[mythtv-users] Hauppage 250 tuner card image problems

[Brian Wood]

On Mar 8, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Joshua Frank wrote:

> I have pvr-250 card that after a  few days of recording with start  
> to show image defects in the recordings and whiles displaying live  
> tv. After I reboot the problem goes away for a couple of days. I  
> have multiple cards in the system and this isn't the first time  
> this happened. The first time it was the same problem with my  
> pvr-350 card. All the other cards will work fine just one tuner  
> goes a little flaky.
> I get an interesting result when I run:
> debian:~# cat /proc/interrupts
>            CPU0
>   0:     634699    IO-APIC-edge  timer
>   1:         40    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
>   2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
>   8:          4    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
>  14:       9774    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
>  15:        116    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
> 137:     376581   IO-APIC-level  ivtv0
> 145:        424   IO-APIC-level  ivtv1
> 153:       1173   IO-APIC-level  ivtv2, eth0
> 161:       9001   IO-APIC-level  ivtv3
> 169:          0   IO-APIC-level  VIA8237
> NMI:          0
> LOC:     634652
> ERR:          0
> MIS:          0
>
> For the ivtv0 card which is the one that is acting up the CPU0  
> number is way higher than the rest even on a fresh boot. This  
> number also goes up even when the card is idle. I'm running  
> ivtv-0.4.3 stable drivers 2.6.15.4 kernel and mythtv 0.19 so I  
> don't think I can update software any further. Has anyone seen this  
> problem before? I'm not sure if it's ivtv, mythtv or just debian  
> related.
What sort of "image defects" ? The typical "digital breakup" of  
little squares and such ??

I can't explain why it would be happening only after some uptime, but  
I notice that you are using a VIA-based motherboard.

I had this sort of problem with a Via mobo before I adjusted the PCI  
latency values. Check your boot log for an "Unreasonably low latency"  
message from IVTV, and check the page on PCI_Latency on the WiKi.

I can't be certain if your problem is related to this, but increasing  
the latency on my IDE controller eliminated all of the artifacts I  
was getting on that system. My problems were more related to system  
load though, and didn't seem to be related to uptime.

Older VIA chipsets had DMA problems that, in some cases, were  
insurmountable on MythTV systems, due to extensive use of DMA to  
transfer data. There is some info on this on the IVTV site, but  
again, I have no idea if this is related to your problem.
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