[mythtv-users] what's the latest on pvr-500 firmware with ivtv 0.3.7b

[Mike]

Marius Schrecker wrote:

>
>
>:-) sounds great! I'm a little worried about one of the channels here which
>is just about ok with mastheat amping and "boosting" at the tv (lcd job
>which I think does massage the image digitally a bit to get rid of snow).
>It will be interesting to see what the 150's make of it and whether Mplayer/Myth
>will clean it up adequately.
>
>I was tying to be lazy and use the 0.3.7b's which are pre-packaged as debs
>on Ian Campbels repository. Aah  well, it liooks like patching and installing
>from tarball after-all (or waiting another couple of days ;-)
>
>I looked at the archives from Cecils link (can't stand the thought of ANOTHER
>100 mails a day from yet another list, but couldn't find any completely
>up-to-date info, so went for the files from the CD, if they don't work they'll
>be easy enough to replace.
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>Cheers
>Marius
>Registered Linux user
>  
>

Well, for me... I get better reception on my type 57 PVR150's than I do 
on my tv set also. (I'm sure you knew the 500 is just 2 150's) With my 
Sony Wega tv I get pretty good image on almost all chanels but the 
PVR150's actually seem to boost and clean the image quite noticeably. On 
the other hand my type 47 350 is a bit worse than the tv set. I guess 
you'll never really know until you try it at your jack but hopefully 
you'll see the same results as I did. I havn't tried to refine the 
tuning past what my locations lineup is slated for but I wonder if I can 
get some of the snow out of the 350 that way.

As far as building the drivers for debian. One thing to watch out for is 
where it throws the kernel modules. I guess you could edit some things 
to make it put them in the right location but my usual lazy route goes 
something like this if your using a stock gcc-3.3 kernel under sid like 
2.6.11 with standard gcc-4.0 installed.. (lucky for you, I already have 
this written down for my brother who is installing a 500 on sid this 
weekend)

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ivtv/ivtv-0.2.0-rc3j.tgz
tar xvfz ivtv-0.3.7c.tgz
cd /usr/local/src/ivtv-0.3.7c/driver/
make CC=gcc-3.3
rm /lib/modules/2.6.11-1-k7/kernel/drivers/media/video/msp3400.ko
make install CC=gcc-3.3
cp *.ko /lib/modules/2.6.11-1-k7/build/drivers/media/video/
cp *.ko /lib/modules/2.6.11-1-k7/kernel/drivers/media/video/

vi /etc/modutils/ivtv

# you'll need something like this for PAL... but double check ivtv_std 
just in case, I use ntsc which is default. Double check your tuner too.
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 ivtv
alias char-major-81-1 ivtv
options ivtv ivtv_std=2,2 tuner=57,57 tda9887=0,0 ivtv_debug=1,1
options cx25840 no_black_magic=1 i2c_enable=1,1
options msp3400 once=1 simple=1

Then to load the modules I do add something like this /etc/modules
cx25840
ivtv

You will probably get away with just 'ivtv' since you don't have to deal 
with saa7127 from the 250's/350's thinking it can take control of your 
150's like me.

Then
update-modules

install the firmware in /lib/modules as described here
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=PVR150-500Firmware
(I use the supported encoder firmware and the audio firmware from the 
cd... When I use just any firmware my stuff doesn't seem to have as good 
quality or as good stability... thats why I use the recommended firmware)
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=FirmwareVersions

reboot or modprobe the modules

and try it out
cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg
cat /dev/video1 > test.mpg

then you can install ptune to change the channels and do all the mythtv 
stuff.....


-Mike