I am getting a black screen when trying to watch TV. ctl-alt-f1 brings up a console, but it isnt dumping anything. I think it may be a problem with the settings for the tuner, but I'm not sure how to restart the config proccess. I had been getting a black screen before, so I changed the PCI slot, and now I get nothing. Can anyone let me know how to restart the config proccess? Or give me advice other than that? Thanks

Perhaps running the frontend from an xterm then quitting? You should get some output...

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I cant get an xterm, if I exit mythtv, desktop is blank and mouse doesnt work(it doesnt work anywhere, its usb, no PS2 port on the box). Can I open one with a key command? I know I can get a terminal from Control-Alt-F1 if thats what you mean.

Press F1, then 1 for xterm.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Well, said I didnt have any channels defined in the database, so I am running mythfilldatabase now. Would this be the cause of the problem?

yup

Okay, that wasnt the cause of the problem. The xtern reads(after)
QTime::fromString: Parameter out of range.
Waited too long for decoder to pause (4 of these messages)
taking too long to be allowed to read..
Waited too long for decoder to pause (2 more)
Waited too long for ringbuffer pause (2 of these)
taking too long to be allowed to read..
Waited 2 seconds for data to become available, waiting again...
2 more decoder messages
2 more ringbuffer messages
taking too long to be allowed to read
2 more ringbuffer
2 more taking too long etc.

Ideas?

what's your hardware?

PVR-250, on an HP de200c box. It was a "digital entertainment center" that pretty much only did mp3 stuff. Inside its Celeron 566, 256mb ram, 20gb HD, onboard intel 810 graphics/audio (using VGA-out to a projector)The dec usergroup has people who have it working, I'm pretty sure they are just running stock hardware.

Nice looking system... Please check the ivtv mailing list...

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I have a pvr-350 and was getting the same error msgs as you while it was doing its black screen of death thing.

Mine was complaining that it couldn't create /root/.qt so I created it and chmod 777 the sucker.

Make sure you run mythfrontend/mythfilldatabase etc... as 'mythtv' and NOT as root! Then fix all permission problems. This was my biggest headache.

I am recieving the same error as well. Could you expand on the chmod 777 thing? Did it successfully fix the problem? I upgraded to 4.2 as well, and am battling the black screen tv-out promlem myself.

Also, when I run 'mythfilldatabase', it never stops running. It goes through all channels sucessfully, then after a 30 second or so pause, just starts up again. I watched it go through about 5 cycles, then did a hard re-boot.

Thanks, as always, for everyone's help!

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Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann

mythfilldatabase does stop running it just takes a long time. If you notice it goes through all the channels then it starts agian on the next day. It grabs 8 or 9 days worth, but it does stop.

The qt error is not a real problem I still get them and I have no problems with my system whatsoever (well other than the gf turning off the switch to the outlet the other night. )

I was having the same problem, but it went away when I changed the input to 8 via test_ioctl -p 8 and then permanently in the MythTV setup. All is OK now.

Next I just have to figure out the choppy video issue on my PVR 250...

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Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann