Hi,
I just received my HD-3000 in the mail and so far it is looking pretty good. Of course, there is good news and bad news.

First, the good news:

1. The HD-3000 arrived in the mail and apparently works.
2. There are at least a few ATSC channels in the area and some work.
3. My PVR can be made to work with the HD-3000 and record shows.
4. My PVR can play HDTV content (can be kind of flakey)

following Xsecrets advice, I removed the ATI TV Wonder VE from the PVR.

I followed the instructions from Human here http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... ight=human

the instructions did not work at first because I kept getting a "could not open card #0!" message so I did a quick forum search and followed the advice of this post
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... vb&start=0

I added step 0 to the Human instructions with the following (as root from console)

#modprobe -r cx88_atsc
#modprobe -r cx88_dvb
#modprobe cx88_dvb

then followed the rest steps 1-7 to the letter and for step 8 did this as root at the console:

I replaced Step 8 with

#rm /root/tmp/unaltered_channel.txt
#rm /root/tmp/unaltered_dtv_multiplex.txt
#DVB_fixer.sh

finished steps 9-11 as instructed.

Then I switched back to X, started the mythfrontend (Alt-M) and proceeded to be amazed in all the HDTV recording glory my trusty PVR can now do.

Now, the BAD news. The above procedure works great if you do the entire procedure for that session!! It is quite time consuming. Once I reboot, its back to the start of the procedure. Ugh.

It seems the root problem here is that the cx88_dvb module is getting confused by the cx88_atsc module loading first or something. Using modprobe to remove cx88_atsc and cx88_dvb, then reload cx88_dvb makes everything work OK.

Is there anyway to get the module cx88_dvb to load PROPERLY at boot up? How do I do that?

I was thinking about adding a file named "cx88" in the /etc/modutils/ directory with the following:

install cx88_dvb /sbin/modprobe -r cx88_atsc; /sbin/modprobe -r cx88_dvb; /sbin/modprobe cx88_dvb

and then doing an #update-modules ; depmod -a

Would this work? Is there a better way?

I could really use some expert KnoppMyth HDTV advice!

Thanks in advance

Andrew Lynch

Not sure about the modules thing, but nothing in /etc/modutils/ will do anything with the new 2.6 kernel. it uses /etc/modprobe.d/ , but I would check /etc/modules first and make sure the modules are in the correct order there if they exist. it's read from top down.

as for the playback you could also try changing from PS to TS or maybe the other way around. you can search for a post by me in the hdtv forum for details.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

OK, its morning and I recall a couple more details...

The PVR can record HDTV no problem. I go into program guide, select a HDTV channel, hit enter, and presto it records. I can view the recorded shows fairly well.

However, live HDTV viewing does not work as well. The default channel works OK when I start "watch TV" and press Y Y to get to the HD-3000 tuner (the first 2 tuners are PVR-250s). Whenever I try to change the channel though it gets all messed up with a mostly green screen if it gets anything at all. Sometimes it appears that X hangs.

In order to get the HDTV recordings to play reasonably well, I had to enable XvMC in the settings and disable display output deinterlace (don't know which but I think it was the default method) and disable the "denoise3d" filter.

Xsecrets, is this the post you were referring to?
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=26623&

I will give that a try tonight and see if I can improve playback...

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

yeah that's the post. and yeah I doubt you'd find a processor that could run denoisse on hdtv in realtime.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Xsecrets,
Is it worth it to try and get deinterlace working again with HDTV?

Even though I am using a regular NTSC TV as a display, the deinterlace made a noticeable difference on SDTV coming from the PVR-250s.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

well if you have a beefy machine you can probably pull off bob deinterlace, but I can't imagine a machine that can do anything more processor intensive on hdtv.

Actually the best solution, which unfortunately is not an option with the latest nvidia drivers is to go 1080i (of course this requires an hdtv as well) When I was using 1080i everything played perfectly without any deinterlace.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I have made some progress on the HDTV PVR. I thought about the reconfigure and reboot cycle a bit and after a few experiments came up with a fix.

boot, login as root at console

#cd /etc/init.d

I created a script file in /etc/init.d called "cx88_atsc_remove.sh" containing:

/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop
modprobe -r cx88-atsc
modprobe -r cx88-dvb
modprobe cx88-dvb
/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start


did a #chmod 777 cx88_atsc_remove.sh

and a #update-rc.d cx88_atsc_remove.sh defaults 99
to get it to start up on system boot.

