[mythtv-users] pcHDTV HD3000 voo doo

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Tue Oct 17 20:31:27 UTC 2006


Rich Goodwin wrote:
> You need DVB drivers for the HD3000 cards and ivtv drivers for the
> PVR-x50.  I have a similiar configuration with two (2) HD-3000 cards and
> one (1) PVR-350.  I am having difficulty getting the two HD-3000 cards
> to work.  It is likely me not configuring things quite right.  My
> anticipation is to have the HD-3000's setup for ATSC and the PVR-350 for NTSC.
Start setting things up with only the HD3000 card installed.
The HD3000 cards are handled by the kernel plus a module. Unfortunately 
the kernel chooses which module, generally the one you do NOT want. In 
Fedora you would add a line with 'cx88xx  'to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist 
to stop the kernel from loading that module. The kernel will then load 
teh cx88-dvb module which will give you ATSC capabilities, and the 
hardware should show up at /dev/dvb/adapter0. If you have a /dev/video0 
entry then something is wrong.
With 2 HD3000 cards you should get a /dev/dvb/adapter0 and adapter1. If 
ou have a problem try putting a line 'modprobe -r cx88xx.
; modprobe -r cx88-dvb; modprobe cx88-dvb ' line in rc.local.


Now install the PVR card and add its modprobe commands to modprobe.conf. 
The card should show up as /dev/video0.

> I am told the HD-3000 cards will not handle both NTSC and ATSC - this is
> an either/or situation.  In looking at .20 screens, there is the GUI
> option to use the card "on demand."  
The HD3000 will do ATSC  *or*  NTSC but not both at the same time. This 
requires unloading and loading of the modules. I have not tried this, 
but I suspect that you could have problems with where the NTSC module 
wants to 'see' the hardware: it may want to stomp on /dev/vido0. I 
presume, without having tried it, that you can force the PVR card 
through use of udev to load as /dev/video2 in order to leave /dev/video0
and /dev/video1 open.

>Im thinking this would enable
> mapping different video sources to the card and then the driver would
> configure the card as ATSC or NTSC based on the source.

Doesn't work that way round. Sources are collections of channels which 
are matched to tuners. You should never connect a tuner to a channel 
source where the tuner cannot 'see' every channel of that sourc as myth 
thinks that any connected tuner can receive any of the channels in that 
source set. Thus ATSC sources do not overlap with NTSC sources as the 
hardware is distinct for each set. You can't tune ATSC channels with 
NTSC hardware and vice versa.

If you have a source for analog NTSC  channels and the HD3000 card can 
receive all of those channels *when configured as NTSC*, then you could 
connect both the PVR *and* the NTSC-mode  HD3000. The major problem with 
that is whether myth can recognize if the second  tuner exists. If myth 
thinks that you have 2 analog tuners when in fact you do not, then you 
will be disappointed. I do NOT know the answer to that question. Nothing 
that I have seen points to any answer. There may be a setting in the 
settings table but I don't think so.
I suppose that you could construct a source set connected to the 
ATSC/NTSC tuner and using myths ability to run external caommands (like 
changing channels), it would modprobe out the wrong module and modporbe 
in the correct module...but I suspect that you would have great 
difficulty with that because you would have to write a program to check 
that the tuner was not already in use in the other mode...

> Rich
> 
> On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 09:06 -0700, Yan Seiner wrote:
>> I am trying to configure a Myth 0.20 system, with a pcHDTV HD3000 card.  
>> The system currently has two tuners, a PVR150 and a HD3000.
>>
>> Myth will let me set it up as either a MJPEG card or a V4L card, but 
>> when I go to channel scan, it only offers me one choice, my PVR150.
>>
>> I've tried all sorts of things, but it seems to be determined not to 
>> actually let me use this card.
>>
>> In myth-setup, should I be using the MJPEG entry or the V4L2 entry?  
>> (/dev/video0 or /dev/vbi0?)  Is there some other incantation I need to 
>> be doing?
>>
>> Here's a snippet from dmesg:
>>
>> cx2388x dvb driver version 0.0.6 loaded
>> cx2388x v4l2 driver version 0.0.6 loaded
>
>> cx88[0]/0: registered device video0 [v4l2]
>> cx88[0]/0: registered device vbi0
>> cx88[0]/0: registered device radio0

Yan, it is seeing theHD3000  card as an analog card andmounting it at 
/dev/video0. I presume that then ivtv runs and loads the PVR card onto 
the same space, so that you can only see the PVR card in mythtv-setup.

As noted above, pull teh PVR card, and get the HD3000 set up properly 
first. This has gone by before: go to gossamer-threads and try searching 
on 'blacklist' an/dor my last name .


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