[mythtv-users] Hardware and software battles

Keith Pyle kpyle at austin.rr.com
Fri Jan 20 04:20:17 UTC 2012


On 01/19/12 13:33, Jeffrey Preston wrote:
> Version 0.24.1-27 maybe worth a shot then.  I cannot recall the exact build
> of the version I last tested on the 0.24.1 branch.  I guess I should take
> better notes.  Worst case scenario, if PVR-500's work, and my PVR-150's will
> not, I go begging to the wife for permission to by a few of them off of
> eBay.  Any tricks to setting them (PVR-500's) up, or are then literally like
> two 150's as far as MythTV is concerned? What is your configuration like
> (other tuners, hardware, etc.)?  Can you run liveTV and hop to another
> analog tuner without issues?  I assume you can channel change in LiveTV mode
> with the one half of your PVR-500 that is working???  But then my issue only
> comes when I switch to my second PVR-150, so hmmm....
Re: your question about PVR-500 setup: Since we just recently upgraded
to 0.24 and re-added all of the tuners, I can say that it is very
straightforward to set up the PVR-500.  Under card type, select "IVTV
MPEG-2 encoder card."  For me, the first tuner on the first card is
/dev/v4l/video0 and shows the "Probed info:" as "WinTV PVR500 (unit #1)
[ivtv]."  The second tuner on that card is video1 and unit #2.  The
second card shows as video2/unit #1 and video3/unit#2.

My only other capture device at the moment is a HVR-2250 (card type "DVB
DTV capture card (v3.x)").  I do not have the analog side of the 2250
configured due to the problems I've had and the fact that I'm using the
2250 for OTA.

With the caveat that I've only used LiveTV during testing of the new
0.24 configuration, I was able to switch among the cards and was able to
change channels on all of them.
> I believe development of the driver for the analog side of the HVR-2250 is
> lagging behind the digital.  With all the attention going to digital tuners,
> we will be lucky if anything is ever done with it.  I know we should not be
> complaining about what is essentially free software, but there has to be a
> developer somewhere that still needs to tune analog stations - right?  I
> contacted my cable company and they have no plans right now to stop
> transmitting analog cable any time soon.  They have too many customers that
> would not want to bother with an external box, and would be beating down
> their door if they switched the SD channels to digital.
If I interpret the commit logs at kernellabs.com and linuxtv.org
correctly, it's probably more accurate to say that the development for
the 2250 stopped as of at least 15 months ago (20 months for
saa7164-stable).  At least, that was the most recent commit related to
the SAA7164.  So, I'm not sure that there is any work being done on the
analog side.  (This isn't a complaint, but an observation.  I know I
could not have done what Steven Toth did for the 2250.)

Keith


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