0710b3 VDR - DVB-T not working

[RichardP]

0710Beta3, VDR installation.
Winfast Leadtek DTV1000-T (Connextant CX8800)

This is the first time I've tried VDR. Now that I have Beta 3 installed, I can't seem to get the tuner card working. Had it working under Beta 2 (Myth Installation).

This time around, I can't seem to get any response from it. scan -o vdr just produces the help screen, no matter what options I try. Kaffeine does not show any DVB options. It seems like the card is not there, but lspci and lsmod show everything normal.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[totallymaxed]

0710Beta3, VDR installation.
Winfast Leadtek DTV1000-T (Connextant CX8800)

This is the first time I've tried VDR. Now that I have Beta 3 installed, I can't seem to get the tuner card working. Had it working under Beta 2 (Myth Installation).

This time around, I can't seem to get any response from it. scan -o vdr just produces the help screen, no matter what options I try. Kaffeine does not show any DVB options. It seems like the card is not there, but lspci and lsmod show everything normal.

Does anyone have any ideas?

...look here http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/LR6650 and make sure all the modules listed are there. Use;

sudo lsmod <return>

Compare your output the listed modules on the LinuxTV site. Then modprobe any that are missing;

sudo modprobe <module_name>

Then if any are missing add them to;

/etc/modules

That should do it ;-)

[RichardP]

Compare your output the listed modules on the LinuxTV site. Then modprobe any that are missing;

All the modules are there - or at least those that relate to my hardware. There are some differences, but if I ModProbe them, they appear in the list and are shown as not used by anything.

The card is working, I think - that is, I don't think it's an installation problem. I tried going into Myth backend setup and setting up the card. Some of the options, like V4L show the card as being detected.  More significant, however, is the fact that the V3 DVB option reports the card as being busy. I think what is happening is that VDR has opened and locked the card, but can't display any channels because I don't have a channel conf file. And because VDR has locked the card, I can't scan to create the channel list. Does that theory sound right or am I barking up the wrong tree? Or am I off my tree? 

The other thing is - am I even using the scan command correctly. I'm using scan -o vdr, but shouldn't I be saying what card to use to scan? After all, I could conceivably have both a DVB-T and a DVB-S card in there. (I don't, though)

Best Regards,
Richard.

[totallymaxed]

Compare your output the listed modules on the LinuxTV site. Then modprobe any that are missing;

All the modules are there - or at least those that relate to my hardware. There are some differences, but if I ModProbe them, they appear in the list and are shown as not used by anything.

The card is working, I think - that is, I don't think it's an installation problem. I tried going into Myth backend setup and setting up the card. Some of the options, like V4L show the card as being detected.  More significant, however, is the fact that the V3 DVB option reports the card as being busy. I think what is happening is that VDR has opened and locked the card, but can't display any channels because I don't have a channel conf file. And because VDR has locked the card, I can't scan to create the channel list. Does that theory sound right or am I barking up the wrong tree? Or am I off my tree? 

The other thing is - am I even using the scan command correctly. I'm using scan -o vdr, but shouldn't I be saying what card to use to scan? After all, I could conceivably have both a DVB-T and a DVB-S card in there. (I don't, though)

Best Regards,
Richard.

Do the following to see if the DVB card is working ok;

sudo dmesg | grep Leadtek <return>

...the line above should list anything to do with your DVB card

or try;

sudo dmesg | grep DVB <return>

No do this to run scan...at the console to stop vdr;

sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop <return>

then do sudo scan -o vdr channels.conf <return>

Restart vdr with;

sudo /etc/init.d/vdr start <return>

then use Web Admin to load the new channels.conf

Now check if that fixes the problem ;-)

[RichardP]

No do this to run scan...at the console to stop vdr;

sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop <return>

Ahh - I think this might have been my problem. Thanks for that - I'll know later on when I get back home. I'll let you know how it goes.

Best Regards,
Richard.

[RichardP]

Hi Andrew,

Yes, that turned out to be part of the problem. Once I stopped VDR, the card immediately became available and started working fully in Kaffeine and Myth.

The other problem was the way I was using scan. It needs as an input a list of frequencies to scan, as far as I was able to make out. I eventually figured out there are lists of frequencies available as samples with the dvb-utils package. I produced a channels.conf file with the command

"scan -o vdr /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/au-Melbourne > au.dvb-t.melbourne.channels.conf"

That seemed to do the trick. After rebooting (because I'd done an apt-get upgrade in the meantime), VDR displayed live TV.

