PcHDTV HD-5500
From MythTV
- The correct title of this article is pcHDTV HD-5500. It appears incorrectly here due to technical restrictions.
The pcHDTV HD-5500 card is manufactured by pcHDTV, makers of the first HDTV card supported under Linux.
Contents |
Introduction
The card is only useful for those in the United States and Canada. It might work in other countries with ATSC channels, such as Australia or Korea. pcHDTV's cards are a great buy right now because the cards do not honor the broadcast flag, preserving your fair use rights. The card supports ATSC, unencrypted QAM 64, unencrypted QAM 256, and NTSC transmission reception.
There are two different series of drivers available for the pcHDTV card: the DVB drivers that are bundled with the Linux kernel (version 2.6.11rc6 and above); and the video4linux drivers labeled as version 1.6 and 2.0. For MythTV, it is highly recommended to use the DVB drivers, which also work with ATSC and NTSC signals. The DVB drivers are much better supported in MythTV for HD than the video4linux drivers. The DVB drivers for the card require just seconds to get working under most distributions running a 2.6.12 or newer kernel.
MythTV version .19 or newer is recommended for any HD viewing, such as that which is recorded by the pcHDTV HD-5500 card.
Issues
Some users are reporting poor channel reception with this card. Check the pcHDTV forums for more information before considering a new purchase. This issue appears to be a hardware problem, as other tuners hooked to the same antenna are able to receive many more channels than this card. If you are experiencing problems with reception, please jump over to the forums and post your experiences.
Using multiple HD-5500 cards
Each NTSC analog tuner provides sound through its own Conexant CX8801 audio chip (cx88_alsa module). When multiple tuners are present the order of the sound devices as listed in /proc/asound/cards may change from one boot the next, causing an apparent loss of sound in MythTV. This can be corrected by adding the following line to either /etc/modprobe.conf or /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base:
options cx88_alsa index=1,2
Using HD-5500 with other cards
A lot time when you boot the HD-5500 will go to /dev/video0 and other card to /dev/video1, then next time you boot they switch. There are two threads discussing this here and here. But it comes down to (1) writing udev rules or (2) adding option to the file /etc/modprobe.conf. Get into for the driver using the command:
modinfo cx8800
I added the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf:
options cx8800 video_nr=2 radio_nr=2
to make the card compatible with my Hauppauge PVR-500 card by forcing the HD-5500 card to use /dev/video2 for NTSC input
Other analog options
The pcHDTV 5500 can function as both an ATSC and NTSC tuner. The NTSC tuner is a v4l compliant tuner and is quite usable. However, it can be slightly finicky. First, when configuring the card in MythTV setup, as mentioned elsewhere on this page, make sure to configure the card as a DVB and not a pcHDTV card. Under analog options, be sure to select an audio sampling rate of 48KHz. In the recording options section make sure to select, "open on demand." In the source configuration section select your analog source to assign to /dev/videoN corresponding to the v4l device on your card. Within mythfrontend I also had to set all of the v4l recording profiles to a sampling rate of 48KHz. I had some strange behavior when recoring anything after a reboot, or when switching between ATSC to NTSC watching liveTV. By adding this module option to /etc/modprobe.d/options (ubuntu 7.10), I was able to correct this:
options dvb_core dvb_shutdown_timeout=0
When setting up the input connections, be sure to fetch channels from listing source on the analog input (v4l) before you scan for channels with the HD source (DVB).
Note for Mythbuntu users: As of 2/14/2008 Mythbuntu's kernel still contains code which will give you problems switching back and forth between NTSC and ATSC. There is a fix (thanks mhitchens on ubuntuforums.org). All you need to do to fix it is to compile the v4l-dvb tree yourself and install it over your current kernel modules. It's easy to do and pretty quick.
