[mythtv-users] Mythbuntu 9.10 / Myth .22 and Hauppauge HVR-1200 Mpeg Encoder fails

Tue Dec 22 22:42:55 UTC 2009

I have been chasing a problem with my latest myth installation.  I 
recently installed Mythbuntu 9.10 and MythTV .22 over my previously 
working  8.10 / .21 version.

I have a Hauppauge HVR-1600 Tuner/Mpeg encoder card installed which 
worked great in my previous install. It is connected to an outside 
antenna and to the S-video out of my Dish Satellite Receiver.  The ATSC 
tuner/DVB  half functions OK but the s-video mpeg encoder output 
(/dev/video0) shows a black screen in myth frontend "watch tv"  and a 
red screen in VLC. When I request that a program be recorded from the 
Dish receiver,  I get 30 minutes of red screen along with the Dish 
receiver audio when I "play it" back in Myth.

1.  I though perhaps I had a broken/bad s-video cable.  So I unplugged 
the s-video cable from the HVR-1600 s-video jack and plugged it into the 
Sony LCD TV. Picture fine.  Normal picture on all Dish channels.

2. I though I must have mis-configured something in Myth.  So I fired up
VLC and chose Media, Capture Device, PVR and entered /dev/video0.  
Red picture in VLC  with audio from the Dish Receiver, same as my 
recordings. Certainly not
the picture I was expecting from the Satellite Receiver but at least the
Satellite audio was there.  In VLC, Media Information,  Codec Details 
shows  Stream 0, type: Video, Codec: mpgv, Resolution: 720x480, Display 
Resolution: 720x480, and Frame rate 29.970029.

3. At this point, I think that the HVR-1600 analog section didn't 
initialize correctly.   But the DVB half did and plays  OK in VLC.  
Plus  it appears that the cx18 chip was initialized as shown below in 
the following:

dmesg | grep cx18
[    5.540246] cx18:  Start initialization, version 1.2.0
[    5.540279] cx18-0: Initializing card 0
[    5.540281] cx18-0: Autodetected Hauppauge card
[    5.543479] cx18 0000:05:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    5.543488] cx18-0: Unreasonably low latency timer, setting to 64 
(was 32)
[    5.544762] cx18-0: cx23418 revision 01010000 (B)
[    5.761818] cx18-0: Autodetected Hauppauge HVR-1600
[    5.761820] cx18-0: Simultaneous Digital and Analog TV capture supported
[    5.856928] IRQ 18/cx18-0: IRQF_DISABLED is not guaranteed on shared IRQs
[    7.004368] tuner 1-0043: chip found @ 0x86 (cx18 i2c driver #0-1)
[    7.016646] tuner 1-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (cx18 i2c driver #0-1)
[    7.209622] cs5345 0-004c: chip found @ 0x98 (cx18 i2c driver #0-0)
[    7.225253] cx18-0: Registered device video0 for encoder MPEG (64 x 
32 kB)
DVB initialization details omitted.
[    7.446209] cx18-0: Initialized card: Hauppauge HVR-1600
[    7.446229] cx18:  End initialization
[    7.488574] cx18 0000:05:02.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx23418-cpu.fw
[    8.215916] cx18-0: loaded v4l-cx23418-cpu.fw firmware (158332 bytes)
[    8.243487] cx18 0000:05:02.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx23418-apu.fw
[    8.507505] cx18-0: loaded v4l-cx23418-apu.fw firmware V00120000 
(141200 bytes)
[    8.513677] cx18-0: FW version: 0.0.74.0 (Release 2007/03/12)
[    8.720131] cx18 0000:05:02.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx23418-cpu.fw
[    8.854592] cx18 0000:05:02.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx23418-apu.fw
[    9.165685] cx18 0000:05:02.0: firmware: requesting v4l-cx23418-dig.fw
[    9.421104] cx18-0 843: loaded v4l-cx23418-dig.fw firmware (16382 bytes)
[    9.440302] cx18-0 843: verified load of v4l-cx23418-dig.fw firmware 
(16382 bytes)

4.  The version installed is
lj at mythtv:~/Desktop$ mythbackend --version
Please include all output in bug reports.
MythTV Version   : 22994
MythTV Branch    : branches/release-0-22-fixes
Network Protocol : 50
Library API      : 0.22.20091023-1
QT Version       : 4.5.2
Options compiled in:
 linux profile using_oss using_alsa using_pulse using_jack using_backend 
using_dvb using_firewire using_frontend using_glx_proc_addr_arb 
using_hdhomerun using_hdpvr using_iptv using_ivtv using_joystick_menu 
using_libfftw3 using_lirc using_mheg using_opengl_video 
using_opengl_vsync using_qtwebkit using_v4l using_x11 using_xrandr 
using_xv using_xvmc using_xvmc_vld using_xvmcw using_bindings_perl 
using_bindings_python using_opengl using_vdpau using_ffmpeg_threads 
using_libavc_5_3 using_live using_mheg

lj at mythtv:~/Desktop$ uname -a
Linux mythtv 2.6.31-16-generic-pae #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 05:20:21 UTC 
2009 i686 GNU/Linux

5. In my old installtion of Myth .21 and Mythbuntu 8.10 I
had installed the gnome-desktop.  As I said, that installation
worked perfectly with the HVR-1600.  I can't see why this
would cause a problem.

6. In the synaptic repositories, I have checked
http://us.autobuilds.mythbuntu.org/mythbuntu/trunk-0.22/ubuntu
so I think I'm getting the latest updates.

A.  Any suggestions on what to try next?  

B.  Does anyone out there have a HVR-1600 Myth.22/Mythbuntu 9.10
system working?  (I'd like to compare notes.)

Thank you,
Larry