Getting the Hauppauge PVR-500 to work

loemmel

Hy there.

I bought a Hauppauge PVR-500MCE for my HTPC-Project.
I've got some serious problems getting this TV-Card working. I made everything as discribed in the ivtv-wiki and the QuickInstall guide delivered by the ivtv-drivers.
i've built the driver by hand, because the portage version of ivtv is really outdated, and support for the pvr-500 was added in the 0.3.x series of ivtv.

When I load the ivtv module i get following output with dmesg:

loemmel · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:26 am Post subject:

nobody? *bump*

hw-tph · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:45 am Post subject:

You could probably get away with doing it the quick and ugly way if nobody presents a better way: Use the local.start init script. Do not load the ivtv module with /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6, but put it all in /etc/conf.d/local.start. Just add the commands there:

loemmel · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:55 am Post subject:

hmmm, okay, it's really an ugly way, but this seems to work.

so do i have to start de mythbackend server after loading the ivtv module (this would mean i have to add the "/etc/init.d/mythbackend start" to the /etc/conf.d/local.start too?)
i'm not shure about that. but it would make sense.
so far your hack works, it seems to load the module correctly, thanks for this. i'm still having problems with the tv-card, will post this later, when i'm at home.

perhaps there's someone who nows a better way, to set de bus mastering on for this pci-device? (bus mastering is enabled in the bios)

hw-tph · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:58 am Post subject:

Hey, I said it was ugly, didn't I?

You can add pretty much anything to the local.[start|stop] files, so a call to an init script should work too.

A more graceful solution would be writing a new init script and do everything you need to get done before the mythtv stuff is launched there, and make sure that script launches before mythtv.

Håkan

loemmel · Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 10:23 pm Post subject:

so, i finally got my tv-card working.
I get video signal on both tuners, and can change the channels. everything seems to be fine, but:
i can't change the channel without loosing sound, this means. the first time i fire up mplayer to watch /dev/video0 or video1 i have sound (same in mythtv) but as soon i want to change a channel (with ptune.pl or in mythtv) the sound is gone. and it doesnt come back until i remove the modules and modprobe them again.

i've made a /etc/modules.d/ivtv and it looks like this:

Miwer · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 11:51 am Post subject:

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 2:50 pm Post subject:

hmm, yes i'm using udev.

i'll have to try this. thanks for the hint.
perhaps this could solve my problem, but i don't have any problems with tuning /dev/video0 it's only the sound by changing the channel, that doesn't work.

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 5:59 pm Post subject:

ok, I switched back to devfs, but the problem is still the same. No sound after changing the channel.

anyone with other ideas? is somewhere here, who got his pvr-500 (PAL) working?

rudyfink · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:10 am Post subject:

I'm sorry that I can't help you but I'd like to ask a question.

Where did you get the rom that you use? Did you download the recommended one or did you pull it off the cdrom?

I'm trying to get a 500 MCE revision 492 working in NTSC and right now I'm having a crash error.

loemmel · Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 6:16 am Post subject:

could you post your error???

i use the rom, you can find on the http://www.hauppauge.com website.

you can download there the driver-cd: http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/mce/mce_cd_v25.zip

you will get an error, because you are using never drivers as recomended, but thats normal and doesn't mean anything.

Miwer · Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:32 pm Post subject:

Hi loemmel,

Guess what ?? I just bought a PVR-500 so now I'm trying to see if I can fix a home-made ebuild for the latest ivtv 0.3.6z

Anyway, I got no sound AT ALL but I haven't really had the time to look at it (I will this evening).
Just another tip for you: I saw in another post, that you can get extensive debugging info from ivtv by setting the ivtv_debug=1 option for the ivtv module.
Theres also another command I don't know about: ivtvctl According to the following thread this seems to give you some more or less interesting output for debugging.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-351104-highlight-pvr500mce.html

Good luck.

