[mythtv-users] PCHDTV-3000 2.0 settings

[Greg Woods]

On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 08:41 -0500, Patrick Kirchner wrote:

> I have a few questions if you don't mind.

As you know if you've been following this list for the past week, I'm
hardly an expert :-)  But I'll do what I can.

> In the end are you using /dev/video1, /dev/dvb/adapter0..., or /dev/dtv ?
> I don't even have /dev/dtv but do have the others.

On my machine, it's /dev/video0 . For the V4L drivers, which is the only
thing that will work for ANALOG cable with the pcHDTV 3000, it has to be
one of the /dev/video* devices. Unless you've got more than one tuner
card, it's going to be /dev/video0. It should come up with three input
choices: Television, S-Video, and Composite. If what you have is a
standard coax connection for analog cable, you want Television.


> Do you have to use the audio cable connected to sound input on your sound
> card for sound? 

Yes. At least in my experience.

>  What sound device are you pointing to in MythTV

I never actually found any place to set the sound device in MythTV. In
fact, my next trick is going to be figuring out how to get the audio to
*stop* after I quit the frontend. The audio for whatever the last
channel was I was watching or recording continues to play. I'm
suspecting that this is just a function of a setting on the card; once
the driver sets it, it plays. I end up having to fire up xawtv and hit
the "a" key to mute the audio from the tuner card. This is important to
me because I have a Y-cable so that I can also have a tape deck plugged
in so that I can do audio editing of my old cassette library, and I have
to make sure the video card is not sending any sound or the tape
transcriptions are corrupted by it. Muting by software and using a
Y-cable beats crawling around on the floor and swapping audio cables.

Which mixer device it is will, of course, depend on what sound card you
have and which port you have the pcHDTV 3000 plugged into. My sound card
is what looks to be more-or-less standard. It's got three audio ports,
one red (microphone), one blue (line), and one green (speakers). I use
the blue port and it shows up in my mixer as the Line device.
> 
> Do these choices match your kernel .config file?

This part I can't help you with because I'm using a stock Fedora Core 3
kernel. But what you want is the Video for Linux drivers (V4L). I'm
pretty sure you won't need or want DVB until you get digital cable
(QAM). Analog cable appears to be similar to OTA (Over the Air) in terms
of how it comes in to the card.

By the way, I would like to add my thanks to the developers. Now that I
have all this stuff working, it is very impressive what it can do. This
is definitely making me want to buy a DVD burner so that I could have a
way to watch what I've taped on the real TV with the comfy couch (not to
mention a way to save shows I've recorded permanently; the 70GB of space
I have in my dedicated /video seems like a lot, but it won't take long
to use it up I suspect), then I could probably ditch the VCR completely.

Next: Kino. Maybe I can fix those purple faces from last night's City
Council meeting (or maybe the public commentary just really pissed them
off :-)

--Greg