I can't seem to be able to get it do anything else. I read your post to someone else saying the VDR interface is a work in progress at the moment. I'm off to hunt down the post, as I recall you gave some instructions on bringing up the EPG.

Thanks for the help.

Best Regards,
Richard.

[niz23]

RichardP.

Hi Andrew,

Yes, that turned out to be part of the problem. Once I stopped VDR, the card immediately became available and started working fully in Kaffeine and Myth.

The other problem was the way I was using scan. It needs as an input a list of frequencies to scan, as far as I was able to make out. I eventually figured out there are lists of frequencies available as samples with the dvb-utils package. I produced a channels.conf file with the command

"scan -o vdr /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/au-Melbourne > au.dvb-t.melbourne.channels.conf"

That seemed to do the trick. After rebooting (because I'd done an apt-get upgrade in the meantime), VDR displayed live TV.

I can't seem to be able to get it do anything else. I read your post to someone else saying the VDR interface is a work in progress at the moment. I'm off to hunt down the post, as I recall you gave some instructions on bringing up the EPG.

Thanks for the help.

Best Regards,
Richard.

Try hitting F6 that should do it.
Depending on what device you use to navigate UI2 klick on up or down arrow.
You´ll see the EPG if erything works. You may also change channel in this menu.
There are functions/buttons to record a show but since I have not tried them yet I cannot say if it works.

/niz23

[totallymaxed]

No do this to run scan...at the console to stop vdr;

sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop <return>

Ahh - I think this might have been my problem. Thanks for that - I'll know later on when I get back home. I'll let you know how it goes.

Best Regards,
Richard.

Hi Richard,

Glad your up and running. Sorry my mistake on the scan instructions... I forgot the tuning file was also needed!

To see the UI2 EPG select live TV and with a live picture on screen... press f6 on the keyboard ;-)

[RichardP]

Hi Richard,

Glad your up and running. Sorry my mistake on the scan instructions... I forgot the tuning file was also needed!

To see the UI2 EPG select live TV and with a live picture on screen... press f6 on the keyboard ;-)

No problem - I knew something was wrong because it kept displaying the help screen, which is Linux-speak "for you've screwed up". So I knew the command was wrong from the outset - but I just couldn't understand why the card wasn't working. I was thinking that VDR wasn't set up yet, so it couldn't have been grabbing the card, and I didn't know how to stop VDR to check.

Last thing I need to know before I close the topic - and I hope someone will know - is this:
When I watch a video, is that VDR that I'm watching? The reason I want to know is because when I watch a video, I get large black bars above and below, which disappear when I change the Aspect to 4:3. This is to be expected - all widescreen TV streams are actually 4:3 format, with the images squashed sideways. I have to do this for every video I watch.

Can I set this so that the default is 4:3, and I can change it from the menu if necessary. And can I do this for live TV as well? I notice the aspect option is not there when I watch live TV.

Best Regards,
Richard.

[totallymaxed]

Hi Richard,

Glad your up and running. Sorry my mistake on the scan instructions... I forgot the tuning file was also needed!

To see the UI2 EPG select live TV and with a live picture on screen... press f6 on the keyboard ;-)

No problem - I knew something was wrong because it kept displaying the help screen, which is Linux-speak "for you've screwed up". So I knew the command was wrong from the outset - but I just couldn't understand why the card wasn't working. I was thinking that VDR wasn't set up yet, so it couldn't have been grabbing the card, and I didn't know how to stop VDR to check.

Last thing I need to know before I close the topic - and I hope someone will know - is this:
When I watch a video, is that VDR that I'm watching? The reason I want to know is because when I watch a video, I get large black bars above and below, which disappear when I change the Aspect to 4:3. This is to be expected - all widescreen TV streams are actually 4:3 format, with the images squashed sideways. I have to do this for every video I watch.

Can I set this so that the default is 4:3, and I can change it from the menu if necessary. And can I do this for live TV as well? I notice the aspect option is not there when I watch live TV.

Best Regards,
Richard.

Richard,

If your browsing Video from the 'Video' menu item and you 'play' something from the media browser in beta3 you are using LinuxMCE's standard xine playback capabilities. In the next beta or the release you wll have the choice to play video in the standard way or with linuxmce.

Andrew