[mythtv-users] PVR-350 /dev/video0 cannot allocate memory

Rob Greene greener at charter.net
Fri Dec 3 04:30:17 UTC 2004


Minor progress - I can see my screen now, and the remote is
partly-functional.  (c:

Problem is that when I watch TV, nothing.  Initially, the frontend just
cause a segfault.  Now it just hangs around.  If I alt-tab back to my
terminal screen I can ctrl+C, ctrl+D, or ctrl+Z to get out of it.  When I
look in the mythbackend logs, I see the /dev/video0: cannot allocate memory.
This is with a sysctl -w vm.min_free_kbytes at either 4096 or 16384 in
rc.local.  I was able to watch TV manually at one point (I'll have to
double-check this tomorrow).

Another problem - I tried playing a DVD.  One (that I had made) does work
but the aspect ratio is off and the sound comes out of my speakers.  The
other one had very blocky video and sound stuttered.  However, in both
instances, the audio is coming from the PC sound card instead of the stereo
(via the PVR 350).  I see mention of btaudio - is this a separate install or
is it part of the ivtv drivers?

The TV schedule does look cool though.  My wife thought the weather was
nifty too.

And, after asking those questions, I'm wondering:  I'm regurgitating some
old hardware.  I've got a P3-500, 40GB+20GB drives, 256MB RAM, and a cheap
Ensoniq sound card as well as the old Voodoo Banshee video card.  My current
"server" (prior desktop) has some hardware I could scavenge - a nVidia
GeForce 4 Ti4200 and a SoundBlaster Audigy (rev 03).

I realize I still have the video capture problems, but maybe for output I
should quit trying to use the PVR-350 and instead use those other cards?
IIRC, the GeForce has S-Video out (which I think I have an adapter for RCA).
Are there adapters that take the stereo out for the SB Audigy and give me
the left/right RCA jacks??

Thanks.  I know I've got lots of questions, but as someone else said, this
is the most difficult install I've ever dealt with!

Oh yeah, how does one initiate the DVD rip?  I was going to try ripping a
dvd, and once in the screen, I selected the video segments (I think that's
what it was)... but I couldn't figure out which keypress or button on the
remote to initiate the process.  I didn't see anything on the MythTV site
really giving a user-level set of instructions for using MythDVD.
-Rob




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