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Pinnacle PCTV HD 800i card on Myth - Page 2

post #31 of 58
5/4/08 at 3:16pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

Those files look good. No more errors.

For the WatchTV problem, I think that I had to delete the TV cards (in mythtv-setup) and then re-add them. Not sure what happens to cause this problem. You may also want to make sure the MythTV playback settings are correct.

If you have a directory that stores the recordings, make sure that it has read/write access for the mythtv user.

EDIT: Make sure you run mythfilldatabase too.

Good stuff- I'll try them when I have access to the machine again Tuesday.

For lurkers who are getting scared by all these diagnostics, I went through similar gyrations setting up video cards and tuner cards on Win98 and XP from 1998-2004, except no one could really know what was going on in Windows .
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post #32 of 58
5/4/08 at 3:31pm
I actually am re-doing my MythTV box. I am using CentOS 5.1 with the ATRPMs repository. I am experiencing the same problem, and deleting and re-adding the cards didn't work. It actually worked the first time I tried. But after changing some settings TV didn't work anymore and MythTV started to crash. I only changed Theme and other minor settings.

Since this is a completely new install, I am gonna just blow it away and try again. I see that there is already a slightly newer version of MythTV available, but the ATRPMs repository is not responding.
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post #33 of 58
5/4/08 at 7:13pm
Bummer, waterhead. Why CentOS, though?

@rgb: If the above doesn't work in MythTV, try to open the tuner with mplayer to confirm it's working and that the problem lies within MythTV.
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post #34 of 58
5/4/08 at 8:07pm
I am using CentOS 5.1 because I want a stable, long-term MythTV HTPC. Most free Linux distros have a very short life span. I have had MythTV on Fedora 2,4,5 and 8. Since I am more than familiar with the Redhat/Fedora distros, CentOS is a good choice.

I am replacing my last build where I used CentOS 5.0. I had found that the CentOS kernel was not compiled with any multimedia support, so I downloaded the vanilla sources and compiled my own. I then compiled MythTV from the SVN sources. This worked great, but I was unable to get the mythplugins or the myththemes to compile, but that's OK. This was the most trouble free MythTV build that I ever had, so why change it?

Well, I screwed it up!

I wanted to save some of the videos from the previous installs, as they were on separate hard drives. My video partitions were always on LVMs with the jfs file system. I tried to mount them on CentOS, but found that there was no support for it, I had not compiled it in. I then was able to add the jfs module, but not without making a mistake first. Within hours things started to go bad. When I rebooted to see if things would clear up, I got hard disk errors and no boot.

Well, using the SVN version of MythTV meant that I couldn't connect to it with any regular front end. I also found that CentOS has a CentOSPlus repository with upgraded kernels. ATRPMs has RHEL/CentOS packages of MythTV-0.21, so a good time for a re-build.

I'll give CentOS 5.1 another try, before considering another distro. I do have Mythbuntu on another box, but I really don't care for Ubuntu.
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post #35 of 58
5/5/08 at 9:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I am using CentOS 5.1 because...

We should start another thread to discuss different distros running MythTV and the pros/cons of each one based on user experience.

But, for now and without explanation, I'll tell you that my favorite is, by far, Gentoo running on XFS.

Also, I've never used a DVB card. What's the mplayer command?
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post #36 of 58
5/6/08 at 3:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

We should start another thread to discuss different distros running MythTV and the pros/cons of each one based on user experience.

I Agree
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

Also, I've never used a DVB card. What's the mplayer command?

It's been a while since I did it, but I think that It is something like this:
Code:
dvb://dev/dvb/adapter0
The mythbackend cannot be running for this to work, as it monopolizes the tuners. You also need a channels.conf file in your /home/.mplayer folder. (I can't get this to work, so I must be forgetting something).

EDIT: I figured this one out. The channels.conf file has the TV stations named, so you just call out the name.
Code:
mplayer dvb://WTMJ-DT
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post #37 of 58
5/6/08 at 3:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rgb View Post

Back on topic, after running the Myth Setup and scanning for channels, I ran the front end and tried "Watch TV".

