[mythtv-users] Re: G400-TV tuner, or recommended cards?

[Andrew Prior]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Stefan Frank wrote:

> How to get it working? Read different docs online and trying several
> things. Seriously, i don't really remember how, but it certainly took some
> time. I use the matrox drivers for X in framebuffer mode (for 2D video only),
> Afaik you need to configure X for framebuffer mode in order to get
> XVideo support on the TV out. And the mgavideo drivers to enable the
> the tv tuner / mjpeg encoder. Kernel is WOLK 4.6s (based on 2.4.20 with
> LOTS of patches).

  OK, that helps to know.  I had been using the matrox X drivers at first,
couldn't get the tuner going, then read a document that said you could do
that OR use the mgavideo drivers.  Using the mgavideo drivers I saw the tuner
work (at least once) so I kept down that path.

  Right now I think I'm getting close.  I've got the TV-out working
reliably & repeatably for X, but not yet for TV viewing.  When I run
tvscan I see the output on the TV, but not on X of course (I only care
about the TV output actually).  Right now when I run mythtv in TV watching
mode I just get a black screen and a syslog error: "mgagrab: get_format
failed".  I think this is because I've been aborting the setup part
where you grab the channels (it's taking a LONG time to run, not sure if
it even actually is making progress, so I'm just going to leave it running
for a couple hours and see), and I think mythtv is using that info to
set up the tuner.  I'm seeing about 10 bytes/second on my ADSL
interface, which might even be other traffic, so I know that listing
download is going to take forever.

> >   I'm using kernel 2.4.22 right now (also tried 2.4.18) but when I use the
> > framebuffer drivers in the kernel I don't get the TV out to work and I
> > don't see the tuner.  At another time I had the mgavideo framebuffer drivers
> > running and xawtv ran and I could play TV, but then the TV out stopped
> > working for mythtv.  I tried the mgavideo drivers other times and it
> > kept crashing my computer (I think it was because I had the kernel drivers
> > loaded too).  I'm slowly working out what the different bits do, and
> > maybe can get something to work...
>
> If you need further help i could send you parts of my configuration. Let
> me know.

  I might ask for some config files if this fails.  Thanks for your
help so far.  It helps even to know somebody out there has it working...  :)

  - Andrew

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Prior,  Programmer                                   (416) 924-9969