[EDIT]

Ok, so now I've managed to reproduce the same error you're describing... it seems that a patch included since 0.3.6v are causing this behaviour. In this link someone has made a reverse patch, trying to solve the problem - http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/ivtv/devel/22272

... maybe you should try applying this patch to 0.3.6z and see if it works (it worked for me) - I'm putting it here since on the page I'm linking to above, it's formatted like crap :roll:

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:15 am Post subject:

thanks for the info, I will try this when I'm back home, just got my pvr-500 back (was RMA).

Could someone tell me how to apply this (or a) patch? i'm not very familiar with this.

thank you for your help.

p.s. Is your card now working with sound?

Miwer · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:44 am Post subject:

loemmel just cut&paste the patch into a file (e.g. ivtv-fileops.c.diff), put this file in the same directory as the target file (ivtv-fileops.c - it's in the drivers directory), cd to it and run this command:

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 11:03 am Post subject:

ok, I'll try this later, when I am at home, hoping this will work. would be very nice.

I will post my experiences with this,
thanks again

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject:

really strange, when i want to patch the file, i get this:

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

ok, i did it by hand, don't know what i did wrong.

the sound is working now on tuner 0, tuner 1 doesn't have sound at all.

dmesg:

loemmel · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 10:39 pm Post subject:

ok, it's now running, no problems at all...

i made a reboot, and now it seems to work. sound on both tuners and also after changing channels.

thank you very mutch you helped me a lot.

loemmel · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:05 am Post subject:

[edit]

ok, i rebooted again, and it stopped working :cry:

sound works on the first tuner, no sound at all on the second...
perhaps this is a firmware problem, but I'm using the same firmware as Miwer.

I don't know what I did wrong, the dmesg output is 2 posts earlier.

thanks for any help.

Miwer · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:55 pm Post subject:

loemmel · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:16 am Post subject:

I already did try version 0.3.7 but it does not work with this version.

I think I have to try it with less modules-options, so perhaps this helps.
I will post later, if it worked or not. *hoping*

Miwer · Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:42 pm Post subject:

Ok,

This is very wierd. The last couple of days I've had only trouble with this card... after upgrading to 0.3.7 and again to 0.3.7a I lost sound on the first tuner. The second worked just fine. Then at one point I lost both video and sound on the first tuner after I did some testing on getting the radio working - no module setting changes, just using the utilities that come with ivtv.

At this ponit I'm at kernel 2.6.12-r6 and ivtv-0.3.7a - the last time it worked fine on both tuners (only tv, not radio) was with kernel 2.6.11-r11 and ivtv-0.3.6z.

So I tried reverting back to the working kernel and ivtv, and even then it was a mixed experience... first boot, it worked. Second boot, it did not. Power off every time to fully reset the card for a clean firmware install on boot (same firmware all the way thru).

Hmm, maybe it was the timing when loading the modules (they load pretty early in modules.autoload) - so I tried setting ivtv and mythbackend to load from local.start (mythbackend always load after ivtv, because it makes some inits on the cards) - Third boot, it worked again, and it's been working ever since. Even when putting ivtv back into modules.autoload for early loading.

So, I tried going forward to ivtv-0.3.7a, testing, it worked - then kernel 2.6.12-r6, testing, it still worked. Mind you that I had to make clean && make the drivers a couple of times during this step-by-step testing, to make sure they were built for the running kernel.

Ok, so now I'm back at kernel-2.6.12-r6 and ivtv-0.3.7a and both tuners work... for now - even after reboot, poweroff and such. I'll be sure to make a note on it here, if I loose sound again on the first tuner... It seemed a bit random - I don't know.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

loemmel · Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 6:56 am Post subject:

sounds really strange.

so I think I have to test the 0.3.7a driver and perhaps upgrading my kernel. I will post if this helped.
could you tell us which firmware you are using?

Miwer · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:14 am Post subject:

loemmel · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:50 am Post subject:

okay, that should be the same as I am using.

I'll try to test the new drivers 0.3.7a and a 2.6.12 kernel.

thanks for your help