[mythtv-users] MythTv, pcHDTV HD3000, & SuSE 10.1

[R. G. Newbury]

Chris wrote:
>> The HD3000 will do both analog and digital, but of course, it will not
>> do digital with the analog module loaded.
>> There is more in the gossamer-thread archives about this.
>>
>> Geoff
> 
> Can you clarify what you meant by this statement Geoff?  I've got one 
> running under Suse 10.0/Mythtv .19 and I'm able to switch back and forth 
> to either tuner within Mythtv.  I did set the card up as a dvb card, not 
> using Myth's preconfigured pcHDTV3000 setup if that is what you are 
> referring to.

The HD3000 will tune and play analog channels (such as cable TV feed) 
using the cs8800 module.
The HD3000 will tune and play digital channels (including cable digital 
  QAM256 feeds or OTA) using the cx88-dvb module.

Until the .19 version, MythTV could not handle switching back and forth. 
It was possible, for example, using xine, to rmmod (or modprobe -r) one 
module and modprobe in the other, and then use the new feed. I never 
bothered to try that. I have no idea how the tuning would be done, but I 
presume from what I read here, that people were using azap or similar to 
tune and xine/mplayer to play.

Of course, Mythtv uses an entirely different tuning methodology. And it 
was not set up to allow, in effect, the "existence" of phantom input 
cards, matched against video sources, (since while one module was loaded 
the card could not receive the other type of feed and for that purpose, 
at least, the card "did not exist").

Without knowing anything more than what has been written here, I 
understand that Myth was tweaked so that it would not barf if it did not 
find all of the card:source pairs that it could expect, and it was 
tweaked to allow the program to load/unload the proper modules at the 
proper time, treating the matter as no more than a type of tuner plus 
channel change....which it is not! Neat work by the coders.

So although it may *appear* that both modules are loaded, the HD3000 
will only work with one of the two, at a time. So Myth actually unloads 
one and loads the other.. transparently. So my statement is quite 
correct, although your experience would lead you to believe that both 
modules are loaded at once

Note, however, that this still requires that you keep your source 
channel lineups unique.

Glad to know that that feature works. I have never tried it, as I have a 
PVR500 to deal with my analog channel recording needs and use the HD3000 
only for digital cable feeds, and possibly HD OTA by the end of the 
World Cup...!

Geoff