[mythtv-users] PCI capture cards on Intel Sandy Bridge

RT Clay rt_clay at bellsouth.net
Tue Apr 3 13:25:12 UTC 2012


>So, is anybody is happily (or unhappily) using PCI capture cards on a 
>Intel H61/H67/P67/Z68 based (sandy-bridge) motherboard?

I'm new to the list and relatively new to mythtv. I am running mythtv (on gentoo) on an Intel DH67BL board with a i3-2100T processor, with a PCI HVR-1600 card. This combination does seem to work, but I do have some problems. I don't think they are caused by PCI issues however:


1. The analog capture on the HVR-1600 is unstable. Sometimes (randomly) after a reboot it does not work, only capturing a blank red or green screen. The only fix is to power off and reboot until it initializes properly. Once initialization happens correctly it seems stable as long as the system is up. I have seen other reports of this issue, I think it is a driver/firmware bug rather than PCI problem. The digital capture part of the 1600 works fine regardless.

2. The IR remote/blaster on the HVR-1600 is not stable. This seems to be a known lirc_zilog problem. Curiously this seems to be linked to issue #1 above...in reboots where the analog part of the 1600 does NOT work, the IR works fine. When the analog capture works, the IR does not work. I gave up and use a separate MCE remote now.

3. This board has a built in IR receiver/transmitter. I have been able to get the receiver to work (nuvoton driver), but the transmitter part of the nuvoton driver is broken.

4. I have had problems getting Sandy bridge video to work correctly over HDMI on this board. If the tv attached to the HDMI is turned  off/on or comes out of power save, everything comes back in green. Unplugging/replugging the hdmi cable every time the tv is turned on fixes this but is of course a pain. I don't know if this is an issue with my tv in particular, but it went away when I switched to a nvidia card (also over hdmi).

Torsten



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list