All I get is a blank screen for a few seconds, then it goes back to the Front End main menu. If I hit Watch TV again-> black screen-> back to main menu.

I am having the same problem. I looked at the log file in /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log. There I found an error message about not being able to find the folder to put the recordings in. After the original setup and trial (it worked), I changed the recording folder to a 500GB disk that I have mounted to a /video folder. I changed the settings to reflect this, yet somehow it is still looking at the old folder. (now deleted)

It must have that location recorded somewhere, maybe in the database. I'll drop the database and re-do it if I have to.
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post #38 of 58
5/6/08 at 4:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I am having the same problem. I looked at the log file in /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log. There I found an error message about not being able to find the folder to put the recordings in. After the original setup and trial (it worked), I changed the recording folder to a 500GB disk that I have mounted to a /video folder. I changed the settings to reflect this, yet somehow it is still looking at the old folder. (now deleted)

It must have that location recorded somewhere, maybe the database. I'll drop the database and re-do it if I have to.

Definitely not a fix, but a quick workaround would be to soft link the /video folder to the old folder location (double-check permissions, of course) until you can figure out where the wires got crossed.
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post #39 of 58
5/6/08 at 4:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I am having the same problem. I looked at the log file in /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log. There I found an error message about not being able to find the folder to put the recordings in. After the original setup and trial (it worked), I changed the recording folder to a 500GB disk that I have mounted to a /video folder. I changed the settings to reflect this, yet somehow it is still looking at the old folder. (now deleted)

It must have that location recorded somewhere, maybe the database. I'll drop the database and re-do it if I have to.

I thought it might be something like that. I received the Kworld ATSC 115 card today, and in a few minutes will reformat the box we've been discussing and start from scratch with MythBuntu 8.04 again, to be sure all the settings/files/databases are set up properly with the Kworld 115 card.

From this thread, it looks like an install procedure so far for the Pinnacle 800i on MythBuntu (needs work to address the Watch TV blank screen issue):

Boot with MythBuntu 8.04 liveCD
Install ATI or Nvidia driver with EnvyNG from Synaptic.
Download the 800i firmware from

http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/

Extract firmware with extract script there.

Download latest v4l-dvb drivers from

http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb

extract with this command from a term window (or your favorite GUI archive utility)

tar xzvf

Remove outdated/incompatible v4l drivers with these three commands:

sudo rm -rf /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/cx88
sudo rm -rf /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/saa7134
sudo depmod -a


Then do these two commands to compile and install the v4l-dvb drivers

make

sudo make install

Reboot

Run MythTV Backend Setup from the System menu and the 800i should be recognized.

...at least I *think* that should be the A-B-C process- someone can check me out by reviewing this thread and the other thread where we started this

We did a lot of diagnostics, but I assume we didn't do any other significant changes that affected the card functionality (?)
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post #40 of 58
5/6/08 at 7:20pm
Tell us it works before posting a HOWTO, please.

We need to clarify waterhead's issue, as well.
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post #41 of 58
5/6/08 at 7:47pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

Tell us it works before posting a HOWTO, please.

We need to clarify waterhead's issue, as well.


The only remaining issue was the "Watch TV" blank screen issue, which doesn't appear to be related to the hardware card, but rather a Myth database or config issue per waterhead's report, and the fact that Mythbuntu 8.04 is doing the same thing on the Kworld 115 .

I just wanted to summarize the steps to get at least as far as we got on the Pinnacle 800i. We can clean up the procedure later once the Watch TV blank screen issue is nailed down.

In any event, I pulled the Pinnacle 800i and started from scratch on the same PC build using the Kworld ATSC 115 card, since I need to test it for DOA, and I might just return the Pinnacle 800i to BB, as it appears the Kworld 115 installs easier and picks up my locals better on the first channel scan.

I started a new thread for the Kworld 115 here

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post13810616
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post #42 of 58
5/6/08 at 7:58pm
I understand...just didn't want anyone to mistakenly think that the problem was solved.
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post #43 of 58
5/6/08 at 8:28pm
I have it working now, somewhat.

I ended up reformatting my video drive to ext3. I think that CentOS has trouble with the more "exotic" file systems. I guess I can live without JFS.

