good morning! heres the deal.
I have been attempting to get this silly box working for quite some time. I feel like I am sorta close!

when I try to go into liveTv, I get the black screen of death and then it goes back to the main myth menu.

I know the card works because when we had it set as a "video for linux" we were able to cat /dev/video0>test4.mpg
I switched it to the mpg encoder pvr-x50 and now it says it is busy, whatever.

this is what my fronted tells me when I try to watch tv
2006-11-13 07:21:04.430 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2006-11-13 07:21:05.116 New DB connection, total: 1
2006-11-13 07:21:05.372 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-11-13 07:21:05.378 Total desktop dim: 1280x1024, with 1 screen[s].
2006-11-13 07:21:05.388 Using screen 0, 1280x1024 at 0,0
2006-11-13 07:21:05.566 Current Schema Version: 1123
2006-11-13 07:21:05.568 mythfrontend version: 0.19.20060121-2 www.mythtv.org
2006-11-13 07:21:05.570 Enabled verbose msgs: important general
2006-11-13 07:21:07.649 lang0: eng
2006-11-13 07:21:07.650 lang: eng
2006-11-13 07:21:07.737 lang1: eng
2006-11-13 07:21:07.738 lang: eng
2006-11-13 07:21:09.761 Total desktop dim: 1280x1024, with 1 screen[s].
2006-11-13 07:21:10.097 Using screen 0, 1280x1024 at 0,0
2006-11-13 07:21:10.101 Switching to square mode (blue)
mythtv: could not connect to socket
mythtv: No such file or directory
lirc_init failed for mythtv, see preceding messages
2006-11-13 07:21:18.404 Joystick disabled.
2006-11-13 07:21:19.116 Registering Internal as a media playback plugin.
2006-11-13 07:21:47.395 New DB connection, total: 2
2006-11-13 07:21:47.538 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-11-13 07:21:48.032 Connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543 (try 1 of 5)
2006-11-13 07:21:48.189 Using protocol version 26
2006-11-13 07:21:48.462 TV: Attempting to change from None to WatchingLiveTV
2006-11-13 07:21:48.472 Using protocol version 26
2006-11-13 07:21:51.627 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 12 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:52.130 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 11 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:52.637 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 10 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:53.139 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 9 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:53.641 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 8 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:54.143 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 7 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:54.645 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 6 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:55.147 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 5 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:55.649 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 4 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:56.151 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 3 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:56.653 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 2 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:57.156 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 1 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:21:57.659 RingBuf(/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg): Invalid file (fd 19) when opening '/mnt/store/1003_20061113072149.mpg'. 0 retries remaining.
2006-11-13 07:22:18.170 TV Error: StartRecorder() -- timed out waiting for recorder to start
2006-11-13 07:22:18.171 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started
2006-11-13 07:22:18.200 TV: Deleting TV Chain in destructor


this is what lspci -v gives me
00:0a.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV PVR 150
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 201
Memory at c8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
do I turn this into an expensive paper weight?

dmesg gives me:
[ 3095.723354] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 3095.808872] ivtv: ==================== START INIT IVTV ====================
[ 3095.808884] ivtv: version 0.8.0 (tagged release) loading
[ 3095.808890] ivtv: Linux version: 2.6.18-gentoo SMP mod_unload 586 REGPARM gcc-4.1
[ 3095.808897] ivtv: In case of problems please include the debug info between
[ 3095.808902] ivtv: the START INIT IVTV and END INIT IVTV lines, along with
[ 3095.808908] ivtv: any module options, when mailing the ivtv-users mailinglist.
[ 3095.809834] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 card (cx23416 based)
[ 3096.721673] ivtv0: loaded v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw firmware (262144 bytes)
[ 3096.984625] tveeprom 4-0050: Hauppauge model 26152, rev E5B2, serial# 9733226
[ 3096.984644] tveeprom 4-0050: tuner model is TCL M2523_5N_E (idx 112, type 50)
[ 3096.984653] tveeprom 4-0050: TV standards NTSC(M) (eeprom 0x08)
[ 3096.984661] tveeprom 4-0050: audio processor is CX25843 (idx 37)
[ 3096.984667] tveeprom 4-0050: decoder processor is CX25843 (idx 30)
[ 3096.984674] tveeprom 4-0050: has no radio, has IR remote
[ 3097.067933] tuner 4-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 3097.359122] cx25840 4-0044: cx25843-23 found @ 0x88 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 3101.317740] cx25840 4-0044: loaded v4l-cx25840.fw firmware (16382 bytes)
[ 3101.464751] wm8775 4-001b: chip found @ 0x36 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 3101.552400] ivtv0: Encoder revision: 0x02050032
[ 3101.625587] ivtv0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPEG
[ 3101.663578] ivtv0: Registered device video32 for encoder YUV
[ 3101.684782] ivtv0: Registered device vbi0 for encoder VBI
[ 3101.696564] ivtv0: Registered device video24 for encoder PCM audio
[ 3101.699758] tuner 4-0061: type set to 50 (TCL 2002N)
[ 3102.297629] ivtv0: Initialized Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150, card #0
[ 3102.298055] ivtv: ==================== END INIT IVTV ====================

Do you have a /mnt/store directory structure on your system? I seem to recall reading where one version of Knoppmyth (or was it MythTV itself?) defaulted to the /mnt/store directory for storing recordings - Doesn't exist. The current default is /myth/tv. I am not in front of a myth box to check, but the path to store recordings is found in the General setup somewhere - Make sure it points to a valid directory.

not a problem, thanks for replying. I physically set the video location to /mnt/store. its permissions are 660.

OK, so that directory structure exists. What are the UID/GID (owner, group) on /mnt/store? Does the mythtv user have write access?

Hopefully your kernel version is 2.6.18? You can't use 0.8.0 with anything else.


You've got one of the problem M2523_5N_E tuner chips, but it looks like the it's picking type 50 correctly.

Have you been through the rest of the stuff on the troubleshooting page here? http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=BlackScreenWatchingTV

BTW - This doesn't look like any released version of KnoppMyth. Are you running something home grown?