I have a problem tuning in stations. When I start MythTV and select watch TV I just get a grey or "snowy" screen. Using XAWTV gives me a similar problem, trying to tune by pressing "ctrl"+"up" will cause the software to tune for a while and then stop with a black screen.

I'm running a PVR-350 card in a P4 1,6 with 512MB mem and everything works fine with Windows. I have had problems with the IVTV driver but upgrading the driver (0.1.9) and trying the TV card in different PCI slots leaves a configuration where the driver loads OK (I think).

I have had some problems with XMLTV as I'm living in Sweden, the tv_grab_sn seems to be out of order. As a temporary fix I have upgraded XMLTV and picked up the Swedish listings from tv_grab_fi (some of the text comes in Finnish!). Then I have run "mythfilldatabase --manual" mapping the listings to the channels that I use in the windows config. I really dont know if this the right way to do this but I feel that it should work.

I have an idea that maybe the "tuner type" in my modules.conf is incorrect. Does knoppmyth installation probe the card to get the tunersetting? I have tried to modify this with no sucess.

Does anybody have a clue what I have done wrong?

Regards
Hakan

i was told that ivtv 019 will never work with myth 012 (thats used in knoppmyth r4).
for the channel kind of thing you could try :

root@mythtv:~ # mysql mythconverg
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 257 to server version: 4.0.13-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> select * from channel;
+--------+---------+--------+----------+-----------+-----------+------+----------+--------------+---------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+--------+-------+----------+
| chanid | channum | freqid | sourceid | callsign | name | icon | finetune | videofilters | xmltvid | recpriority | contrast | brightness | colour | hue | tvformat |
+--------+---------+--------+----------+-----------+-----------+------+----------+--------------+---------------------------+-------------+----------+------------+--------+-------+----------+
| 1000 | | | 1 | | 3SAT | | 0 | | 3SAT.tvtoday.de | 0 | 32768 | 32768 | 32768 | 32768 | Default |
| 1001 | 1 | E2 | 1 | ARD | ARD | | 0 | | ARD.tvtoday.de
--SNIP--

as you can see I have a station called ARD sitting on channel E2.
you could use this to verify your channel-settings with another source.
if you have had xawtv running in the past,you could also try to import the .xawtvrc file by using :

mythfilldatabase --xawchannels <sourceid> <xawtvrcfile>
(--manual flag works in combination with this)
Read channels as defined in xawtvrc file given
<sourceid> = cardinput
<xawtvrcfile> = file to read

back to your 'tuner-problem'
most likely you have to select your tuner manually as autodetection still sucks.
there is a util called tveeprom.o. try modprobe tveeprom.
At the end of /var/log/messages you'll find a line:

Nov 30 14:54:55 myth kernel: tvee: Hauppauge: model=48134, rev=J347, serial#=6551709
Nov 30 14:54:55 myth kernel: tvee: tuner=LG TP18PSB01D (idx=47, type=28)

type 28 is your tuner. Change the corresponding line in modules.conf

also don't forget to to set your tv-standard (pal i guess in sweden?)

here is the modules.conf (/etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv for KnoppMyth)
root@mythtv:/usr/local/lib/ivtv/driver # more /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 ivtv
alias char-major-61 lirc_i2c
options ivtv ivtv_debug=1 ivtv_pal=1 tuner=28
options tuner type=28 pal=i
options msp3400 once=1 simple=1
options saa7127 enable_output=1 output_select=1 pal=1
add below ivtv msp3400 saa7115 saa7127 tuner
add above ivtv lirc_dev lirc_i2c ivtv-fb
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video0 -u 0xff
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video16 -u 0xff
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video32 -u 0xff
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video224 -u 0xff
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -y mute=0
# 0xff for PAL #


here are some very good guides that helped me to get through :

http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~h ... alkthrough
http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-user ... 19431.html
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php

last but not least, i've upgraded to myth 013 and ivtv 019 to get things working better.

hth

zardoz

Thanks for the informative reply!

I solved my tuner issue last night and I realized how to use XAWTV together with mplayer. I managed to tune into most of my channels. I will continue from here.
Now I have the "no sound" problem and I have to get the PVR-350 TV-out to work but there are quite a few posts about these topics so I will continue from those.

