On 05/30/10 15:16, Andy Walls wrote: > On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 10:56 -0400, Dale Pontius wrote: >> Last week the audio died on one of my hvr-1600s. I'm limping along on >> one at the moment, but don't plan to continue that way. >> >> Time to start looking for a replacement? Or is there something I can do >> to bring back the sound? > > Maybe. > > Does the audio line input still work for sound? > Haven't/can't try it. See next comment.
> When tuned to a known good channel, what does v4l2-ctl --log-status show > for the detected Audio Standard on each HVR-1600? > I need to go back through the list and dig up your link to the code. I'm running Gentoo, and v4l2-ctl is part of the ivtv-tools package. I'm not sure if it's because I'm running cx18 instead of ivtv, or if it's because I'm running cx18 out-of-tree, direct from v4l mercurial, but Gentoo won't let me build it. Getting around this was one of those things on my round tuit list - now it's a bit more important. I had v4l2-ctl when you were helping me originally because Gentoo had those packages organized differently, then. > >> We had an early morning power outage. I brought the system back up, and >> because everyone else was asleep, when I was checking for "red screen" I >> had the sound turned off, and didn't notice any problem. My wife >> noticed when she tried to watch one of her shows, and had no sound. I >> rebooted and brought sound back, but only that once. Next boot, no >> sound, and full power disconnection doesn't bring sound back, either. >> (Full power disconnection has always brought back "red screen" to full >> function.) > > Given all the problems people have reported with braodcast audio > decoding by the stand-alone CX25843 and the CX23418's integrated CX25843 > core, I'm under the impression the core doesn't perform well with the RF > signal characteristics cable companies or STB's seem to provide. > > The CX25843 and CX23418's integrated CX25843 had never given me a > problem with OTA broadcast analog signals. > I still tend to think it's a problem on the card. When it was working, I had no complaints. The other card is still working, and I have no complaints. Video still works on this card, no problems. If it were signal, I would expect to see some degradation somewhere, not a simple binary works/doesn't-work, as this is. I was hoping that I could just flip the mystery-bit, and it would come back. > > >> In another week or two I'm taking the system down to change some other >> components, and at that point I'll replug both hvr-1600s, to see if that >> helps at all. If it doesn't, it's time to order. > > Blow the dust out of every slot while you're at it. > I'll make sure I have dust-off on hand. I have some, not sure how full. > >> What to order? >> >> I don't remember what model hvr-1600 I have, but a little quick >> searching gives 1101, 1178, 1183, and 1199, all at slightly different >> price points. The 1178 and 1199 look more like what I've got - the 1101 >> and 1183 seem to be missing my IR/audio mini-jacks, having what look >> like a pair of RCA jacks (stereo audio?) instead. From what I can tell: >> The 1101 comes with no remote, seems to have 3 antenna inputs. >> The 1178 looks most like what I've got. >> The 1183 has a separate USB remote, again 3 antenna inputs. >> The 1199 looks like what I've got, but also has FM. >> >> Is another hvr-1600 really the best thing to get? I'm set up for it, >> and it meets my needs pretty well. At the moment I'm really only using >> the analog side, and experimenting with the digital side. I'm also on >> Comcast, and have no idea when they're going to do something annoying. > > Well, PCI bus equipment is being phased out in favor of PCIe in the > consumer market. Finding newer card designs (i.e. PCIe) with good > analog support under linux is hard. (Do you want reliability and > usability, or do you want maintainability. ;] ) > > Boards based on the CX2388[578] PCIe bridge chips can have raw analog > hookups and can also have an onborad CX23417 to perform hardware MPEG > compression. However, Linux support for these boards for analog video > is well, barely useable. The CX2388[578] also has essentially an > integrated CX25843 as well, so any analog sound decoding problems you > have now (caused by external factors), these chips may also exhibit. > I wish Hauppauge would come clean on this - better yet, help a little with the necessary information. > > USB is a nicer choice in my opinion. External to the PC case means > less EMI affecting the tuner. Also they are easily moved from one > machine to the next for troubleshooting, etc. > > If you want hardware MPEG encoding from a USB device with essentially > the same "guts" as the PVR-150 or HVR-1600, the HVR-1950, supported by > the pvrusb2 driver, comes to mind. > http://www.isely.net/pvrusb2/pvrusb2.html > (FM radio not supported under linux.) > That looks interesting. A little more expensive, but might well be worth it. > If you want H.264 compression in hardware from a USB device, people have > been very happy with the HD-PVR. Note that the HD-PVR appears to be the > only consumer product currently available that lets you caputre analog > HD (resolutions better than 480i). This unit doesn't have a tuner, so > you'll need to feed it either baseband Composite video, S Video, or > Component video, and basedband audio. This unit probably offers a > longer usable life, as it makes one's video capture setup more modular > (the tuning function is handled by a VCR, STB, or something else, the > bus interface is USB) so this unit can stay as a usable component as TV > tuner and PC IO bus technologies evolve. > I'll have to think about that one. I've heard a lot of talk about the HD-PVR, most of it good, much of it fear about "closing the analog hole." My current STB (and Comcast plan) only supports std-def, so the ClearQAM gives me a way to get some direct digital. I've played a bit with ClearQAM, I've done very little with the STB. I'm more than a little fearful of finding the right lirc config to make it work. Piling that on top of the complexity of getting the hvr-1600 blaster working, and the time to do it all is what has stopped me. > And the wiki of course has information: > http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Device_Information > http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Video_capture_card > I'll walk through all of this again. Haven't really looked since getting the hvr-1600s. Thanks, Dale > >> Incidentally, regarding the "red screen", which I've reported before: >> At this point, the "red screen" appears to be something that happens at >> boot time, I have no solid evidence of a properly working system that >> subsequently went into "red screen" mode. Full power-off, either unplug >> or the "hard" switch on the power supply in back, has always fixed it. >> One possible, slight correlation... I have grub set for a 30-second >> boot delay. Pressing "enter" to speed boot might aggravate "red >> screen", and waiting for the full timeout may make it less likely, but >> once it has hit, it takes a full power-off to recover. _______________________________________________ ivtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://ivtvdriver.org/mailman/listinfo/ivtv-users
