Adding support for newer tv tuner

[PKWilson]

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to LinuxMCE and was just wondering what the best option for adding support for a newer tv tuner is. I have the Winfast DTV2000H card. I had read up before buying it to check that it was supported only to find out afterwards that there was a revision update and I have the type J which isn't natively supported.

While I can force it to work using the "option cx88xx card=51" switch in the module options file, this only offers limited support. That is, the digital tuner works but analogue and the composite/s-video inputs don't (analogue kinda does, without sound).

I did try to patch the module using a patch found here : http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/2/6/289, but I only had limited success with it. I tried to cheat by just downloading the kernel source 2.6.22 and only doing a "make modules" and copied over the .ko files without recompiling and installing a whole new kernel, so maybe this is why. The card autodetected and loaded without errors after the patch and it did show the extra input options. I was initially able to tune and watch digital tv in MythTV, but as soon as I added the analogue tuner to MythTV it seemed to kill the digital tuner. After adding the analogue tuner I couldn't get a lock on a digital channel in MythTV (only showed l _ _ lock and not L M S) and the bit error (BE) went up to 13000ish and MythTV would freeze after a few seconds. If I deleted all the tuners from MythTV and added just the digital back in, it would work again. Also, trying to use the composite video source from outside MythTV would kill the digital tuner again and I would have to delete it from Myth and add it back in again to get it working.

So, my question is, what is the best way for me to add support for the newer card? Do I do a full recompile of the kernel with the patch? Install a newer kernel that supports the card or is there some other way to add it in? If I do have to recompile a new kernel, are there any implications for running LinuxMCE and is there a recommended source version to use.

I'm now running a fresh install with LinuxMCE 0710 b4.

Cheers
Phil

[darrenmason]

On my leadtek DVB card it also creates a /dev/video0 as well event though this is a digital only card - so perhaps on a hybrid card like yours it should be creating two /dev/video devices.
In MythTV you will either use the DVB OR the V4L for the digital tuner. My guess is that you are trying to add the same tuner (digital) twice to mythtv and they are getting in each others way.

I would go back to ensuring that the patching etc that you were doing was done properly and see if it is supposed to create multiple /dev/video devices and then only add the one for the Anologue tuner under mythtv.

These are only guesses btw but hope it helps a bit....

[PKWilson]

Thanks for that info.

Going from memory, as far as I could tell it was only creating the one /dev/video0 device. If I tried adding a card on /dev/video1 it just said it was unavailable. When I added the V4L capture card, it gave me the option of 3 inputs - Television, S-Video & Composite. This lead me to believe that I had to install one tuner as a DVB capture device and the analogue one as a V4L capture device. When the DVB capture device was set up on its own, it worked fine, it was only when I then added the V4L device that it stopped working.

The reason why I tried to cheat by just doing a "make modules" instead of compiling the full kernel was that I couldn't get "make menuconfig" or "make xconfig" to work in the LinuxMCE DVD distro. It's been 5-6 years since I was last playing around with recompiling kernels and I'm a bit out of practice.

I've decided to try a full kubuntu install to see if I can get the card working in that and then I'll install the LinuxMCE 0710 b4 CD distro over the top. Hopefully I'll have more luck.

Cheers