Hello,

Here is my system:

-two pchdtv 5500
-AMD 64X2
-Nvidia 7300gt
-4gb

I have some questions:

1. I'd like to run these cards with both NTSC and QAM tuners working...With the QAM the audio is not an issue but with NTSC do I have to run a jumper from the tuner card to the sound card? How do I accomplish this if I have two cards?

2. When setting things up in myth do I set the system to ATSC or NTSC?

3. Any other special or unique things I should do/consider with two of these cards?

Any and all help is always appreciated...I have spent the last two days googling and haven't seen much written about this kind of setup. Perhaps there aren't any big issues (I'm crossing my fingers!).

Thanks.

I'll try to answer a couple items...

If you're at that screen that has the ATSC/NTSC setting. LEAVE it at NTSC. I had a problem recently, and it was tracked down to that. If your system is using NTSC anywhere, leave that setting be!

If the hdtv 5500 doesn't do MPEG encoding for the NTSC capture, I'll have to assume that you need the audio feed from the card to the line-in on you mobo's soundboard. I just checked the pchdtv site, and it DOES require the cable for analog. check out the posts on how folks setup the older WinTV cards for pointers.

OBTW - In case it isn't obvious, this means that like with all bttv type SDTV cards (aka "YUV framegrabbers", or "software encoders") you need a sound card per capture card. This includes the SDTV tuner on the 5500 and most other ATSC cards.

This is part of the reason that the PVR cards are so popular for SDTV, not only does their on-board encoding offload the CPU, but the automatic incorporation of the audio into the MPEG-2 stream produced simplifies several other things. ATSC cards don't need to do this for an HDTV signal since they're just capturing a pre-encoded MPEG-2 stream.

Thanks for the replies...I got everything working perfectly...I think.

The pchdtv5500 doesn't need jumpers from the card to soundcard if configured correctly. The later revisions of the 5500 allow for sound to be passed w/o the jumper thankfully. So far the card is working great --- its too bad there isn't a comprehensive guide to setting it up. With this card the information seems to be scattered about the net on several forums...

Nonetheless thanks.

nedson, Any chance you can give a rundown of what you did. I was recently force to replace 2 failing PVR250 cards, so I chose to go with two additional pchdtv 5500's for a total of 3. One is for OTA HD which works perfectly. The other two are hooked to directv boxes for SD reception.

Anyhow, I can get the video to work fine, but not the audio. I've scoured the net and seen the problem everywhere but nothing fixes the problem. I can get the /dev/dspN's created, all information indicates the drivers are working, but either no sound comes through dspN, or dspN locks up the system. I upgraded to R5.5 in hopes of fixing the problem, but no luck.

Did you install the drivers provided by pchdtv, or just use what was provided by knoppmyth? I'm currently trying to get the pchdtv drivers compiled to try those.

Thanks for anyones help!
Dan

Well I was able to get video working on myth. It turns out that myth was not changing the channel to 3 like it was supposed to. When I used ivtv-tune to set the channel while watching up pops the picture.

Now I just need to figure out how to get sounds to work. I know it's a common problem but none of the solutions seem to work. Everything looks like it should. I have the Audio Port judging by:



Alsa seems to recognize it:


/dev/dsp1 is created:



But whenever anything tries to play from /dev/dsp1 an error is produced:



Does anyone have any thoughts?

Dan

skyhighpn
I make you a deal. If you use any of this information below to get your pcHD card working. You will post back a statement like this. "I got everything working perfectly and this is how I did it". Then list your work. With your information maybe you or I or someone else reading this could create a comprehensive Wiki on the Knoppmyth site.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/PcHDTV_HD-5500
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/PcHDTV_HD-3000
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCI_TV_audio#CX88_with_HD-3000_.2F_HD-5500

The maximum number of pcHD cards is three.
The analog portion of the pcHD3000 and pcHD5500 are identical when the DMA sound is enabled. Use link above.
Alsa sound for hd3000 / hd5500 was disabled in 5.5 because it would sometimes load the sound cards in the wrong order.

First question is your DMA sound enabled. Run lspci | grep [[]Audio. Below I have two pcHD3000 cards with DMA emabled.

Next step find your sound card module name. run cat /proc/asound/cards

In my case I have only one card listed (HDA-Intel) in the (0) position. Now run lsmod | grep snd_*

My sound card module is named snd_hda_intel . You should be able to ID your sound card module at this point. If not post back to the list.

Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and comment out "#" this line. This is where the DMA sound was disabled.

and add this below it.

Note: on the first two lines of code my sound cards module name (snd_hda_intel) shows up. You need to substitute your sound card module name that you found from the procedure above.

Save your file above and reboot.

run cat /proc/asound/cards in this case I only have two pcHD3000 cards installed.

Compare this to the first time you ran cat /proc/asound/cards above. You now should have all of your pcHD sound cards (CX8801) listed in the 1,2 or 3 positions. Your primary sound card must be listed in position 0.

Now open AlsaMixer in a Xterm window and adjust the sound level output of your cards. Run alsamixer –c1 for pcHD card 1.
>alsamixer –c0 Primary sound card
>alsamixer –c1 HD-3000 capture card #1
>alsamixer –c2 HD-3000 capture card #2
>alsamixer –c3 HD-3000 capture card #3

Both of my card where unmuted and set at 81% but you better check yours to make sure.
You also may need to adjust capture levels on primary sound card (0). (This is just a guess)

Now delete all cards under Mythtv or your host name if you changed the default and reinstall your card.
Backend >> Capture Cards >> check box "Open DVB Card On Demand"
Backend >> Input Connections >> to match your Input Group to the correct DVB0, DVB1 or DVB2. You need to match the analog tuner to the digital DVB tuner of your card.

I am sure there is more to this but try it and post your results.

TVBox

_________________
TVBox
LinHES R8.6.1

Just thought I would chime in as well. I, too, seem to have the same problem as you, skyhighpn. Everything seems like it is setup right, but it doesn't work in myth and I get the same errors when I try some of the command line programs:

Also I get this error as well:

Now, I only have one PVR-150 and one HD-5500, so I have just been using the cable to feed the sound into my main sound card. But it bugs me that I can't get the PCI audio working. TVBox, thanks for posting those instructions, but they did not work for me. They are very similat to what I have tried before except for your changes to alsa-base. Still no dice. The audio port is enabled (as lspci shows), the CX88 sound card shows up in /proc/asound/cards, a /dev/dsp1 is created, but all the programs i have tried can't seem to talk to it. I have run alsamixer on it, and have enabled the capture and have un-muted/turned-up the playback (the only two controls that show up). These command line programs are what I have seen others use to double-check that it is working before trying it in myth, and I would prefer to keep playing aorund with these because things tend to lock up in mtyh when I try it. If anyone can confirm that those command line calls should work, that would be helpful. If anyone has any ideas for how to debug this further, I can provide feedback.