[Edit 2006/07/19: latest, upgraded to R5C7 with almost Tier 1 success (see below). Hardware failure meant mobo replacement (MSI 661FM2-LSR Socket 478 SIS 661FX)]
[Edit 2006/03/13: latest, upgraded to R5B4 with success but some hiccups. Will save full report for R5Vn]
[Edit 2005/06/13: This post now out of date - see post below - now have installed R5A16 with minimal effort]

• KnoppMyth R4V5
• PVR-350, recently bought with tuner type 47
• TV and audio output through the PVR350
• NTSC N America, analog cable
• Dell 2350 - Celeron 2.2, 512Mb, 160Gb, DVD-ROM, PS2 mouse/kbd.

The short story: it basically works after some tweaking. There is some instability. I'm very impressed by KnoppMyth, MythTV, and very appreciative for everyone's work on this. Thank you!

[Backstory: I got a PVR350 because I was planning to put it in a PII 333Mhz, so needed the hardware encoder and decoder, plus I had read about the high quality of the 350's TV out. The PII box was already a SuSE based web/mail server, and I tried to install MythTV on top.
This turned out to be a world of pain, and I was losing the will to live, even when I switched to the spare (!) Celeron 2.2 I had available as a result of marriage. After many, many evenings, I had it working to the monitor, still no TV out, no remote, none of the add-ins (web, music, weather). Then I discovered KnoppMyth and thought I'd try that.]

I alread knew I had a new, and therefore awkward, PVR350 card, but I'd seen the following articles, and I followed their instructions: the HauppaugeThreeFiftyInstallation Wiki article, and the Green&Purple PVR350 TVout [Solved] thread (10th post, but read the whole thread for other tweaks), and lo, it worked! I set the tuner type to 44, as suggested somewhere in there.

The KnoppMyth installation was painless, and the post-install tweaking was pretty much cut/paste. To help with it all, I installed my favourite editor, and Firefox, with:

If you're not already an emacs fan, you probably don't want that editor - it will be too much hassle. Sounds like Pico is a good simple editor.

Now the fundamentals seem to be working, however, it is a bit flakey. I suspect the ivtv driver I used (ivtv-0.3.1x), and will be trying to identify a better driver version to use. I tried the latest 0.3.2, but it wouldn't compile - I suspect it wants a 2.6.x kernel.

I'm tempted to try patching the kernel for proper tuner type 47 support, as I've got it set to tuner type 44 and the picture quality could be better on some channels.

My current problems are - it has crashed or locked up quite a bit, sometimes almost definitely due to the ivtv driver (display freezes or similar). I havent' done a good forensic check of logs etc., for clues yet. DVD playing just didn't work either - haven't started investigating, but I added the DVD-ROM after install so that might be part of it.

I'm a little disappointed by the video quality though (and it's meant to be better than many options !?). It's definitely inferior to the direct TV display. I upped the bitrate to 7500, though still on 480x480, with no improvement. Picture looks soft and relatively washed out. Tweaking the TV controls might help, but that will stuff up other viewing. It's also annoying that you can't adjust the output signal for the TV size (can you?), and instead have to shrink the GUI and TV display within the X output.

Another thing that disappointed me is MythMusic - I tried to initialize it reading my music over an SMB share, and after 1 hour when it was only 15% complete, I gave up. I do have over 40Gb of mp3s, and I know SMB is rubbish, but there's no reason it should be that slow as it's not reading the MP3 tags. Perhaps if I can get the time I can look at the code... (and yes, I now that the audio for that won't come out through the PVR350).

MythWeb is fantastic - I didn't know if it was included, and just speculatively pointed my browser at the new machine, and there it was in its glory! I expect to do all my scheduling from there. The machine works without the keyboard plugged in, and I suspect that's how I'll keep it.

If I improve things or discover anything, I'll post in this thread. Hints/tips on the best driver version to use, and how effective a kernel patching for tuner=47 would be much appreciated.

I decided to try another driver option, since the 0.2.0-rc series is meant to be more stable. I re-did the instructions from the Green&Purple thread, post 10, but with driver ivtv-0.2.0-rc3d (most recent 0.2.0-rc) and firmware pvr_1.18.21.22301_inf.zip (the most recent in the directory).

