[mythtv-users] Calling all HVR-2250 owners

[Neil Cooper]

>From several threads on this forum in the last year or two, its clear that many people with an HVR-2250 tuner card sometimes experience a problem where recordings and live TV are just blue screens.

No-one seems to have a fix for this but it appears to be the result of occasional bad initialisation of a tuner hardware when switching between digital and analog modes, suggesting that this bug may be in the Linux HVR-2250 driver code.

Th other night I finally hit the last straw as my mythbox blue-screened another recording I had been really looking forward to watching, so I emailed Steven Toth (the author of the Linux drivers for the HVR-2250) directly about the problem (see below for my email and his reply).

Surprisingly, even though many people have posted here about the blue screen problem over the last year or two, Steven hadn't been aware of it.

In his reply, he asks for a repeatable case, ideally using linux scripts. I am still preparing my own answer for him, but as many others have the same problem, I felt it would be good to give everyone the chance to respond so we can all provide Steven with our specific experiences and as much helpful information as possible.

If you have experienced the blue screen issue with the HVR-2250, I urge you to take the time and post any helpful information you can, such as your hardware setup details, any info you have on when it happens and how/if you can recreate it, and ideally, scripts that can repeatably cause it.

I suggest the best approach is to both post your reply here and CC it to stoth at kernellabs.com.

The more of us that respond with specific information the more helpful it will be to Steven,  so the more likely we are to finally get this really annoying problem acknowledged, diagnosed and fixed.

Thanks guys,
Neil Cooper.

--- On Mon, 11/14/11, Steven Toth <stoth at kernellabs.com> wrote:

> From: Steven Toth <stoth at kernellabs.com>
> Subject: Re: HVR-2250 Linux driver
> To: "Neil Cooper" 
> Date: Monday, November 14, 2011, 11:57 AM
> Hi Neil,
> 
> Thanks for writing!
> 
> I'm not aware of the issue so thanks for raising it. If you
> can get me
> a repro case, ideally by using a simplified set of Linux
> scripts then
> I'll find a little time to look into it. I can't spend time
> installing
> / re-configuring a custom mythbackend in an attempt to see
> an
> occasional failure.
> 
> I do use a pair of HVR2250's in my mythbackend but for
> digital only - no analog.
> 
> So, if you can get a repro with some scripts - and make the
> problem
> happen quickly then I'll look into it.
> 
> Best,
> 
> - Steve
> 
> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Neil Cooper
> wrote:
> > Hi Steven,
> >
> > Thanks to your wonderful efforts, I am using a
> Hauppauge HVR-2250 in my MythTv box for the last 2 years or
> so. I have generally been following kernel and software
> updates.
> >
> > In all that time the card has been mostly working,
> however quite often I get just a blue-screen instead of a
> 'proper' recording or signal. After trying to diagnose it
> myself, it seems your driver sometimes doesn't handle
> switching between analog and digital sides of the same tuner
> well. I haven't been able to get this exactly repeatable but
> it seems especially likely when it is the first use of the
> tuner since power-up.
> >
> > As I couldn't find much if any mention of this problem
> on the net, I had presumed it was probably just a factor of
> my unique combination of hardware, or perhaps I just had a
> faulty card, however since joining the mythtv mailing list
> it seems that many other mythtv users with an HVR-2250 are
> experiencing exactly the same thing.
> >
> > I realize your work is voluntary so I have tried to be
> patient in just waiting and hoping for this issue to be
> resolved through the normal upgrade process, however after
> 2+ years it still appears to be a live issue that affects
> many people.
> >
> > As I don't have the technical information and
> knowledge to just fix this myself, I guess I'm writing
> mostly to make sure you are already aware of this issue at
> all, and to ask how far down your to-do list fixing this is,
> and if there's anything at all I can do to help bump it up
> higher.
> >
> > Thanks and Best Regards,
> > Neil Cooper.
> -- 
> Steven Toth - Kernel Labs
> http://www.kernellabs.com
> +1.646.355.8490
> 
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