[mythtv-users] loss of video from PVR-250

[Christopher N. Deckard]

Howdy,
First let me say that MythTV is great.  I first looked at it in May, 
and it is much improved since then.  I finally got down to buying a 
PVR-250 this week, so I've upgraded everything and have been trying 
to get things to work right.  So here's where I am:

Hardware:
VIA FV24 motherboard (VIA Chipsets with Savage4 video)
VIA C3 900MHz (Ezra)
256MB RAM
20GB Maxtor 7200 RPM
WinTV PVR-250

I'm using the riser card supplied with the motherboard to connect 
the PVR-250.  Using onboard sound, video, network.

Software:
Debian Unstable
Linux 2.4.22 (my own configured kernel)
MythTV 0.12

I compiled everything after changing the settings.pro files to use 
i586 instead of pentiumpro.  I followed the directions for getting 
the ivtv driver and for getting lirc up.  I am using the most recent 
firmware for the PVR-250.  The database, backend and frontend are 
all running on the same box.

Everything works great (including IR) except for watching live TV 
(I'm not sure if recordings have the same problem).  Basically, I 
get pretty poor quality video.  Very grainy, lots of vertical 
interference of some kind.  For the most part, I can only watch a 
few seconds of live TV before the video feed completely stops.  At 
this point, mythfrontend uses no more CPU.  If I kill the backend, 
sometimes the frontend will return back to the menu, otherwise it 
stays locked up.  On one occasion the entire computer locked up.

I get a lot of these kernel messages:

Nov  4 19:29:45 mythtv kernel: ivtv: dma still pending!
Nov  4 19:29:46 mythtv last message repeated 101 times
Nov  4 19:29:46 mythtv kernel: ivtv: dma still not cleared
Nov  4 19:29:47 mythtv kernel: ivtv: EOS interrupt not received! 
stopping anyway.

Mostly the dma still pending message only shows up once I've killed 
the backend.  On the occasion that video is playing, any channel 
changing or channel guide that pops up freezes the video.

So, besides low quality TV, MythTV is great.  :-)  What should I 
look at doing to up the quality of the video, and to keep it from 
dropping out all together?  Any help would be much appreciated.

Below are the important snips from modules.conf and the output from 
lspci.

Thanks,
-Chris

modules.conf:
alias char-major-81     videodev
alias char-major-81-0   ivtv
alias char-major-61     lirc_i2c
options ivtv debug=1 mpg_buffers=100
options tuner type=2
options msp3400 once=1 simple=1
add below ivtv msp3400 saa7115 tuner
add above ivtv lirc_dev lirc_i2c

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8605 [ProSavage PM133] 
(rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8605 [PM133 AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super 
South] (rev 40)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1a)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1a)
00:07.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] 
(rev 40)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 
AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:0a.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc 
iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0f.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Lucent Microelectronics FW323 (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. ProSavage PM133 (rev 02)