I must say that I really like the features of MythTV and apart from these small problems that I had I have to say that the KnoppMyth distribution works really well.

have a look above :
/etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv
options msp3400 once=1 simple=1
post-install ivtv /usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -y mute=0

for the msp module you can also add standard=xx which describes your country.
more details here : http://www.poptix.net/ivtv/May-2003/msg00474.html

also, what kicked me a couple of times, check the permissions.
as root do a
find / -name 'test_ioctl'
chown mythv.mythtv test_ioctl (for every test_ioctl which is found)

hth
zardoz

Hi again, thanks to your help I managed to get both tuner and sound working. I have also been able to get the TV out of the PVR350 to work, sort of. Using 350 tvout works fine with the GUI, but watching live TV works for three seconds, then the picture freeze until I restart the box. I have read other articles about this but I felt that no one had any solution so I decided to leave it for a while.
But last night I found a setting in the GUI that I have not seen before and it made me curious. It was the "Use PVR350 hardware decode" in the "watch/tv settings" section. I guess live TV should work with this setting both on and off, but setting it to "yes" and "/dev/video16" just gives me a blank screen watching TV.
I'm really a Linux novice but it feels that it's the "frame buffer thing" that's not working. When I worked with the TV-out I tested TV output with the following. This displayed the test pattern fine and later on the MythGUI worked fine. But the testing hw mpeg like this did not work.
Does anyone have any ideas?

I have spent quite som time with MythTV now and it's rather addictive but I have to tell myself "go to bed" every other night to keep daily work, and family up and running!

Regards
håkan

what s/w versions do you use ? i needed to upgrade to myth 013 and ivtv 019 to get it running.
what are the logs telling you when you get your blank screen ?

pls check /var/log/messages /var/log/myth/mythbackend.log

when i load saa 7127 i also append pal=1

hth
z

I'm running R4 (0.12) and IVTV 0.1.7 so maybe an upgrade is recommended. I have looked into some of the articles in this forum regarding Myth upgrade and it feels a bit tricky.

Regards haan

Looking at the logs when I start LiveTV on the 350 tvout gives the following results. By the way, I get similar results whatever "content" type I choose, LiveTV, Video, recorded show. VGA output works fine.

Without HW compression (Frontend hangs after 3sec)
2004-01-26 22:06:10 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:06:10 adding: mythtv as a player 1
2004-01-26 22:06:10 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:06:10 adding: mythtv as a player 0
2004-01-26 22:06:10 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:06:10 adding: mythtv as a player 0
2004-01-26 22:06:10 adding: mythtv as a remote ringbuffer
2004-01-26 22:06:10 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
Couldn't read data from the capture card in 15 seconds. Game over, man.
2004-01-26 22:06:29 Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None


With HW compression (Black screeen, frontend hangs)
2004-01-26 22:12:09 Enabled verbose msgs : important general
2004-01-26 22:12:11 Found changes in the todo list.
2004-01-26 22:20:49 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:20:49 adding: mythtv as a player 1
2004-01-26 22:20:49 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:20:49 adding: mythtv as a player 0
2004-01-26 22:20:49 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2004-01-26 22:20:49 adding: mythtv as a player 0
2004-01-26 22:20:49 adding: mythtv as a remote ringbuffer
2004-01-26 22:20:49 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
root@mythtv:/home/haan5# tail /var/log/messages
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: lirc_i2c: chip found @ 0x18 (Hauppauge IR)
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: i2c-core.o: client [Hauppauge IR] registered to adapter [ivtv i2c driver #0](pos. 4).
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: lirc_dev: lirc_register_plugin:sample_rate: 10
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: saa7115[0]: decoder set size
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: Setting full NTSC width
Jan 26 22:12:05 mythtv kernel: Setting full NTSC height
Jan 26 22:12:10 mythtv kernel: Warning: Remapping obsolete /dev/fb* minor 32 to 1
Jan 26 22:20:50 mythtv kernel: saa7115[0]: decoder set size
Jan 26 22:20:50 mythtv kernel: Hpsc: 0x00001, Hfsc: 0x00600
Jan 26 22:20:50 mythtv kernel: Vsrc: 576, Vscy: 0x004cc