Ok. first here are my specs.

P3 1Ghz, 512mb ram, Nvidia TNT2 32mb Vid Card, Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150MCE, and a 40gb IDE hdd. viewing through a 21"monitor.

I have the latest KnoppMyth (R5A16).
I updated to the latest IVTV (0.3.6g)

I thought i set up my stuff right but.....
when i try to watch live tv i just get a black screen for like ten or fifteen seconds then it goes back to the mythtv menu.

here is what i have in my /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv


i then did a "mythtv-setup".
then did a "./mythtv-backend"

I know my 150mce is /dev/video0 because when in setup that is the only decice that give me any svideo/composite/tuner options.

I do have one suspicion that since the 150MCE has an FM tuner and a TV tuner that may be causing my problems...

can anyone help me figure out what is going on? i searched the forum but couldn't find anything.
ok... FYI... i'm completely new to linux so i'm sorta supprised i've gotten as far as i have already.

I'm also pretty new to this, but after booting up, hit Ctl-Alt-F1 and login as root. Then, do cat /dev/video0 and see what output you get.

For one solitary second, I got an error message that way, but then my box reverted to freezing whenever I try that. If anyone has suggestions to cure that, I'm all ears!

I have the EXACT same problem with my system, but unfortunately I haven't figured anything out yet. I tried going thru all of the troubleshooting steps on the Knoppmythwiki, but it did not work.

The only big difference between your and my setups is that your processor is more powerful than my athlon 850, and my video card FX5200 256MB is a little better than yours. But I also have the same PVR-150MCE that you have. If I come up with any solutions, I will repost to this thread.

The only real solution I have right now is moving the tuner card over into my "good PC", which is an AMD64 3200+, 1GB ram, FX6500 video card. I installed MythDora on that machine and everything worked like a champ.

I am starting to think that the "minimum requirements" that you see posted everywhere for mythtv are very suspect. I am starting to think that you need to have JUST THE RIGHT hardware or just the right minor configuration tweak to make mythtv work adequately on older hardware. To be honest, I am getting sick of wasting hours trying to "squeeze" performance out of my old PC to make mythtv work on hardware that everyone tells me "should work fine". I am most likely just going to upgrade my mobo & cpu and start over.

[There is a HUGE difference between hardware that "should work" and hardware that "works well"; with a large part of that difference being how much pain and heartache it takes for you to get the "should work" hardware functioning]

If that truly is the problem you are experiencing, then you need to make absolutely sure your tuner is configured properly. See http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... WatchingTV and pay particular attention to the part "Under "2. Capture Cards",". In your other thread you said you were able to watch TV for awhile, but then received an error, which would not be the same as the above (but the Wiki reference may still hold a clue)

I believe the responses were that an Athlon 850 should be powerful enough. That's not to say that some other component(s) in your system aren't causing the issue, or perhaps a misconfiguration somewhere. If you choose to upgrade your hardware you may want to take a look through the Tier1/2 forums to see what's working for others.

On Ebay, a 1.8 Ghz IBM goes for $100, a 2.6 for $150, and a 3.2 for $200.

Hi,

I didn't read all the previous threads but one thing that will stop tv from displaying is if the xorg.conf is set too high. 1024x768 will work but 1280 won't. It gave audio but black screen until switching res.

Mike