Now when the system boots one of the last things the system (root) will do before launching gdm is stop the mythtv-backend, clear out the cx88 modules, reload the cx88-dvb module, and restart the mythtv-backend.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, since there doesn't seem to be one (that I could find), I started a crude R5A16 with HD-3000 HOWTO page on the knoppmythwiki.org site. Maybe if you can, stop by and make fixes?

Odd... During testing (and everyday use), my 3000 just works.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I followed the Human instructions to the letter including step 1 (stop mythtv-backend) but the mythtv-setup is NOT able to detect my HD-3000 as a DVB card without removing the cx88_atsc module.

Oddly, it is able to see it as an HD-3000 card (the more obvious configuration choice) with the cx88_atsc module installed.

cesman, did you use the same steps as Human or do you have your own instructions?

I suspect there has been a firmware change in the HD-3000 or something. Maybe its more ECS 848P-A motherboard wierdness? I have tried repeatedly, stopping mythtv-frontend and mythtv-backend and the mythtv-setup cannot see the HD-3000 as a DVB card if the cx88_atsc module is loaded.

Is there something I can post to help debug this problem or identify what I am doing wrong? I started a R5A16 w/HD-3000 wiki page to help people since it appears that several people are having this problem.

Once the HD-3000 is configured it detects about a dozen or so digital TV stations Over-The-Air using my attic UHF attenna. I am amazed at the number and variety of stations -- any/all of which I can apparently select a show in "program guide" and record. I can watch the recordings and even see the previews. They look great.

However, I cannot get the Live TV to work at all anymore. It did work briefly for a single channel but as soon as I tried to change the channel it locked, X hung up, or it just returned to the mythtv-frontend menu.

I did the Xsecrets suggested mythtv-setup change to the DVB card and enabled the "PS to TS" advanced option. I have XvMC enabled on my NVIDIA card.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

well I think for the most part hdtv is pretty much broken for livetv. any time you switch formats it will mess up, and of course if you happen to get on a station that won't lock then it messes up.

I had the same experience as cesman. I've never had to mess with which module is loaded, other than when I wanted the atsc module loaded so I could tune my antenna. Not sure why the atsc module loaded on your setup, but for most people it seems the atsc module does not load automatically.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Well, that certainly looks to explain what I am seeing.

I am going experiment with the "on screen programming guide/browse mode" so I can survey the digital channels to see what actually is there or not.

I rarely use the live TV feature except to debug tuners and view reception quality. I mostly just watch recordings.

I will also investigate the /proc/interrupts to see if there are any sharing going on.

I plan to use "modinfo" on the cx88_atsc modules to find out who and why it is loading.

Am I correct in that the default install, cx88_atsc is not loaded? Is it loaded by default on your systems? I wonder why it is loading on my system as I haven't done anything (except the script to remove cx88_atsc) to the modules. I removed any bttv cards and their configuration.

Hmm... is there some way to check on the HD-3000 firmware version so we can compare my board to others? A dmesg note or something?

Thanks for your help!

Andrew Lynch

PS, I am making a knoppmythwiki page to document my HD-3000 R5A16 install experiences. Please check it out and make improvements.

Thanks!

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page ... 3000_HOWTO

I have my own set of instructions. I also followed Human's with the Dragon. Either way it was smooth sailing. However Human's route is fater in terms of getting the channels setup. Human, kudos on the script and the lanuch of the Dragon!

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I don't have any PVR-xxx cards in my system, but I have two HD-3000's and one HD-2000. They all worked fine with cesman's instructions. All running as DVB cards.

_________________
Do you code to live, or live to code?
Search LinHES forum through Google

What I cannot figure out is why the cx88_atsc module loaded in the first place. Is it present on your system? I never specified it in the /etc/modules file and don't know how or why its getting autoloaded.

I think something has recently changed on the HD-3000 and is causing configuration problems with R5A16. Or maybe operator error but I can't figure out what it is. There are others on the forum who are also seeing this problem, at a minimum, crabby, chopsuey, and gbutters. I bet there are others out there as well on the pchdtv.com forum. All are apparently recent HD-3000 owners like myself.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... vb&start=0

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

According to lsmod, I DO have cx88_atsc loaded.

_________________
Do you code to live, or live to code?
Search LinHES forum through Google