[mythtv-users] RE: Help!!! Garbled Video

Sat Oct 9 16:11:57 UTC 2004

Mike,

I am experiencing the same thing and it started about the same time (shortly
after I upgraded to 0.16).  My system has been running flawlessly for
exactly one year and has been the only way my wife and 3 kids can watch TV
in my house (in other words, it's been heavily used).

For the past year I had been running on my own LFS 5.0 system with various
builds of MythTV.  A few weeks ago I upgraded to 0.16.  Shortly thereafter I
started seeing exactly the same video problems you have (I viewed your video
clip).  At that point I was a bit tired of my LFS system and decided to
install FC2 and the ATRPMs for Myth 0.16 to get up quickly.  This involved
new ivtv drivers as well.  Since everything was changing (except Myth
version) I expected my problem to magically disappear since nobody else was
reporting this video problem that I had noticed.  Unfortunately the same
problem existed on my new system.

My hardware:  Dell 400sc with two WinTV PVR-250s, 2.4Ghz P4, 512MB RAM.  I'm
using analog cable, so they are doing the tuning.

It would seem that the common denominator is MythTV 0.16.

FYI, I followed Jarod's guide a couple of days ago for the install.

Regards,
Thomas

-----Original Message-----
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 02:28:41 -0500
From: Mike Green <mikey at linuxwiz.org>
Subject: [mythtv-users] Help!!! Garbled Video
To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
Message-ID: <200410090228.41727.mikey at linuxwiz.org>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"

I have just about exhausted trying everything I know to try.  I am at my
wit's 
end!  About three weeks ago, the recordings and livetv on my mythbox started

getting garbled, almost as though the channels are not tuning in quite
right.  
The weird thing is that certain channels do not seem to be affected, in 
particular msnbc.  The rest of the channels, either recorded or livetv,
garble, 
like I am trying to watch a cable channel that I didn't pay for.

I am running a gentoo box kernel 2.6.8 (-gentoo-r7) with nptl, with dual 
pentium II 400Mhz processors, 256MB ram, a pvr 250, mythtv 0.16, ivtv 0.1.9 
(0.1.10pre2-ck71d obtained from gentoo portage ivtv-0.1.9-r4), xorg X11,
nvidia 
4363 running off of the TV-Out on my GeForce2 MX 400.

I recently upgraded to gentoo and thought maybe something was going on so I 
booted back to my old reliable 2.4.22/linux from scratch box and see the
same 
results.  I have tried several different versions of the ivtv driver 
(pre2-ck100z, pre2-ck114f, pre2-ck114q), tried turning preemption on/off in 
the kernel, tried a 2.6.7 kernel, yadda yadda yadda.  Nothing seems to make
a 
difference.  This box has been running great for months, 

Here is some relevant dmesg output:

Linux video capture interface: v1.00
ivtv: version 0.1.9 (0.1.10pre2-ck71d) loading
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #0
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #1
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #2
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #3
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #4
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #5
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #6
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #7
ivtv: Autodetecting cardtype for card #8
ivtv: Found an iTVC15 based chip
ivtv (i2c)= 0xd09bfd40
msp34xx: init: chip=MSP3445G-B8, has NICAM support, simple (D) mode, simpler
(G) no-thread mode
msp34xx: $Id$ compiled on: Oct  9 2004 01:29:24
saa7114.c: starting probe for adapter ivtv i2c driver #0 (0x10005)
saa7114.c: detecting saa7114 client on address 0x42
saa7115.c: writing init values
status: (1E) 0x09, (1F) 0xc0
tuner: chip found at addr 0xc2 i2c-bus ivtv i2c driver #0
tuner: type set to 2 (Philips NTSC (FI1236,FM1236 and compatibles)) by
insmod option
tuner: The type=<n> insmod option will go away soon.
tuner: Please use the tuner=<n> option provided by
tuner: tv aard core driver (bttv, saa7134, ...) instead.
ivtv: Encoder revision: 0x02040024
ivtv: Decoder revision: 0x02020023
ivtv: Registered v4l2 device, minor 0
ivtv: Registered v4l2 device, minor 32
ivtv: Registered v4l2 device, minor 224
ivtv: Registered v4l2 device, minor 24
ivtv: Creating Stream 0 size 180
ivtv: Creating Stream 1 size 120
ivtv: Creating Stream 2 size 64
ivtv: Creating Stream 3 size 100
ivtv: loaded
saa7115[0]: decoder set norm NTSC
saa7115[0] set audio: 0x02
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set picture bright=127 contrast=63 saturation=63 hue=0
saa7115[0]: decoder set size
Hpsc: 0x00001, Hfsc: 0x00480
Setting full NTSC height
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting va->volume to 58950
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting va->volume to 58950
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting va->balance to 32768
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting va->flags to 30
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting msp->left to 58950
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting msp->right to 58950
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting msp->bass to 32768
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting msp->treble to 32768
msp34xx: VIDIOCSAUDIO setting msp->mode to 0

Here are my modules settings:
alias char-major-81     videodev
alias char-major-81-0   ivtv
options ivtv ivtv_debug=1 mpg_buffers=90
options tuner type=2
#options msp3400 once=1 simple=1
add below ivtv msp3400 saa7115 tuner
post-install ivtv /usr/bin/ivtvctl -d /dev/video0 -u 0x3000
#post-install ivtv /usr/bin/test_ioctl -d /dev/video0 -u 0x3000

lspci output:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge
(rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX
[Cyclone] (rev 30)
0000:00:10.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev
06)
0000:00:14.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15
MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2
MX/MX 400] (rev b2)

My input is comcast digital cable, I have a splitter and can only record
analog
channels.

Examples of good/bad recordings:
http://home.comcast.net/~anon6969/good.mpg
http://home.comcast.net/~anon6969/bad.mpg

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  If more information is needed I
would
be glad to provide.  I can't live without my mythtv!!!

I have tried booting back into my old box, tweaks with hdparm, installing it

all on a different box (P4 1.7GHz) in a different room/cable, tried
mythtv 0.15.1, endless tweaks with modprobe.conf (albeit wild guesses),
power 
cycling, recompiling my entire box with nptl, screaming at my dog, pissing
off
my wife, and praying.  None of it has helped :)