IVTV

The primary goal of the IvTV Project is to create a kernel driver for the iTVC15 family of MPEG codecs. The iTVC15 family includes the iTVC15 (CX24315) and iTVC16 (CX24316). These chips are commonly found on Hauppauge's WinTV PVR 150/250/350/500 model TV capture cards. More supported cards can be found at their wiki. Much of the earlier work on these drivers was done by Chris Kennedy, and current development is being done mostly -- and fairly aggressively -- by Hans Verkuil. The driver is now in v0.10, with some earlier versions being minimally maintained for users in specifically limited situations.

The primary resource for IvTV support is the IvTV Homepage and the Mailing List.

DVD Settings

you may find this snippet from a mailing list useful:

I've found some stuff for configuring my PVR-350 tuner card that I am having problems finding info for. Under the Settings->TV Settings->Recording Profiles->MPEG-2 Encoders (PVR-250, PVR-350)-> Default->Video Compression settings, I find an option for Stream Type that has many options. The default is MPEG-2 PS. Some of the other options are MPEG-2 TS, MPEG-1 VCD, PES AV, PES V, PES A, DVD, DVD Special 1, DVD SPecial 2. Can anyone provide some insight into what these settings are intended for?

Well, TS and PS are the standard transport and program stream respectively. VCD is mpeg1 compression and will give a VCD compliant stream when used in combination with the proper resolution and bitrate settings. The same for DVD and DVD2, those are DVD compliant mpeg2 streams which will give an mpeg2 stream which doesn't need to be replexed when it's in a compliant resolution and bitrate. DVD2 is the streamtype MS MCE uses and therefore should be the one the firmware is optimised for. So I use this one. If there ever is a DVD burning module I'm prepared

Note: with ivtv 0.7 series and svn -head (as of 2-8-07), using TS with pvr150 results in "Error: select timeout - ivtv driver has stopped responding", with myth failing to record from the card properly. PS seems to work fine, however.

Troubleshooting

Any IVTV Device

My console/log is full of messages about IVTV DMA errors and some of my recordings are truncated!

This is an IVTV problem. Some motherboard chipsets apparently don't respond correctly to DMA resets. The search for a solution is ongoing. See the IVTV mailing list (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/ivtv/) for details.