1. sudo apt-get install gcc linux-headers-<version>-<kernel type> mercurial 2. hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb. This will create a folder called v4l-dvb in the current directory. I usually do this in a 'build' directory in my home dir. 3. make, then sudo make install 4. sudo reboot
Hopefully that fixes the issue for you. It worked for me with Mythbuntu 7.10.
Addendum from another Mythbuntu 7.10 user: Updating the v4l-dvb drivers on my system made the HD-5500 work much better for analog reception, but the Hauppauge WinTV (bt878 card) that is also in this system stopped functioning. I had to reinstall the stock kernel to make the WinTV card work again. As always, your mileage may vary. I'll have to poke around and see if it's possible to stop the updated v4l-dvb drivers from stepping on the bt878, but I might just have to stick the bt878 card into a secondary backend.
More details
Once you have a 2.6.12+ kernel with DVB support enabled, install the HD-5500 driver from the pcHDTV site: http://www.pchdtv.com/downloads_right_down.html .
When using DVB drivers in kernels before 2.6.18, it may be necessary to disable the kernel DVB drivers. Starting with Linux kernel 2.6.18, the HD-5500 drivers will be in-kernel and need not be compiled separately. Load the module cx88-dvb to take advantage of the DVB driver.
You will also want the tools from the above site.
The HD-5500 does not need any special firmware files as the HD-2000 and HD-3000 do.
You may need to re-configure mythtv with support for the DVB drivers:
./configure --enable-dvb --dvb-path=/home/user/src/pchdtv/v4l-dvb/linux/include
Rebuild mythtv.
When adding the new capture card to myth in mythtv-setup, be sure to select DVB, not pchdtv.
For more details adding QAM (cable) channels prior to MythTV 0.20, see Adding_QAM_Channels_For_HDTV_Tuner_Cards.
Configuring mythfrontend
... TODO ...
"Y" key — for switching inputs.
Use ALSA, otherwise the sound will have crackles and generally just sound bad.
Turn on XvMC if you have it and want to watch 1080i content. The option for turning on XvMC is on the first page of the setup:tv:playback configuration screen in mythfrontend.
Feature summary
| Feature | Support | Information |
|---|---|---|
| Discontinued | NO | |
| Bus | PCI 2.2 | 5v and 3.3v 32-bit 33MHz "Universal PCI" |
| Low Profile | YES | Separate bracket included |
| Cards Per System | 4 | |
| DVB Drivers | YES | Kernel 2.6.12rc6 or later |
| video4linux Drivers | YES | 1.6 and 2.0 |
| Analog | ||
| ATSC | YES | All 18 compliant digital formats; 5th Generation LG ATSC receiver chip |
| NTSC | YES | Conexant CX23883 NTSC receiver chip |
| PAL | NO | |
| HDTV | ||
| QAM 64 | YES | Unencrypted only |
| QAM 256 | YES | Unencrypted only |
| Honor Broadcast Flag | NO | |
| Inputs | ||
| Stereo Input | 2 | One on included splitter cable |
| S-Video | 1 | One on included splitter cable |
| Composite | 1 | One on included splitter cable |
| TV / Antena | 1 | 75 ohm |
IrDA Receiver
Its possible to recompile the V4L drivers to include support for the IrDA receiver that comes with the pcHDTV HD5500.
- Download your preferred flavor of the V4L-DVB source.
- Locate cx88_input.c (v4l-dvb/linux/drivers/media/video/cx88/cx88_input.c)
- Insert the following line...
CX88_BOARD_PCHDTV_HD5500:
...after every occurrence of...
CX88_BOARD_HAUPPAUGE_HVR3000:
This should be in two places. Once you recompile the drivers, your IrDA receiver should be recognized. You can use it with Lirc using the dev/input driver. (Run lsinput to see which input the receiver has been assigned) (source)
External links
- antennaweb is run by the Consumer Electronics Association and provides useful links to picking out antennas and finding the locations of broadcast TV towers in your area.
- pcHDTV manufactures and sells HDTV tuner cards for Linux.
- Offical pcHDTV Forums
