IMPORTANT NOTE: the following instructions include information for getting TV-out working only on an HDTV-capable TV (but in 4x3 mode, plain or stretched/expanded, not 16x9). DO NOT TRY THIS ON A REGULAR TV SET, AS IT COULD PHYSICALLY DAMAGE YOUR TV SET. IN EXTREME CASES, THE TV COULD CATCH FIRE, WITH ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF A FIRE (I.E., YOUR HOUSE COULD BURN DOWN, YOU OR YOUR LOVED ONES COULD DIE, ETC.).

This is probably an incomplete set of instructions, but I thought that I'd post what I have, as so many people are having trouble mining the nuggets from the posts on this forum. I've probably forgotten something, though. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Anyway, R4V4.1 needs a fair amount of tweaking to work with a PVR-350 (and 250).

That said, here are the pointers to all of the juicy bits:

• Install a clean knoppmyth R4V4.1. At this point, both the backend and frontend should come up, and you should see the mythtv UI (from the frontend). However, TV viewing won't be working. Also, note that the UI will be displayed on the regular video card, and will NOT be coming from the PVR-350. We'll fix this later.
  
  Also, the backend configuration must be correct; the capture cards, video sources, and input connections must all be properly configured.
  
• See the posts by "frustrated" (for fixing devices in /dev) and "ke6oms" (for fixing /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv) in:
  
  http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1432
  
  Don't do anything else from that thread.
  
• Follow mike's instructions (to get a new msp3400.o) in:
  
  http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1634
  
  His instructions are in the third or fourth reply.
  
• Reboot, if you haven't already done so.
  
• Now, at this point, you should be able to watch TV (however, the sound will be coming from your soundcard, and the video will be coming from the video card, and not the PVR-350). If you still have no sound, you probably have problems with your sound output device (and not the PVR-350, as long as you followed Mike's instructions, as mentioned above).
  
• Now, to get TV-out working.
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: the following instructions include information for getting TV-out working only on an HDTV-capable TV (but in 4x3 mode, plain or stretched/expanded, not 16x9). DO NOT TRY THIS ON A REGULAR TV SET, AS IT COULD PHYSICALLY DAMAGE YOUR TV SET. IN EXTREME CASES, THE TV COULD CATCH FIRE, WITH ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF A FIRE (I.E., YOUR HOUSE COULD BURN DOWN, YOU OR YOUR LOVED ONES COULD DIE, ETC.).
  
• Determine the PVR-350 framebuffer device. Do this by doing:
  
  
  Code:
  dmesg | grep -i itvc
  
  Note that this is guaranteed to work only for a short time after reboot (it may, however, work longer), as it depends upon the dmesg buffer not being flushed by other messages. Note that you cannot grep in /var/log/dmesg, as the message you need is not there (however, alternatively, you should be able to grep in /var/log/messages).
  
  You should see a line like (all on one line):
  
  
  Code:
  fb2: iTVC15 TV out frame buffer device
  
  The beginning of the line will be something like "fb1" or "fb2" or somesuch. Remember this; this is the framebuffer device. In this example, it's "fb2" (otherwise known as "/dev/fb2"), and so we'll use "/dev/fb2" in the following.
  
• Next, determine the bus address of the PVR-350 card. Run:
  
  
  Code:
  lspci | grep -i itvc
  
  You should see something like (all on one line):
  
  
  Code:
  00:14.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
  
  The important thing to note here is the beginning of the line: "00:14.0", in this example. We need to remember the middle number, "14" in this example. This is the PCI bus ID. Note that this number is in hex (this fact will become very important in a few steps).
  
• cd to /etc/X11.
  
• Rename "XF86Config-4" to something else, like "XF86Config-4.old".
  
• Copy "XF86Config-4.pvr350-tvout.sample" to "XF86Config-4".
  
  Note: it is this new XF86Config-4 file that will output the wrong frequencies, which may cause regular TV sets to burn up and catch fire (in particular, the vertical refresh is not locked to 60Hz). I don't know how to change the clock settings to get proper TV frequencies; perhaps someone else here will have better information.
  
• Edit "XF86Config-4". Search for "/dev/fb1", and change all occurrences of that to your actual framebuffer device ("/dev/fb2", as in the above example).
  
