If you are one of the people who's colors are very dim when viewing content from your PVR-150 or PVR-500, but other content, like DVDs or HD cards look fine, there may be a fix for this. If you can get it to work. I couldn't.

Take a look here.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/ivtv/devel/28696

It has to do with updating a register using ivtvctl. It did not work for me because I am running 2.6.15 kernel. It may work for others who are not running R5B7.

If you get it to work using R5B7, please post the procedures here.

mike

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KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

I know this is an old post, but did you get this to work? I tried it in R5B7 with no luck. I'll try compiling a new version ivtv and see if it works.

What I found was the brightness and contrast were way to high and the saturation was too low... so...

You can set color levels for the card with ivtvctl and I think you can set them in one of your init scripts and have it stick throughout the session but I'm not sure. gonna do some testing.

settings I used that seemed to make a decent picture (at least it matched my regular broadcast picture for color and that's good enough for my old eyes).

ivtvctl -y brightness=100
ivtvctl -y contrast=50
ivtvctl -y saturation=85

you can get the current settings with ivtvctl -Y (you may have to specify the device with -d /dev/video0 etc). note that brightness isn't read out properly and I think you have to subtract 256 to get the current setting. But you must set it in the range 0-255. ivtvctl -h will help.

anyway, that seems to work for me. hope it helps.

A

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ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

I was never able to get the fix to work as described. I will try the ivtvctl parameters when I get a chance. I've been working with hdtv lately.

mike

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KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

did you try to recompile with ivtv version of cx-whatever?

I haven't done it yet, but if you have, it'd be good to know.

Acutally, though, I think knoppmyth includes the ivtv version? I don't know.

A

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

I don't think knoppmyth includes the kerneversion, because the command returns with an error. I later found that this is a syptom of using the kernel version of the cx25840 module.

_________________
KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

well, maybe this weekend... I'll try building and using a couple different versions and see what works.

A

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

I believe adding the settings in this file /etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params somewhere before the "done" line should make them "stick".



Then do the following (or reboot) to set the parameters




I have a PVR-150 on mythtv 0.19 and the latest ivtv driver but still can't quite get the vibrant colours I used to get with mythtv 0.18. Kind of dissapointing...

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-Mapper
"You can be the captain, and I will draw the charts" - N.P.

From the IVTV changelog for version 0.4.4, http://dl.ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/stable/ChangeLog



The saturation fix is included in 0.4.4 After I upgraded IVTV, this fix cured my PVR-150 low saturation problems.

right, ivtv 0.4.4 .. installed it right after upgrading to R5B7 following these instruction http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=CompileIvtv (firmware and all, even though it says R5B7 has the latest firmware for PVR-150). Thought this would do it but, it still did not fix the colour problem for me.

It does fix the 0.4.3 bug (included in R5B7) of PVR-150s misidentified as PVR-250s.

_________________
-Mapper
"You can be the captain, and I will draw the charts" - N.P.

This change will work, until I go into "Watch TV". I verified that the script makes the correct changes, but after starting Watch TV, and checking again with ivtvctl -Y, I get the folowing.



It looks like mythtv is reseting them when it calls ivtv. Does anyone know how this might be happening?

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KnoppMyth R5B7
Asus P4P800-VM
P4 2.4 Ghz - 1GB RAM
PVR-150 - HD-5000
Geforce FX 5200

It doesn't just do it when you select live TV viewing. It resets with every channel change.

Select "Watch TV"
Alt tab to a shell you have open (you have to exit myth, load the terminal, then reload myth)
su to root
cd /
./etc/init.d/set_ivtv_params start

You'll see the colours reset. Then change the channel and then go back to the channel you were on and it's the same as before you executed the param change.

I also noticed there are brightness settings for each channel in mythtv-setup and these default to 32768 for each one so I imagine Myth pulls the offset information from the database and applies it to a base number stored in the database?(or a file somewhere). If you can find the base information, this is what you'ld want to change. I'll have a look, but I'm still a little green with linux. (just not PHP, SQL etc.)

Do the settings in myth tv change anything; the ones from myth web channel info. I have a pvr250 and find the colors a bit flat.

Craig

More of a workaround. Playing with the settings (G key in myth) I figured out the settings for the contrast etc.



Updating the channel table using

"UPDATE channel SET contrast=26873, brightness=25563, colour=42593, hue=35388"

Will globally apply the settings to every channel (much faster then using mythtv-setup), but if you aren't confortable using SQL (you can access it by using webmin if you have it setup)..

Best workaround I can figure out without knowing where it's getting these start numbers from.

Personally I prefer setting brightness to 40628, but oddly ivtvctl -Y shows this as being set to 158?? The brightness got small in tvctl as the screen got brighter.. go figure.

another work around is to put the ivtvctl settings into a tuning script

create a script: I called mine /usr/local/bin/tune_video0.sh


chmod +x it and then enter it into myth-setup for that particular input.

a tuning script is normally used for tuning an external tuner, but is a good workaround for this.

can anyone confirm that ivtv 0.4.4 actually fixes the problem?

_________________
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Hauppauge 350/150
ASUS V9520Magic/128MB Geforce FX5200
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L200R0 200GB
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton

It sure does. Works a treat, and a real simple fix

Steve

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