Now, this version of MythTV seems quite buggy. It is crashing a lot, even during channel scanning. I can only watch SD channels, as the HD channels freeze up. I am using a nVidia card, and have been trying to get MythTV to use XvMC, but I don't think that it is. The setup pages for this are now much more complicated, maybe I just need time to figure it out. It does seem to be the same as the SVN version that I was running, and I had that working pretty good.

Here's some links to setup How-To's
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php...hipset_library
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Playback_profiles

I'm not at all happy with this. Mythbuntu 7.10 here I come!
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post #44 of 58
5/7/08 at 3:48am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I have it working now, somewhat.

I ended up reformatting my video drive toext3. I think that CentOS has trouble with the more "exotic" file systems. I guess I can live without JFS.


I'm not at all happy with this. Mythbuntu 7.10 here I come!

Exactly what I was thinking. I may try MythBuntu 7.10 with the Kworld 115 if I can't get Watch TV to work with 8.04.
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post #45 of 58
5/7/08 at 9:47am
Thread Starter 
To clarify for this thread, the Watch TV blank screen issue was due to Read-only permissions on the Record directories.

Shame on me for the rookie mistake, but shame on the Myth developers for not throwing a simple dialog or warning message in the Myth Front end GUI describing this simple problem.

I returned the Pinnacle 800i card to Best Buy today- no issues in getting the full refund, since I only used the card and nothing else in the package. The pinnacle might work for some people, but it looks like the Kworld 115 is the better bet for Linux.

The Kworld is about the same price with shipping from newegg or provantage.com vs the Pinnacle.

Plus, it appears the Kworld 115's remote works with lirc/Myth if you manually add the driver in Mythbuntu, based on MythDora 5.0 having the Kworld 110/115 remote driver listed as a preset, though I haven't tried it yet.
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post #46 of 58
5/7/08 at 2:29pm
Mythbuntu 7.10 is no longer available for download from the Myhtbuntu web site. It is officially unavailable, but it took me about 10 seconds to find it on some of their mirrors.
http://us-ca2.cdimages.mythbuntu.org/
http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/mythbuntu/

If you don't already have it downloaded, get it now. There is no telling how much longer it will be on the servers. I now have both i386 and x86_64 versions.

Also, MythTV does give an error if the video folder is not writable. I think that it is when you exit mythtv-setup, as that is where you define the folders to store the recordings in.

I'm gonna do a complete reformat and install of CentOS. I screwed it up right from the beginning by moving the boot drive from the ATA PCI card that I had it plugged into, to the mobo's IDE1 input after installing CentOS. It didn't even want to boot Linux, at first. You see, I wanted the PCI slot that the ATA card was in for the new gigabit LAN card that I just got.
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post #47 of 58
5/21/08 at 6:27pm
hi guys, obviously i am new to the forums, but i am also new to Linux in general. i have a pinnacle 800i card that i would love to get working with my new install of Mythbuntu 8.04. however, being new to Linux, i don't follow most of thew instructions (the the extract firmware step) mostly because i am not used to the language, if someone could help me get things rolling it would be greatly appreciated...thanks in advance!
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post #48 of 58
5/21/08 at 7:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by cainmp View Post

hi guys, obviously i am new to the forums, but i am also new to Linux in general. i have a pinnacle 800i card that i would love to get working with my new install of Mythbuntu 8.04. however, being new to Linux, i don't follow most of thew instructions (the the extract firmware step) mostly because i am not used to the language, if someone could help me get things rolling it would be greatly appreciated...thanks in advance!

After you download the shell script (extract.sh), open a terminal and run the following commands:
Code:
chmod +x extract.sh
./extract.sh
Note that you need to be in the same directory that you downloaded the file.
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post #49 of 58
5/23/08 at 12:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythmaster View Post

After you download the shell script (extract.sh), open a terminal and run the following commands:
Code:
chmod +x extract.sh
./extract.sh
Note that you need to be in the same directory that you downloaded the file.

maybe i am doing something wrong, but this is my code as i typed it:

