[mythtv-users] no audio PVR-500

Greg Woods greg at gregandeva.net
Fri May 26 04:32:24 UTC 2006


On Thu, 2006-05-25 at 16:02 +0100, Nick wrote:

> cx25840 1-0044: unable to open firmware v4l-cx25840.fw
> cx25840 2-0044: unable to open firmware v4l-cx25840.fw
> 
(hangs head in shame)

That was it alright. Something in the way my system was destroyed (by
trying to install Windows so I could use Powerstrip) and restored from
backup didn't work quite right.

# rpm -q -l ivtv-firmware-audio-0.0.1-5.at
/lib/firmware/v4l-cx25840.fw
/lib/modules/HcwMakoA.ROM
/lib/modules/v4l-cx25840.fw
#

The second of these was simply missing even though the package was
supposedly installed. The first and last are symlinks to the middle one.
I ended up forcibly removing the package and reinstalling it

# rpm -e --nodeps ivtv-firmware-audio-0.0.1-5.at
# yum install ivtv-firmware-audio-0.0.1-5.at

That did it, I now have sound again. Thanks, Nick!

I now have a system that has at least some usefulness. I now have the
following problems to solve, and this quickly starts to look like Lucy
and Ethel in the chocolate factory, but I post it for everyone's
amusement:

1) Coming up with a mode line for my TV
2) Figuring out how to use Powerstrip to do #1
3) Figuring out how to set up my pcHDTV3000 card. The card works, it's
getting the channels.conf figured out that's stumping me at the moment.
4) Getting firewire to work reliably (it works at first, then hangs.
Every reboot it comes up with a different node number).

#1. I have a Pioneer PRO-930HD 43" plasma TV. The TV itself is awesome.
It can do a split picture with 2 4x3 images and it has a couple of size
variations (one with equal sizes, one with one a bit larger, and one
with one of them a full size 4x3 and the other one very small). It can
also do PIP with a small PIP screen on top of an HD display. It has tons
of inputs (VGA, two HDMI, two coax, two component). The big problem is
nobody else in the world seems to have this TV or anything like it, so
I'm totally on my own coming up with a mode line. I have spent quite a
bit of time on this one so far with no luck. Myth and Xorg (with
nvidia-8756 and a GeForce 5500) work fine with this TV but only in SD.

#2. Installing Windows trashed the partition table, leaving me with a
bare piece of metal to put my data back on. A royal pain, leading
directly to the problem that started this thread. I have a 450GB drive
and Windows really does not like it. I can get Windows to work if I boot
from the FC5 DVD and use fdisk to create a FAT32 or NTFS partition for
Windows, but Windows will only boot on this partition if it's the only
partition in the table. Otherwise it blue screens. So to boot Windows
(which I only want for PowerStrip), I have to record the partition
table, remove all the other partitions, boot Windows from CD and repair
the master boot record, then I can boot into Windows. To get back to
Linux, I just recreate the partition table and my Linux file systems
magically reappear, then I have to boot from the  DVD to restore the
grub master boot record. I have had a number of dual boot systems in the
past with Linux and Windows, and I really have no idea why it's such a
hassle this time. The size of the disk drive is my only guess.

That brings me to PowerStrip. The instructions I have found on the net
all say that, at one point or another, you set the number of lines to
"563" in an attempt to create a 540p resolution. I am consistently
unable to do this. By the time I get below 700 lines, the "front porch"
and "back porch" parameters are already down to 1. As soon as I click
any other box, the number of lines jumps back to 700-something. I simply
cannot create a resolution with 563 lines in it. So I haven't been able
to generate a modeline for my TV with PowerStrip.

#3. Probably getting a sufficiently large block of time will allow me to
do this, but all the scripts I've found on the net expect the program to
be called "azap", but the dvb-apps source I compiled doesn't have "azap"
in it. So I will have to go through the painstaking procedure of
scanning for channels and tuning each one to see what it is, so I can
create a channels.conf file for Myth. Maybe I can write my own script
after a while.

#4. Really no ideas on this one, but the only reason I want the HD3000
or the firewire is to tune HD channels, and it's not worth a heck of a
lot until I can actually display in HD. The problem really is that it's
unreliable. I've been able to capture some HD streams to test with, but
aside from the node number changing all the time, I get sporadic
results. I use test-mpeg2 to capture. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I
can't get anything but zero-length files. Sometimes changing the channel
on the cable box manually will get it going. There's no pattern as to
which channels work. Sometimes the same channel will work, other times
that same channel doesn't work. Nothing ever works like the hints and
wikis say it should.

But at least I have my analog tuners back...

--Greg





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