• Search for the section:
  
  
  Code:
  ### change the busid to whatever is reported by lspci. Note that
  ### output of lspci is hex, so add a preceding "0x" to the BusID
  BusID "0:0x08:0"
  
  Here, you want to replace "0x08" in the BusID with the bus ID that you determined a few steps ago ("14"). Using the example, you would replace "0x08" with "0x14" to get:
  
  
  Code:
  ### change the busid to whatever is reported by lspci. Note that
  ### output of lspci is hex, so add a preceding "0x" to the BusID
  BusID "0:0x14:0"
• Reboot. At this point, you should be able to go into the mythtv settings and change the output to that of the PVR-350. With luck, TV-out to your HDTV-capable set will be working.

If you're still having trouble, here are some other useful links:

http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=TvOutHowto

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

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=804

Just curious what about that makes it hdtv only? As a matter of fact what about that makes it hdtv at all?

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I'd agree with Xsecrets. This is an awesome HOWTO but if you're using the 350's TV out, your only option is composite or S-video, and both of those are SD and not HD.

It's the monitor output frequencies, as set by the "NTSC Monitor" section. In "XF86Config-4.pvr350-tvout.sample", we have:


Note the comment (which I assume is correct):


Normal (regular/old) TV sets can only use an horizontal frequency ("H") of around 15KHz, and a vertical frequency ("V") of 60Hz (interlaced). Using the above frequencies will not result in a usable picture, and may burn out the TV's circuitry, possibly causing a fire.

(I'm also making an assumption that all HDTV-capable sets are capable of handling the above frequencies. Mine can, but I don't know if it's true of all others.)

The "Tips and Hints" section in the knoppmyth docs (at the bottom) also says something similar (but the HorizSync values don't look right to me):



Going off on a wild tangent: IIRC, one of the first IBM PC viruses was designed to burn out a monochrome monitor by changing the timing on the video card to something that the monitor could not handle. After some period of time (I don't know how long), the monitor's circuitry would overheat and burn out.

But the point is, if you're using a card's TV out, it doesn't matter if it's going to an HDTV or an SDTV or a camcorder or a VCR... the composite or S-video cables can only carry an SDTV signal.

The Nvidia README says the same thing that the KnoppMyth install section says: values are generally 30-50 for HorizSync and 60 for VertRefresh. So that's what should go in that part of the Monitor section.

It then continues to claim that "the valid modes for your TV encoder will be reported in a verbose X log file (generated with `startx ---logverbose 5`) when X is run on a TV." So that should give you your proper modeline.

Yes, but I'm being pretty conservative; as I haven't seen anything that says that the PVR-350 really does output only TV-compatible signals, I'm assuming that it might not (because PC hardware often don't adhere to real standards). I think it's weird that the sample "XF86Config-4.pvr350-tvout.sample" config file lists non-standard TV frequencies when TV out is being used.


OK, but that is for Nvidia cards. We're talking about a PVR-350. While the notes might be the same for a 350, there's no guaranteed correlation.

Anyway, I do hope that you're right. It would certainly make everyone's life much easier.

I'll grant you that I'm not sure why it provides a vertical refresh range like that either. However, the actual modeline for the PVR-350 seems to agree with others I've found out there when searching for "PVR-350 modeline." So I'd bet that setting VertRefresh to just 60 (nice legal NTSC refresh rate) would work.

At some point I may play with it and try to get the 350 working on my system, but I've read so many comments on the instability of the 350 drivers that I'm leery to do so.

I realized after I posted that I started talking nVidia TV-out instead of PVR-350 TV-out... you're right, thanks for the correction there.

(I did get my nForce motherboard's TV-out working last night, but the image quality was quite poor, and I could not get get interlacing to be preserved, so I gave up.)

I haven't had any problems with instability. My box has been rock solid for TV watching/recording; all of my problems are in getting everything working the first time (and, being stupid hasn't helped, either ). However, there are the issues with DVD/divx playback, etc..

Heh. I've just spent several hours getting a 250-based system working, with TV-out coming from an MX-440 card. It's been painful, mostly due to a couple bouts of stunning stupidity (example: never answer "yes" to either of the initial mythtv-setup questions, when configuring a slave backend -- I knew about not answering "yes" to the second question, but I thought I could answer "yes" to the first, because I botched adding a slave tuner entry ).