Code:
michael@michael-desktop:~/Desktop$ chmod +x extract.sh
michael@michael-desktop:~/Desktop$ ./extract.sh
Extracting hcw85bda.sys from the windows zip file
./extract.sh: 13: unzip: not found
Failed to extract file, aborting
michael@michael-desktop:~/Desktop$
as i said i am a complete newbie to linux, so any ideas would be appreciated
thanks again!!
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post #50 of 58
5/23/08 at 1:44pm
Thread Starter 
You need to install unzip.

sudo apt-get unzip

or search, point and click in Synaptic
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post #51 of 58
5/23/08 at 3:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rgb View Post

You need to install unzip.

sudo apt-get unzip

or search, point and click in Synaptic

This might work better.
Code:
sudo apt-get install unzip
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post #52 of 58
5/23/08 at 3:58pm
Thread Starter 
I was assuming an implicit "install" declaration
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post #53 of 58
11/21/08 at 12:46pm
Hi,

I am building out a htpc with the current version of mythdora.

Is this card natively supported now or do i need to do some additional
steps ?

mythdora newbie, so a step-by-step instruction will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance !
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post #54 of 58
1/18/09 at 4:51pm
In lieu of waiting on the new v4l/dvb driver to fix the two analog tuner problems I am having with my Kworld-115's, I am looking to purchase another tuner card for OTA HD. I seen this Pinnacle card in BestBuy the other day and started doing my research on it for Linux support. I found this thread here and noticed that the issues Rgb was having with it was in May of last year. Has there been any improvement for this card to be viable for MythTV?

TIA
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post #55 of 58
1/18/09 at 7:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwisher View Post

In lieu of waiting on the new v4l/dvb driver to fix the two analog tuner problems I am having with my Kworld-115's,

You will, no doubt see the other thread, but for the sake of posterity for others, that wait should be over very soon.
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post #56 of 58
1/18/09 at 8:41pm
I would still like to see if there is any new info on the Pinnacle card because I still need another tuner. If the Pinnacle is still troublesome with Linux I will get another Kworld.
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post #57 of 58
1/18/09 at 10:04pm
Quote:


noticed that the issues Rgb was having with it was in May of last year. Has there been any improvement for this card to be viable for MythTV? ... I would still like to see if there is any new info on the Pinnacle card because I still need another tuner. If the Pinnacle is still troublesome with Linux

Other then the initial hiccups that needed to be ironed out when Chaogui added support, I don't think that this card has ever been troublesome per se. Skimming through the thread (and some of the links), the issues that Rgb and others were having can be summarized by:
  • the distro that they tried to use the card with didn't contain recent enough drivers covering the card
  • user error (loading the wrong module: they were trying to manually load cx23885, when they should have been loading the cx88 modules)
  • errors caused by ubuntu's choice of location for some of their kernel supplied modules -- when you install the v4l-dvb drivers from LinuxTV, they will copy over top of the older installed set, but because ubuntu had set up a different location for some of the v4l-dvb drivers that they included/provided with their kernel, the newer v4l-dvb drivers from LinuxTV got installed along side the older versions provided by ubuntu ... this caused an error wherein you get a case of a mixture of new and old drivers loading ... problem solved by blowing away the older ubuntu versions
  • that version of ubuntu messed up the version of alsa that they included in their kernel, causing difficulties, in terms of analog audio, when building the v4l-dvb drivers against that ubuntu kernel.
Other popular user errors one might see with a card like that is, first, putting the firmware in the wrong spot (didn't see it in this thread, but see it in many other cases), or, second, using the wrong firmware (i.e. trying to use the xc3028 firmware when what they need is that for the xc5000 ... again, didn't spot this in this case, but this is a common error when it comes to similar situations)

Provided that you put the right firmware in the right place, everything else should be automagic at this point with all distros.
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post #58 of 58
1/20/09 at 3:19pm
I have that card, and it works fine on my system, after I downloaded and put the firmware file in the right spot. But other than that, I'm using the stock 2.6.26 kernel that came with Debian. (I've since upgraded to 2.6.28 to get newer audio drivers for my onboard Realtek ALC883 sound).

MythTV sometimes gives an error when changing channels, but I don't know if that's a driver problem with this card, or a MythTV bug.

-- Kevin
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