[mythtv-users] Query wrt using a pvr150/ivtv card in mythtv - tuner broken?

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Sat Aug 10 13:02:59 UTC 2013


On Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:16:30 +1000, you wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>  I did search the list archives, and found 1 recent post (jul 20 this
>year, subject 'Locked') wherein the user was complaining about mythtv not
>scanning/tuning-in their connected dvd player - I can only guess I'm seeing
>the same thing here, but I can probably explain the situation better ;). My
>backend server setup has 2 x dvb-t cards and the single PVR-150 card. This
>latter card has only one connection - an RF patch cable between the tuner
>TV ant in & the RF out socket on an aust-star sat paytv box (which I know
>is modulating on UHF channel 69 of the old .au frequency table). I have an
>IR blaster all setup to flip channels on the satbox etc etc, and this all
>worked a treat by just setting up manual record times/rules for that card
>in mythtv. There is some picture quality degradation using this route, but
>it's not -that- bad and still quite watchable..
>
>...that system was running Debian 6 and in mythtv-setup' you could setup
>the card as per normal, tell it 'no grabber', connect your RF patch-cable
>and turn on your vcr/dvd/paytv device, scan for channels, and it'd flip
>thru the entire (australian here) channel set one at a time (status - No
>Lock) until it found the channel/frequency the device is modulating on
>(signal level would jump up & status to 'Locked')., this would give me one
>channel (which is set as the starting channel) -- worked a treat, and this
>is the channel 'scanning' that OP was talking about me thinks...then I
>updated the motherboard, clean install of Debian 7.1 and went to setup the
>backend fresh, and...
>
>... now, the same process sees the tuning status proclaiming 'Locked' for
>the entire frequency/channel set, as it speed-skips through all 50+
>channels in 2seconds without pausing/ever seeing -any- signal level ;
>increasing the tuning  timeout etc has no effect. So I decided to check
>with ivtv-utils, just incase the card had coincidentally died..
>
>... issuing 'ivtv-tune -t australia -c 69' returns '/dev/video0 814.250MHz
>(Signal found)' and if I follow on with 'cat /dev/video0 &>test.mpg' , I
>get exactly what I expect when replayed with mplayer ; a slightly degraded
>mpeg capture with audio all as it should be ; so the card is working fine
>it seems (even to the point of -not- returning 'Signal found' when
>switching to known vacant channels)....
>
>..so, I cross checked a couple of other linux tv apps ; xawtv I can
>definitely vouch -did- work fine with the pvr-150 I have here (it's type
>26559 with FM1216 ME MK3 tuner), but now pretty much mimics the results I
>get in mythtv...ie; no signal detected on any channel, tvtime refuses to
>talk to the card at all (incorrect ioctl for device?), so I suspect this
>problem is not entirely mythtv's fault (if at all).
>
>My query is, what should I do about this? Abandon the pvr-150 and get
>different hardware? If not only mythtv but also the other apps mentioned
>have seemingly lost the ability to manipulate the card's tuner, where would
>I look for such a bug and/or report it?
>Any help/clues/comments appreciated.
>
>Apologies for creating a new thread about this ; couldn't figure out how to
>reply to the original...
>
>Cheers

It sounds as though the PVR-150 drivers or V4L API for tuning analogue
cards has changed somehow and it is not tuning using the same methods
as before.  If that is the case, ivtv-tune must have been updated for
the changes and works, but other programs have not caught up yet.
Analogue TV is going away rapidly right around the world and no-one is
putting much priority on supporting it any more.

Since scanning is not working, you could just put the right frequency
data in the database manually.  Do you still have access to the old
working database?  You could copy it from there, or maybe the correct
value for the freqid field is actually the AU channel number = 69.  In
New Zealand, if I remember correctly, we just had to put in the
channel number.  You can use mythweb to easily set freqid values for
channels.  In 0.26 the channels table is available at:

  http://<your mythtv box IP address>/mythweb/settings/tv/channels

Also, does the satbox have any video out capability - component out,
S-Video out, SCART, or as a last resort, composite video out?  You
could connect that and an audio cable to the PVR-150.  Except maybe
for composite video, you would get a much better picture.  I have my
New Zealand SkyTV box set up for S-Video output from its SCART
connector into my PVR-500 card and it works well (PVR-500 = dual
PVR-150).  There is one workaround that has to be done for a problem
with the audio input selection in the drivers, but I can give you my
bash file for that if you want to try that setup.


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