[mythtv-users] Both capture cards mysteriously died at the same time

[Edgar Chen]

Turns out one of my tuners recorded a show days after everything went
static/snow.  I didn't change anything on the software side, so it's either
the hardware or the signal.  I was grabbing shows via Comcast analog cable
and I see that all my TV stations above 35, on my normal analog cable TV,
have disappeared.  

 

I think I have this problem/fix:

http://wiki.mythtv.org/wiki/Comcast_Users_And_scte65scan

 

From: Edgar Chen [mailto:email at edgarchen.com] 
Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 8:20 PM
To: 'mythtv-users at mythtv.org'
Subject: Both capture cards mysteriously died at the same time

 

Both Capture card mysteriously died 

  _____  

Both my PVR 250 cards all of a sudden just died. Tuner 0 was happily
recording at 2 hour show and 39 minutes (5:39am) into it, it flickered for 2
seconds then just static/snow. Tuner 1 was also recording and at the exact
same time (5:39am), it also flickered and died.  When I use tuner 0 now, its
just static/snow, same with tuner 1. It's as if someone unplugged my cable.


My troubleshooting steps in the order I did them

Tested cable connection
Input is analog cable. 
I tested the cable by connecting a TV to the cable itself and verified there
is still video and sound, so I know it isn't the cable. The static/snow did
get just slightly darker when I disconnected the cable from the capture
cards.

Tested capture cards
I tested the tuners manually by running:
"cat /dev/video0 > ~/test.mpg" then "mplayer -vo xv ~/test.mpg" result was
static/snow.
"cat /dev/video1 > ~/test.mpg" then "mplayer -vo xv ~/test.mpg" result was
static/snow.

Rebooted
I come from the world of windows, so of course when something goes wrong,
you reboot to fix it. I rebooted my whole linux box and when it came back up
I tested the capture cards again, still static/snow.

Root
I then tried testing out the capture cards as root, hoping I'd get lucky and
for whatever reason it was a permissions issue, nope. Running the manual
tuner testing as root still produced just static/snow.

dmesg
I ran "dmesg | grep ivtv" and got this output:
myth at home:~$ dmesg | grep ivtv
[ 40.702228] ivtv: Start initialization, version 1.1.0
[ 40.702320] ivtv0: Initializing card #0
[ 40.702322] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge card (cx23416 based)
[ 40.723181] ivtv0: Unreasonably low latency timer, setting to 64 (was 32)
[ 40.820037] ivtv0: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
[ 41.131767] tuner 2-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 41.356745] saa7115 2-0021: saa7115 found (1f7115d0e100000) @ 0x42 (ivtv
i2c driver #0)
[ 43.140949] msp3400 2-0040: MSP4448G-A2 found @ 0x80 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 43.216937] ivtv0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
[ 43.216949] ivtv0: Registered device video32 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
[ 43.216961] ivtv0: Registered device vbi0 for encoder VBI (1024 kB)
[ 43.216972] ivtv0: Registered device video24 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
[ 43.216984] ivtv0: Registered device radio0 for encoder radio
[ 43.216986] ivtv0: Initialized card #0: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
[ 43.217042] ivtv1: Initializing card #1
[ 43.217045] ivtv1: Autodetected Hauppauge card (cx23416 based)
[ 43.244820] ivtv1: Unreasonably low latency timer, setting to 64 (was 32)
[ 43.251201] tuner 3-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (ivtv i2c driver #1)
[ 43.360991] saa7115 3-0021: saa7115 found (1f7115d0e100000) @ 0x42 (ivtv
i2c driver #1)
[ 43.627431] msp3400 3-0040: MSP4448G-A2 found @ 0x80 (ivtv i2c driver #1)
[ 43.685937] ivtv1: Autodetected Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
[ 43.722704] ivtv1: Registered device video1 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
[ 43.722728] ivtv1: Registered device video33 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
[ 43.722749] ivtv1: Registered device vbi1 for encoder VBI (1024 kB)
[ 43.722769] ivtv1: Registered device video25 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
[ 43.722771] ivtv1: Initialized card #1: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250
[ 43.723281] ivtv: End initialization
[ 71.039537] ivtv0: Loaded v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw firmware (376836 bytes)
[ 71.236549] ivtv0: Encoder revision: 0x02060039
[ 129.739588] ivtv1: Loaded v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw firmware (376836 bytes)
[ 129.938646] ivtv1: Encoder revision: 0x02060039
myth at home:~$ 

After which I tried testing the cards manually again, got nothing but static
/snowagain.

lspci
I ran lspci -v and got this:
05:06.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16
(CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV PVR 250
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 20
Memory at dc000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Capabilities: <access denied>

05:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16
(CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV PVR 250
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 21
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Capabilities: <access denied>


Logs
I checked all the logs (system, daemon.log, debug, kern.log, messages,
user.log) for any errors or anything for around 5:39am (time it went from
happily recording picture/sound and died to static/snow) and don't see any
entries for that time.

Anyone have any ideas??

  _____  

 

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