I'm have a problem getting a PVR-250 to work, all I get when I try to watch TV is a gray screen.

My set up on my EPIA M1000 & PVR-250 was as follows:
1. Install using auto-install
2. Use the i686 install script
3. Performed apt-get update
4. Performed apt-get install xmltv
5. Made changes to /etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params so that PAL is default.

I found the message from cesman regarding the "Updating ivtv", applied this code, still get a gray screen but now with horizontal white lines.

Does anyone have a step by step guide to getting a PVR-250 working?
Also can anyone give me any advice on how to figure what is going wrong with my PVR-250?

Thanks

well the only two things that jump out at me are that one you used the i686, which I am not sure works with that processor, however I know it does work with some of the via boards, and I'm not sure what the failure is if you are using the wrong one. You might want to look into this.

Second since you are using pal the script that runs I think it's in the .fvwmrc file may be giving you problems some people have complained that it gave them problems with sound, but I have not experianced this. I did actually less than what you have described and my pvr250 works perfectly, but I am using ntsc not pal. Did you change the pvr250 to utilize pal? once agian not sure exactly which setting that is, because I've never used it, but I have seen it.

Ok,
I don't know how I've managed it, but I now get a fuzzy screen when I watch TV, progress at last!!

Do you know how I get an actual TV channel signal ( is this something to do with the frequencys in the UK)?

Or do you know how I can get the composite signal input to work( for cable tv)?

Thanks

well I'm not exactly sure what you are asking the channel frequency information is usually put into the database when you do the setup and select your location.

and as far as the cable tv and composite input in my experiance cable tv always uses the tuner input not composite. composite would be used for say maybe a video camera or vcr or something of that nature.

Here in the UK we use a system called SCART to connect our TV, Cable, DVD and Video devices together. So I'm running a SCART->Composite cable from the Cable box to my PVR-250.
I have managed to get a picture from this by running the mythtv-setup program and setting the default input on the capture card to be Composite 0.

They only problem that I have got now is that when I try and watch live-tv the picture looks like it is either running very slowly or is dropping frames, not sure if I have set up mythtv to use the MPEG2 decoder on my EPIA M1000 correctly.

Forgot to mention that to get the composite to work I have to run every time the machine restarts.

as far as the mpeg2 decoder unfortunately it's much more than just setting up mythtv properly. You have to install some binary kernel modules, which were compiled for redhat, so that poses a problem since knoppmyth is based on debian. Seems like I've heard that someone got it to work, but I'm not sure.

I have found a quick way to get mythtv to stop dropping the frames on my M1000 and that is to use the via_drv.o for XFree86. This is not using the hardware MPEG decoding found on the M1000 but is using software decoding.

This is what I did:
1. Download the via_drv.o driver: http://www.shipmail.org/~thomas/via/xfree43/via_drv.o.bz2
2. bunzip2 this file and move the via_drv.o file to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers directory.
3. Now edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and add the following section:

4. While in this file change the screen section so that it now uses the device1 device:

5. Now restart X or reboot.

For more detail go to the following web page: http://www.shipmail.org/~thomas/via/