I removed the options lines for saa7127 and msp3400 from /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv, based on this thread, to give:
The picture is now better. Color, contrast, brightness is about the same as the from the TV tuner, though sharpness is less.

I don't know whether stability will be better, but as before it still freezes any time I do Menu->Edit Recording while watching a recording and I have to reboot. So I won't do that any more .

Currently trying newer firmware ivtv-0.2.0-rc3e, said to fix an OSD bug - and the flakyness I've seen could be OSD related. [Edit: nope, it's still flakey - I've had to teach the wife how to reboot.]

While the Ivtv Wiki FirmwareVersions page recommends version .22168, the driver itself complains about your firmware being buggy unless .22037 is installed. I'm going with that for now.

Still freezes on Menu->Edit Program, but haven't yet used it enough to tell if the other freezes are gone. [Edit: they haven't gone]

Ok, I'm hopeful that stability has arrived, courtesy of moving the card to another slot [Edit: my hopes were in vain, it didn't remove the problem]. There is some suggestion in the forums to avoid the top or bottom slots.

The problem with transient bugs is that you can't prove it's fixed, it just hasn't happened yet. I'll mention it if it does, otherwise, the config in my signature may be a good one, with the caveat to check which slot you use.

If you change the slot, you'll have to do the 'lspci' thing and put the new BusId value in your XF86Config-4. On startup, myth-setup will be run automatically because of the tuner card change, but you can quit that; nothing needs to change there.

Strangely, my setup worked even before I edited XF86Config-4, I'm baffled about that, as lspci did give a different number.

I had the fuzzy picture too (we seem to have very similiar setups.) Changing the capture resolution to 640x480 made it much better. I'm still using the default bitrate, I think. I originally did this because Windows Media Player wouldn't correct the aspect ratio.

_________________
P3 500 Mhz, no fan | 256 MB PC100 RAM | PSU SEASONIC SUPERTORNADO-300W | HD 160GB SAMSUNG 7200 SP1604N 2MB | TV TUNER HAUPAUGE WINTV-PVR 350 (990) PCI

We even have exactly the same disk... 640x480 did improve things a bit, though it's still noticeably flatter and softer than the tuner in the TV, an ordinary 2 year old Sony 28". Perhaps I should try a better cable from the 350 to the TV.

Does the P3 500 work well enough for you? I was originally going to go with a PII 333, but found my spare (result of marriage) Celeron 2.2 didn't use a whole lot more electricity, even though it may be underused most of the time.

Spinpoint, Super Tornado, passively cooled P3... Let me guess, you browse Silent PC Review ? I went the cheapest silencing route I could, with quiet replacement fans in my PSU and case, and have my HD, with homemade heatsinks on it, wedged into the case with bubble wrap to dampen the vibes. Those spinpoints certainly vibrate, even if they're otherwise low noise.

Further to my silence and electricity usage obsessions, I'm experimenting with shutting the machine down when not in use, with nvram-wakeup etc.. Not as simple as I originally thought, but we'll see. A Wiki entry will be forthcoming if it works out.

I browse www.overclockers.com a lot, but they frequently link to silentpcreviews so I knew to look there when I wanted some noise advise. They have some great recommendations.

The passive CPU was just an afterthought. The CPU fan has run for 5 years almost non-stop so its noisy. When I put in the new power supply the 120mm fan created a cross current that made the 40mm even louder. For a week I contemplated mounting an 80mm fan on the CPU somehow until I finally got fed up and unplugged the one noisy fan. Its still working so I havn't given it a second thought.

All together I ended up with a very quiet computer. I have to turn my TV and everything else off to hear anything.

I had to turn commercial flagging off. It would bog down the processor and the system would sometimes become unresponsive. I havn't played with the settings, there may still be a way to get it working. I'm still having some trouble. Since I havn't figured out the cause it could still be the processor. I tend to think its something to do with the PVR-350. Maybe thats overheating. It doesn't have any active air circulation and top never shows CPU usage over 20%. It could still be something like interupt processing is too slow. I'll try moving the card out of the first PCI slot tonight. That might help the passive airflow as well.

