[mythtv-users] Hauppauge NovaT-500 I2C read errors

[Gary Dawes]

I hope someone can give me anyther ideas on what to try with this card,
which quite frankly is really starting to wind me up...

I have a hauppauge NovaT-500 dual DVB-T tuner, which until the last few
weeks has been rock solid for the l2 to 3 years with no EIT scanning, and 2
virtual tuners per physical on Freeview in the UK. I am running Mythbuntu
10.10 and Mythtv 0.24. The hardware is a Gigabyte MA770 mainboard with a
Athlon X64 3600, 1GB of ram, and 2 x 1.5TB disks each with about 40% free
space.

About the middle to the end of January I started getting the "classic" i2C
read errors on the card.
I did have an hardware problem, which resulted in a swap of the graphics
card for a Nvidia Geforce 210. There were no other hardware issues, and the
OS was not reinstalled or reconfigured in any way.

I have been though the Mythtv and LinuxTV wikis and various mailing lists
and followed the standard steps for fixing this issue.

1. ensured that the LNA is on, USB autosuspend and RC poling are off - my
/etc/modprobe.s/options.conf is below
options dvb_usb_dib0700 force_lna_activation=1
options usbcore autosuspend=-1
options dvb-usb disable_rc_polling=1

2. I have tried various combinations of having setting long tuning delays on
each card together or individually, and having no delays on either or both
tuners.

3. I have tried the various combinations of active EIT, on each card
individually, together, and off ( I use the XMLTV radio times grabber so do
not rely on EIT for data)

4 . I have flattened the cards, video sources, and channels in the db, and
recreated from a full scan.

5. I have verified that the signal strength and quality is good. The main TV
is an hitachi 42" with an extremely picky tuner, and that is working great -
I have also ran the Mythbox with the antenna feed straight into the Nova-T
card, by passing any signal amps etc.

6. I have tried with the number of simultaneous recordings set to 1 and 2 on
each and both tuners.

When the tuners work as they should the picture and signal are rock solid
and stable.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to try next? Sod the WAF, this is
starting to make me lose faith with Myth.....

I have seen suggestions about replacing the NULL entries in the database
with manually entered ones, but have not managed to identify what settings
need changing and what to.
I then came across a post from Michael Dean, who stated that manually
inserting into the DB is a bad thing, and the recommendation in that post
was to delete all and start again.

Could it be that the card is getting to the end of a useful life, and simply
needs replacing?
In which case does anyone have any recommendations for a pci or pci express
freeview tuner which is supported/working with mythtv in the UK - Ohj and it
has to be half height or it won't fit! I don't want to go back down the
route of seperate USB tuners if I can get away with it, cos the mainboard is
flaky when transferring plenty of data over USB (a known issue with the
sb600 chipset I have - not related to my tuner issue), and I just don't want
to go back to multiple usb dongles which is what I had when I ran 3 freecom
dvb-t sticks.

Thanks

Gaz
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