[mythtv-users] Query wrt using a pvr150/ivtv card in mythtv - tuner broken?

[Don]

Greetings,

  I did search the list archives, and found 1 recent post (jul 20 this
year, subject 'Locked') wherein the user was complaining about mythtv not
scanning/tuning-in their connected dvd player - I can only guess I'm seeing
the same thing here, but I can probably explain the situation better ;). My
backend server setup has 2 x dvb-t cards and the single PVR-150 card. This
latter card has only one connection - an RF patch cable between the tuner
TV ant in & the RF out socket on an aust-star sat paytv box (which I know
is modulating on UHF channel 69 of the old .au frequency table). I have an
IR blaster all setup to flip channels on the satbox etc etc, and this all
worked a treat by just setting up manual record times/rules for that card
in mythtv. There is some picture quality degradation using this route, but
it's not -that- bad and still quite watchable..

...that system was running Debian 6 and in mythtv-setup' you could setup
the card as per normal, tell it 'no grabber', connect your RF patch-cable
and turn on your vcr/dvd/paytv device, scan for channels, and it'd flip
thru the entire (australian here) channel set one at a time (status - No
Lock) until it found the channel/frequency the device is modulating on
(signal level would jump up & status to 'Locked')., this would give me one
channel (which is set as the starting channel) -- worked a treat, and this
is the channel 'scanning' that OP was talking about me thinks...then I
updated the motherboard, clean install of Debian 7.1 and went to setup the
backend fresh, and...

... now, the same process sees the tuning status proclaiming 'Locked' for
the entire frequency/channel set, as it speed-skips through all 50+
channels in 2seconds without pausing/ever seeing -any- signal level ;
increasing the tuning  timeout etc has no effect. So I decided to check
with ivtv-utils, just incase the card had coincidentally died..

... issuing 'ivtv-tune -t australia -c 69' returns '/dev/video0 814.250MHz
(Signal found)' and if I follow on with 'cat /dev/video0 &>test.mpg' , I
get exactly what I expect when replayed with mplayer ; a slightly degraded
mpeg capture with audio all as it should be ; so the card is working fine
it seems (even to the point of -not- returning 'Signal found' when
switching to known vacant channels)....

..so, I cross checked a couple of other linux tv apps ; xawtv I can
definitely vouch -did- work fine with the pvr-150 I have here (it's type
26559 with FM1216 ME MK3 tuner), but now pretty much mimics the results I
get in mythtv...ie; no signal detected on any channel, tvtime refuses to
talk to the card at all (incorrect ioctl for device?), so I suspect this
problem is not entirely mythtv's fault (if at all).

My query is, what should I do about this? Abandon the pvr-150 and get
different hardware? If not only mythtv but also the other apps mentioned
have seemingly lost the ability to manipulate the card's tuner, where would
I look for such a bug and/or report it?
Any help/clues/comments appreciated.

Apologies for creating a new thread about this ; couldn't figure out how to
reply to the original...

Cheers
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