Hauppage PVR150MCE not using onboard encoder

[archived]

As the subject specifies. I have a Hauppage PVR150MCE card with a single tuner. To this I've connected by satelite box. This card is supposed to have a onboard encoder so that the CPU don't have to spend time on it.

But this don't work. Cause when I watch TV, the CPU load is about 60-70%(using top command) and about 2-3% when not watching.

Earlier I used IVTV drivers from http://www.geocities.com/medencid/index.html untill I read the small text(TM). The drivers where without the onboard encoders. Then I switched to the Blackbird drivers(downloaded from the same place), but nothing has changed.

Do I need to reinstall since I first used the IVTV package? Or is there something I've missed?

[archived]

You didn't bother mentioning the spec of the system you were using to playback TV.

Encoding = Recording, with ivtv-supported PVR card, should be 2-3% CPU MAX.  

Decoding = Playback, the only ivtv card w/ Decoding cababilites is the PVR-350, with the others playback is CPU and Video Card Dependant.

The best numbers I have seen are about 7% CPU for playback on an Athlon XP2400+ and Nvidia AGP card. (MythTV)  An older P3 system without optimized video can easily tax the system to 60-70% or more on playback . . . . .

[archived]

Sorry, missed that  :oops:

Mainboard: Abit KV7 v1
CPU: AMD Sempron XP2500+
RAM: 1024MB DDR PC400
Graphic: Ati Radeon 9550 256MB AGP8x
Harddrive: Seagate S-ATA 200GB 8MB Cache 7200RPM
TV-card: Hauppage PVR150MCE Bulk

And I'm not steady on the whole encoding/decoding thing yet.
But the main thing is while watching tv. That's when the CPU is about 60-70%.

Hope this helps.

[archived]

Well, certainly a capable system you have there, the 1GB of ram is overkill for even HD content, for regular MythTV 256MB seems to be plenty.

You need to install the latest ATI drivers if possible.  ATI video driver support for linux is still lagging compared to Nvidia cards, but my understanding is that its getting better.

The final thing, I'm guessing that you are running very high resolution, there is little reason to run a multimedia computer at a higher resolution than your source material.  For standard TV, about 640x480, MythTV is actually designed to have a native resolution of 800x600, which handles standard TV with minimal scaling and has sufficient resolution for the menus and On Screen Display.

Good video drivers will help this problem, but my guess is that your CPU is currently doing all the work for real-time scaling and playback.

[archived]

Yes, that's the conclusion I've come to as well.
Since I can play DVD and harddrive content just fine.

The memory is mostly because it's a hybrid. And memory is cheap

So, I've come so far to figure it out that it must be something wrong with the IVTV drivers. I've read that IVTV defaults is to not use any onboard functions. So, I need to change the firmware or config to specially support my card, and take the load of the cpu.

[archived]

Hi

I am trying to get the IVTV drives to work

Currently I added the firmware for latest version to my lib/modules/linux version" and DMesg seems to say all is ok and initialized ..but cat't test capture to a file (this works but this was not in out job....

I see /videodev as a result of "ls mod"lsmod also working becaus we pushedt this our was your next task

video0 or video1 does not seem to work either but for me a cat \dev\video33 > home/test.mpg (which is blank but just increases in size as the MB er sec.) seems like no vid though.

Again I tried all 3 in mythtv settings to no avail....I did not uninstall the ivtv modules as I presumed the install from Radu would have done this (as I see some backup files of the originals that the ivtv site says to backup

Appreciate the help on the this.. specific steps would be great...

I am running Debian and pluto .34

Thanks

[archived]

If I am in the pluto admin site, what would I use to add the IVTV drivers to the system.

I found a site that says to use ivtv-firmware-2.6.10-4 but I don't know how old this page is. Is this the best firmware to use?

I am not familiar with Linux but why is it a firmware and not a driver?