[mythtv-users] PVR500 and recent mythtv-backend versions

John Drescher drescherjm at gmail.com
Mon May 4 12:44:42 UTC 2009


On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 5:12 AM, James Warden <warjamy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I've been using mythtv for a long while now on a home network. The server is debian based, contains a PVR500 card (not the newer ones with digital chips, only the good ol' analog tuners). Clients are linux or windows based.
>
> Anyway, I recently upgraded the server to kernel 2.6.29.1-1-686 from debian. It contains ivtv version 1.4.0.
>
> I checked the driver was working well by the trivial 'cat' test:
> cat /dev/video0 > file.mpg and played the mpg file with mplayer or others
> same with /dev/video1
>
> So far so good. I also upgraded the mythbackend to what debian multimedia is providing : 0.21.svn20090430-0.0
>
> After this upgrade, all my frontend clients are showing a quite scrambled picture. I can still see what it is about but it is noisy, as if someone was detuning the channel frequency on purpose and randomly.
>
> When I do a /dev/videoX dump afyer that, I get a screwed mpg file. Only an rmmod ivtv followed by modprobe ivtv will fix it. But starting the backend again will screw it up once more.
>
> I tried the SVN code as well, the QT4 port. It compiled fine and ran fine but with the same image symptom. It is not the first time I see this in all these years, using the PVR500 with the debian mythtv-backend package. Usually, I just compiled the SVN code and things were fine again but not this time. I believe recent mythbackend updates must screw something with the PVR500. This is not an ivtv issue as a fresh modprobe and /dev/videoX dump will produce a clean image.
>
> Anyone with something similar ? If not, I'll provide more technical details.
>

I am not seeing that effect however I after checking every recording I
did have 2 bad recordings in the last 2 weeks. And what I mean by bad
was one had no volume and the other had no volume and no picture. Now
the problem is that I upgraded mythtv, my kernel and ivtv within the
last 3 weeks so not sure what one caused it. And since this is
different bad behavior from yours I am not sure.

John


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