_________________
P3 500 Mhz, no fan | 256 MB PC100 RAM | PSU SEASONIC SUPERTORNADO-300W | HD 160GB SAMSUNG 7200 SP1604N 2MB | TV TUNER HAUPAUGE WINTV-PVR 350 (990) PCI

Ok, I was hopeful that switching PCI slots helped out, but last night it froze again. The gap between freezes was the longest I've had, so it might have improved things, but with something as seemingly random as this, it's not really possible to extrapolate confidently. It certainly didn't fix the problem though it may have improved it.

I hadn't noticed the freeze (it froze when exiting viewing a recording after I turned the TV off), and it prevented all recording until I rebooted. I'm assuming that the ivtv driver was frozen so recordings etc. couldn't happen.

I haven't really found anything in the logs (are there any interesting logs outside of /var/log?). The mythbackend log for the time it locked (about 18:45) to reboot (22:00), contains this:



These QSettings errors happen all the time, I've seen mention that they're not important. So, no evidence from the backend.

Before rebooting, I tried to restart X, and the XFree86.0.log.old is the same as a successful one until it complains it couldn't open /dev/fb0, so then "No devices detected", and bombs out. I assume just another symptom of the driver/firmware/hardware being hung.

When I switched slots it worked for a long time without a problem, but then it started happening more regularly after the first freeze. I wonder if something gets screwed up in the settings and changing slots causes this to be reset.

I can't find anything abnormal in the logs either.

_________________
P3 500 Mhz, no fan | 256 MB PC100 RAM | PSU SEASONIC SUPERTORNADO-300W | HD 160GB SAMSUNG 7200 SP1604N 2MB | TV TUNER HAUPAUGE WINTV-PVR 350 (990) PCI

Being too busy, I hadn't intended to upgrade until R5V1 appears, as my machine was very stable - no freezes for a couple of months. But something wierd happened - the display froze, and never came back even on reboot. I feared that something had fried internally, since it's 95F (35C) in our apartment and I keep the fans slow to keep noise down. The X11 logs just said they couldn't open the device.

I wasn't getting anywhere with diagnosis, and decided if it wasn't a hardware failure, then an upgrade would be the easiest option.

I backed up, and went through the auto-upgrade process. However, it didn't work for me. Firstly, I think the upgrade transferred my /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv file, and who knows what else that I didn't really want. I hacked past that, only to find that the database upgrade had failed. /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log had various messages that I have unfortunately destroyed about a failure to update the schema among other things.

Whatever, again, I decided that a fresh install seemed simpler than diagnosis. The install went very well, based on this post.

My apologies to the community - it would have been more helpful if I'd found out what was actually wrong in both cases. Still, getting the 350 with TV-out working for R5A16 is a breeze with the above instructions. Auto-upgrade was less reliable for me.

The latest - enforced update to R5C7 due to hardware failure. Now have a non-Dell motherboard (yay!). Surprisingly, the Dell PSU in this machine seems to be standard, as it runs the motherboard fine. I thought Dell used non-standard connectors.

Anyway, the upgrade was surprisingly painless. R5C7 auto-configures the TV-out now, and that *almost* worked (not quite Tier 1 yet). I had to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to change fb0 to fb1, as hinted by the /var/log/messages message:

ivtv0-osd: fb1: cx23415 TV out frame buffer device

Other than that, it works fine. Tier 1.1...

Well i'm similar situation. Had R5Ax and never could get pvr350 to TV out, just had a black screen. So after sadly using it to record stuff and watch it on the monitor I actually went online to check if anything new was out.. yeppie R5C7. Wasn't even going to consider looking at it except like what you found the change log stated that it had better TV out support. No doubt it does!! I do have TV out now but no sound through the 350 what so ever . Can you give me some help as to what to look for to tricker sound through 350?

Thanks for any help....

also

Many thanks to all the people who helped keep KnoppMyth active

KnoMythTV

Are you doing audio through the pvr-350 or though your sound card?

make sure you specify which you are using in mythtv-setup.

Ok i must have missed that on the setup... because I don't have a clue... sorry Let me find out. In middle of movie so it will take a moment. Thanks for the quick reply!

KnoMythTV

Ok i ran mythtv-setup again as su and I never found the place to do the sound which explains why I didn't remember seeing it. Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks for all the help
KnoMythTV