I think I have read every post on the PVR 350 and I have not found anyone whith my problem. It seems that if I don't load ivtv-fb then I can set MythTV to playback through the PVR 350 and I get a beautiful output. But obviously I am unable to load X out the Svideo port. On the other hand if I load ivtv-fb the I can get X out of the Svideo port on the PVR 350 but I am unable to get the TV to play thorugh the Svideo on the PVR.

Note: TV will play if I DON"T select PVR 350 playback inside MythTV but it is jerkey which is quite understandable. If I correctly select playback through PVR 350 while ivtv-fb is loaded all I get is a black screen. Then when I hit escape to exit the black screen, I am usually kicked all of the way out of mythfrontend. Sometimes it even kills mythbackend.

I have recomplied the ivtv drivers supplied with KnoppMyth and installed them (make clean, make, make install) I have also downloaded the most recent ivtv driver v 0.1.9 and compiled and installed that and I keep having the same problem.

I didn't know what information I should post to help diagnose this problem so, if you think you can help just let me know what you want me to post and I will be happy to supply any clarifying information.

Thanks in advance!

I am having the exact same problem. On top of not being able to have X out and TV-OUT, I also cannot seem to record anything or watch Live TV with X-out enabled. I just get a black screen that kicks me back one screen after about 30 seconds.

If I eliminate the X-out portion, recording works fine.

I am not sure where all the logs file are that I would need to go through to see if anything obvious is showing up. I did a "tail -f /var/log/messages", but no errors showed up there at all.

>I am having the exact same problem. On top of not being able to have X
>out and TV-OUT, I also cannot seem to record anything or watch Live TV
>with X-out enabled. I just get a black screen that kicks me back one
>screen after about 30 seconds.

That sounds a lot like my problem but as long as I don't send the output throught the PVR 350 I am still able to record.

if I load ivtv-fb during boot up and then get an xterm window and type in

ivtvfbctl /dev/fb1 -noglobalalpha -localalpha

and then

dd if=/dev/video of=/dev/video16 bs=64k

I see the TV through the 350. So, I think it is some setting in MythTV that is not set correctly but I don't know where the magic stetting is located.

I've had similar issues this past week as I built up a box with a PVR-350 for a friend. I started with KnoppMyth R4V2, and then followed the instructions from this thread:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=804&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

That got me to the point of seeing X on the composite port of the PVR-350, but I got a black screen when I tried to watch live TV. When I ran the command line tests (i.e. dd, etc.), I saw video. Eventually I decided to run mythfrontend as the local user that I created during installation, and I saw an error in the console about not being able to open fb0 (the device my PVR-350 ended up on). After I executed the following command as root, watching live TV via the PVR-350's composite port started to work:

chmod 666 /dev/fb0*

Of course during the whole process I made a lot of other changes, so the command listed above may not be the only thing you have to do. I'm reinstalling the system now due to freezes I have been experiencing, so I'll let you know if another change I made had a role in the success.

YES!!!!!!!!!!

As root, I typed in

chmod 666 /dev/fb0*

and

chmod 666 /dev/fb1*

My system uses fb1 but I thought I would cover all bases and like magic everything now works!!!!!!! Thank you very much larryka!!

I'm glad it worked for you. I guess I should post it to that other thread, just in case other people run into this.

Now I just need to fix the freezes I'm seeing... my friend's machine is a Dell Dimension L700cx (Celeron 700MHz). It currently only has 128megs of RAM, which I'm going to try and bump up tonight. Just for giggles, I'm also in the process of compiling the kernel without APIC enabled, since I see evidence of APIC being used in the dmesg output, just to see if it helps.

I'd be interested in knowing how stable your machine is after you use the 350 for a while, and what your specs are...

- Lawrence

BTW, I also forgot to mention that the tuner on my friend's PVR-350 wasn't the type=2 tuner that most people seem to have. If I remember the "modprobe tveeprom" output correctly, it's a Temac 4039FR5 (type=21), which I put into the /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv file where the tuner type is defined. At somepoint I was seeing double video and weird stuff going on when I watched live TV, and I think the tuner type made a difference, I'll confirm tonight when I work on it again.

FWIW, this PVR-350 was part of the new batch that the online stores seemed to have received last month. He bought his from mwave.com (http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=1303575) for a pretty good price.

- Lawrence

My system is currently configured as follows

- Epox 8K7A via chipset--I have had the capacitors replaced due to leakage
- AMD 1.2 GHz Athlon
- 256 MB ram I will probably upgrage to 512 MB
- Nvidia GForce
- Western Digital 160 GB drive
In slot order
1. PVR 350 (Tuner = 2) only about 3 weeks old
2. cooling fan
3. cooling fan
4. Hercules Fortissimo II sound card
5. Hauppague TV card (Bt878 Revision (2))
6. Network card

Note: Myth only worked if I put the PVR in slot 1. My system would recognize the card but the software would not access it correctly. I have read that other people have had slot problems too. My thought is that it is a Myth problem since the card is detected in all of the slots but only works in the first slot.

Note 2: I also run Folding@home in the background and I haven't noticed any degridation in Myth performance.

Well, I'm off to see if I can get digital audio out of my Hercules now.

Can you post how to recompile the kernel without the lapic stuff? I'm descent using Linux, but I don'tknow all the steps reqired. Using R4V2. Just the major steps would be nice, you don't have to go to excruciating detail. I have the freeze-ups also, using nforce2 board and pvr-350. Using the svideo out on mobo at the moment.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=697

The last post in the thread liked to above also has a method to fix the problem. It has you delete some devices and then recreate them and change permissions and the owner on them. This worked for me.

I'm sorry to report that I haven't successfully compiled a fully working kernel yet. I got close with a kernel that would boot and not enable APIC, but then I had problems with the ivtv drivers. The instructions from BugRogers' post (Wed Dec 10, 2003 12:32 pm) seem to be valid for at least disabling APIC:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=214&highlight=compile+apic

FWIW, I don't think the following steps are necessary:

apt-get install kernel-sources-2.4.22
do the symbolic link stuff and copy /boot/config-2.4.21-xfs to /usr/src/linux

- Lawrence

I made some progress tonight with the non-APIC kernel and the ivtv drivers. I found the following message, which helped:

http://www.poptix.net/ivtv/Feb-2004/msg00321.html

Once I compiled the ivtv drivers with the gcc-2.95 version that was used to compile the kernel, ivtv didn't cause a kernel panic on startup. I'm currently using the original ivtv tree that came with R4V2, the X driver from Matt, and the no-APIC kernel that I compiled. So far I haven't seen a lockup while watching live TV, even with a lot of channel changing and OSD activity. I'm going to try ivtv-patch 41 soon, and possibly the latest patches from http://kmos.org/~ckennedy/ivtv just for fun...

I was getting worried my friend would have to/want to return his 350 and buy a Tivo. We'll see if I can prevent that

- Lawrence

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

i have been beating my head against the wall for a while now with this exact problem.. i actually put my myth box in a timeout for fear i might smash it to pieces.. it just didnt come across that it was a perms issue..

thanks again.. i'm a happy camper now.. quality is outstanding.. so glad i took the time to get my tvout working..