[mythtv-users] Multiple LIRC Devices Causing Problems with HD-PVR Blaster on F14

Jarod Wilson jarod at wilsonet.com
Thu Feb 17 18:13:16 UTC 2011


On Feb 16, 2011, at 8:45 PM, John Welch wrote:
...
>> Complete 'dmesg' output from my system after a reboot can be found
>> here: http://pastebin.com/32f6F9vB
>> 
>> Thanks again,
>> John
>> 
> 
> Just to throw something else into the mix here.  I've been dealing
> with this HD-PVR blaster issue for quite some time now (since last
> fall) because: a) I didn't do enough in-depth troubleshooting; and b)
> I mistakenly thought that there were fixes for the issue in the
> testing pipeline.

You were not mistaken, except in what level the fixes are
implemented at. :)


> Well, in all the time that the blaster wasn't
> working I continued to use my HD-PVR the best I could.  When I wanted
> to schedule a recording for the HD-PVR I had to make sure to set my
> STB to the proper channel.  (I know there are other channel changing
> options, but I have not had the time or the inclination to explore
> them.)  During this time I never had a bad recording from the HD-PVR.
> 
> Now that I've figured out the cause of the blaster issues, and have a
> less than ideal, but working solution I figured things were pretty
> much back to normal as far as the HD-PVR.  Last night was my first
> recording since getting the blaster "fixed", and unfortunately I ended
> up with a bad / incomplete recording.  The recording quit after less
> than a minute, the red "recording" light on my HD-PVR was stuck on,
> and when I tried stopping LIRC on my back-end the whole system locked
> up.
> 
> I used to have similar issues back before when my blaster was working,
> but I guess I thought that the fact that I was getting good recordings
> despite the broken blaster was a sign that the driver for the HD-PVR
> had been fixed / improved.  Now I'm starting to think that the working
> blaster is actually a cause of the bad recordings.  Maybe this is a
> known issue, but I was rather surprised and disappointed when I ended
> up with the incomplete recording last night.  As things stand now I
> think I would rather deal with the limitations of not have the blaster
> work properly rather than risking not getting a recording at all.


Based on your dmesg output, your HD-PVR is still running the oldish
0x12 firmware. I'm pretty sure something in the 0x15 firmware helped
to stabilize IR usage on the HD-PVR. Unfortunately, you need Windows
to update the firmware, but once done, in theory, IR should be more
stable for you.

Additionally, if you don't care about the rx portion of the HD-PVR,
you can tell lirc_zilog to *only* do tx, which eliminates the rx
polling, which is the most likely cause of the HD-PVR getting wedged,
knowing what I know now about the HD-PVR's IR and i2c implementation.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com





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