[mythtv-users] Re: (One of two) PVR250s produces a stream MythTV can't decode?

[Stephen L. Ulmer]

On 29 Feb 2004, ulmer at ufl.edu spake:
>
> Okay, this is weird and I'm at a loss.
>
> I have a front/back-end combination box that was running MythTV 0.13
> and IVTV 0.1.7 happily for a "long" time (since January 6). The
> system has 2 PVR250s (one rev 1, one rev2).

[...]

> What should I do next? Other than buying (yet another) card and
> checking for a hardware failure, I'm completely at a loss.

It's always the last damn place you look.

In a fit of desperation to at least get *most* of my recordings, I
opened up the box and switched the order of the cards on the PCI bus.
When I did this, I realized that the /dev/video0 card (the PVR250, rev
2) was in the PCI slot next to the AGP slot in which resides a
Geoforce MX440.

There is a heat sink on the MX440 that is 1mm-2mm from the "back" of
the PVR250, and there just happens to be some components on the "back"
of the PVR card right "over" the heat sink.  It was kinda hot...
Okay, it was *really* hot, but not yet scorched.

I let everything cool down, then moved that PVR250 to the slot on the
OTHER side of the /dev/video1 card (PVR250, rev 1). All works fine
now.

When trying to figure out "why now", I realized that in the last two
weeks my family has used MythTV completely exclusively of our
Tivo(tm).  Previous to that it had been in an "engineering mode", with
me making sure that it was at least as effective for TV recording as
the Tivo, though we made pretty good use of MythMusic.

So *now* I can cancel the Tivo subscription... :)

0.14 rocks, and thanks for a great project!

-- 
Stephen