[mythtv-users] PVR-350 comments

[Sam Varshavchik]

I followed Jarod Wilson's HOWTO (http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/), and 
mythtv.org's HOWTO, to set up mythtv 0.19 on Fedora Core 4 with a Hauppauge 
PVR-350.

One comment I have, and I hope that the HOWTO can be changed to clarify 
this point, concerns the input source configuration.

The mythtv HOWTO says: "NOTE: Don't add a video source to a hardware input 
if you don't actually have anything connected there."

When I finished setting up the ivtv drivers for the PVR-350, mythtv's input 
source screen listed a whole bunch of devices, labeled "Composite 0" through 
"Composite 3", a "Tuner 0", a "Composite 4", and "S-Video 0" through 
"S-Video 3", in this order.  All of them were prefixed by "MPEG: 
/dev/video0".

So, I naturally thought that "Composite 0" was the right option, and I 
proceeded to set it up.

Long story short -- I spent an hour trying to figure out why I was recording 
a completely black signal.  I don't yet have anything hooked up to PVR 
350's TV-OUT, I just start mythfrontend, choose "Watch TV", let it run for 
a few minutes, then grab the mpeg files and look at them.  The .mpeg files 
were the right size, they were valid mpeg files, a few minutes long, but 
were 100% black.

It turns out, that I needed to set up the "Tuner 0" device, not "Composite 
0".  That was the trick.  Looks like the chipset on my PVR-350 also has 
logical four video-in channels, that are not really hooked up to anything.  
The card has just a single cable TV-in plug (and also an FM radio-in plug, 
wonder if mythtv can do anything about it).  The software saw the extra four 
video-in channels, but they're all duds.  If an appropriate blurb is added 
to the HOWTOs, hopefully it would save other folks some time in figuring 
this out.

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