[mythtv-users] HDPVR Causing Backend to Hard Freeze

[Patrick McKinney]

On 5/25/2010 9:41 AM, Enigma wrote:
>
> A warning, your mileage may vary with this solution.  I tried to get
> the blaster on my new HD-PVR working a few weeks ago and it caused
> extreme instability for the HD-PVR.  The backend didn't freeze, but it
> lost all connectivity to the HD-PVR which required a power cycle and
> module reload to remedy.  I have seen many people on the list report
> the same problem, Patrick is the only one I can recall saying it is
> working for him.
>
> In Jarod's post (http://wilsonet.com/?p=40) describing how to get the
> blaster to work using his patches he says "I believe at this stage,
> very few (if any) people have been able to actually use the IR part on
> their HD PVR under Linux reliably. At some point or another, while in
> the middle of video capture, the device completely deadlocks, and has
> to be reinitialized. Looking into the root cause of this is on my TODO
> list, but its a long list…".   Obviously you are welcome to try it but
> you might want to also look into fixing your current blaster or
> looking into other channel changing solutions (i.e. serial connection
> for DirecTV, firewire for cable, etc).
>    

FWIW, I was following the instructions on the Wiki 
(http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/HD-PVR#IR_Transmitter_Support) which compile 
stand alone kernel modules versus patching the kernel source directly.  
But I can't imagine that this matters as they seem to be derived 
directly from Jarod's patch of Fedora 12.  But I've never had any 
problems using the HD-PVRs blaster... finally some good luck on my 
server :)  FYI, I'm running gentoo with the 2.6.31-r6 kernel, and what I 
think is the latest firmware on the HD-PVR (reported as 0x12 by the 
linux driver).

Patrick