issue with no sound on my second pvr 250 also. I had to use another mysql command to fix this (but I think it is already fixed in latest version...).
update capturecard set audiodevice = '/dev/dsp'; (/dev/dsp should be your sound card). Then it started working. You should probably first check it by doing
select cardid, audiodevice from capturecard; to see what the first card is audiodevice is set to and then do the update command to match.

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That would be ivtvctl a tool to let you do low level poking at the driver. Use the option to see the details.