[mythtv-users] Questions about Setup Configuration with multiply tuner cards and HD Channel Scanning

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Mon Jan 15 02:19:20 UTC 2007


Jeffrey Born wrote:
> OK I went to the wiki and found this:
> 
> NOTE: Following these directions makes it impossible to use the analog
> portion of the pcHDTV card. It is recommended that you upgrade to the Linux
> 2.6.17 instead. Do not upgrade to 2.6.18, the ivtv drivers are using a new
> API in this release which is not yet complete.
> 
>   - Compile the kernel with the pcHDTV HD-3000 drivers normally.
>   - Compile and install the ivtv (0.4.x) drivers.
>   - Remove the eeprom.ko module from the ivtv directory (should be
>   /lib/modules/2.6.15.x/ivtv/tveeprom.ko). There is another
> eeprom.kothat will work perfectly with the IVTV cards, but the IVTV
> version will not
>   work with the pcHDTV cards.
> 
> 
>   - You will also have to remove the v4l driver modules for the pcHDTV
>   card (cx88 and cx88_blackbird) then insert the dvb driver module 
> (cx88-dvb)
>   before starting mythbackend. You also have to be sure that the IVTV 
> modules
>   are loaded before the dvb drivers.
> 
> It sounds a bit complicated, but if you follow these instructions you 
> should
> have no trouble running ivtv 0.4.x and cx88-dvb cards in the same system.
> 
> FC6 has kernal 2.6.18-1.2869.fc6
> 
> Which leaves me confused.. Can someone point me to instructions for getting
> a PVR500 and HD3000 running under kernal 2.6.18-*?
> 
> Or are the instructions above good?  My biggest problem is finding
> instructions to follow.. I'm never sure if what I'm finding is out dated
> 

Those instructions are dated: Back at 2.6.15 ivtv and dvb both had a 
module called eeprom. That has since been fixed  circa October 2005.

The best instruction set is Jarod Wilson's at wilsonnet.com.

Choose your installation: FC5 or FC6. The ivtv module you use depends 
upon the kernel: .7 for 2.6.17, .8 for 2.6.18, .9 for 2.6.19. All of 
these are stable on their respective kernels. You would only use ivtv .9 
is you did a 'yum update' from an FC6 install.

The dvb drivers have been in the kernel since about 2.6.15. You should 
not be using the v4l kernels at all. IIRC, the proper kernel switches 
are set by default in the kernel config so you do not have to 
reconfigure and compile the kernel. (Although knowing how to is useful).

  I am running FC5 on kernel 2.6.17-1.2174 with ivtv .70 and the 
kernel's included cx88_dvb module for the HD3000 card. I do not even 
attempt to use the analog side of the HD3000: that requires the CPU to 
encode the analog stream to digital. Not worth it on an EPIA SP13000 
motherboard.

The PVR500 with ivtv should install without problems and show up at 
/dev/video0 and /dev/video1 with modprobe.conf lines like this:
*****************************
# ivtv modules setup
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 ivtv
alias char-major-81-1 ivtv
*****************************

There is nothing in my modprobe.conf for the HD3000: it is automagically 
loaded by the kernel. However, to stop the kernel loading the analog dvb 
module first (and stealing /dev/video0), I blacklist the cx88_blackbird 
and cx8800 modules in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. The kernel looks at 
that list and does not load anything listed there so that you can do so 
when and how you want..meaning in rc.local, like this.

********************************
#Following lines probably no longer needed as cx8800 is blacklisted
modprobe -r cx8800
modprobe -r cx88_dvb
modprobe -r cx8802
modprobe cx88_dvb
# This is to make sure that lirc gets loaded
echo "Running modprobe lirc_imon"
modprobe lirc_imon
**********************************

The modprobe of cx88_dvb should make the card show up at 
/dev/dvb/adapter0 with subfolders. If not, check that 
/etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules has the following lines:
*****************************
# DVB
KERNEL=="dvb",                  MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="dvb", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k; K=$${K#dvb}; printf 
dvb/adapter%%i/%%s $${K%%%%.*} $${K#*.}'", \
         NAME="%c", MODE="0666"
********************************

It is easier to install and debug one card at a time. With the setup as 
above, the HD3000 modules will be installed after ivtv. Either way you 
should see:

or51132: Waiting for firmware upload(dvb-fe-or51132-qam.fw)...
or51132: Version: 10001334-17430000 (133-4-174-3)
or51132: Firmware upload complete.
cx88[0]/2: cx8802_stop_dma
cx2388x dvb driver version 0.0.5 loaded
CORE cx88[0]: subsystem: 7063:3000, board: pcHDTV HD3000 HDTV 
[card=22,autodetected]
TV tuner 60 at 0x1fe, Radio tuner -1 at 0x1fe
tuner 3-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (cx88[0])
tuner 3-0061: type set to 60 (Thomson DTT 761X (ATSC/NTSC))
tda9887 3-0043: chip found @ 0x86 (cx88[0])
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.2[A] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 11 (level, 
low) -> IRQ 11
cx88[0]/2: found at 0000:00:14.2, rev: 5, irq: 11, latency: 176, mmio: 
0xeb000000
cx88[0]/2: cx2388x based dvb card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx88[0]).
DVB: registering frontend 0 (Oren OR51132 VSB/QAM Frontend)...

If the firmware is not installed, it will report that and fail. 
Thereafter it is basically foolproof (but not idiot proof!!!).

IVTV produces extensive dmesg output and will tell you if it is 
installed properly.

Plug in an antenna or cable tv feed and test the cards.

Read Jarod Wilson's guide. It explains at a lot more detail, but the 
above covers the tuner card details. It actually is fairly easy. There 
is lots of good stuff on the ivtv site about how to set that up. Both 
cards need their firmware installed and the modules themselves. Put the 
firmware files in /lib/firmware and modprobe the module...It really 
amounts to that!

Now checking that the card is working properly with your antenna or 
cable feed is another matter, especially a digital cable feed. You need 
utilities from linuxtv.org to test that. (And at the moment, scanning in 
mythtv is broken, so you need the utilities to get the information 
needed to poke into the database.) Check the wiki. There is a reference 
to some pages at penlug.org. The page is now old, but the procedure is 
still the same: the version numbers are all changed, as are kernels, etc.


***********************
Final thought:  Wiki's should automatically date an entry, so we can 
tell whether it might be out of date.
**********************

Geoff



















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