[mythtv-users] Setting up a DVB Card

Andrew Herron andrew.herron at gmail.com
Tue May 3 09:18:31 UTC 2005


> OK, that's encouraging. Do you know any good step-by-step guides on
> how to do this? It's diffierent to getting analogue cards up and
> running and I'm finding it a little difficult.

I'm in Brisbane, Australia and did this a couple of weeks ago.  This
may hurt a little.


Start here:
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

I also referenced Jani Talikka's guide:
http://www.users.on.net/~jani/dvico-mythtv.html

I used bits and pieces from Jarod's, Jani's and even Martin Smith's
guide (the one you have already found).  Jani compiles a custom kernel
and uses card-specific drivers, which I didn't want to do.  I mostly
stuck to Jarod's guide as it seemed to have the general stuff covered,
but make sure you read all 3 before starting.


The biggest thing in Jarod's guide that was wrong for me was the
kernel choice.  I spent at least a day bashing my head against the
wall to work this stuff out, so here goes:

1) Instead of the _FC3 version listed in that guide, use the
"rhfc3.at" version.  This currently means sticking to 2.6.10 - in step
6 use this command:
apt-get install kernel=2.6.10-1.770_14.rhfc3.at

The reason for this is that _FC3 doesn't include the cx88-dvb module,
apparently the Fedora Core guys don't think it's fully stable yet. 
However, even after installing the correct package you will find that
cx88-blackbird loads instead of cx88-dvb; this is because the
"kmodule" command still returns the wrong thing.

I couldn't find any way to stop it doing that that so I ended up
hacking rc.sysinit (not recommended).

2) In section 10, under "DVB capture cards" follow Jani Talikka's
guide, that has most of it covered.

Section 5.3 of Jani's guide has info about the LinuxTV apps you need
for your original question.  Finding a list of frequencies to give the
"scan" program is a pain, but google should give them to you
eventually.

3) The LinuxTV page for this card has links to kernel patches, but
they are already loaded in the kernel I recommended:
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Kworld_V-Stream_Xpert_DTV

You will note there is no lirc information for this card's remote yet.
 I couldn't get it working either.

4) run the "scan" program, and keep the channels.conf it produces. 
Take note of each station's unique settings (everything except the
last 3 numbers, there will be a number of lines for each station where
only those numbers differ; one for each channel found).

5) Tuning the channels into MythTV is all kinds of fun.  I ended up
using the mythtvsetup channel editor to enter 5 sets of frequency
information (everything you wrote down in step 4) for each of the 5
stations available to me, each of which located 3-5 channels.  The
scan can take anywhere up to 30 seconds per frequency set.


Step 4&5 probably don't need to be that complicated; you may be able
to get a list of frequencies and let MythTV auto-detect everything
else.  Didn't work for me though.

If you manage to get it working without going insane consider yourself lucky  :)

Andy


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