[clug] MythTV ABC tuning problem plus multiple capture cards problems

[John Brown]

I have single MythTV backend, Dual-Core AMD Operon 170 processor with 2G 
RAM, Ubuntu Intrepid (waiting for Tour de France to finish before I 
upgrade it!) which has been working fairly reliably for years but except 
for a nagging problem trying to tune to ABC (black mountain). I actually 
only need to solve one of these problems, because anyone of them will 
give me the result I want which is to be able to record all stations 
(including ABC and SBS stations) on two tuners. My preference is to 
solve problem 3, but solving problems 1 and/or 2 would be fine.

Problem 1): I have two Technisat AirStar 2 DVB-T PCI cards. Individually 
they both work fine, and both properly capture all stations including 
ABC and SBS stations. However, when I put both of them in at once, only 
one works correctly. The appears to to install properly in the Mythtv 
backend setup, but behaves as if the aerial isn't connected - regardless 
of how the aerial is connected to it (directly, via an external 
splitter, or from the passthrough of the other card). I can make both 
cards act this way, but can't get both of them working simultaneously. 
Any ideas. A potential problem with getting these cards working is they 
have to be in neighbouring slots and see to generate a lot of heat, 
which I am a bit worried about...


Problem 2): I also have a DigitalNow tinyUSB 2 DVB-T Receiver. If I use 
one of the Twinhan cards and a TinyUSB receiver both capture devices 
work fine simultaneously except that the TinyUSB won't lock onto ABC 
stations at all, and won't lock reliably to SBS.  My work around for 
this is just to specify that recordings for ABC and SBS shows should use 
the Twinham card. HOwever, every now and then I forget, sometimes after 
reboot mythtv gets them reversed, and sometimes I want to record two 
programs simultaneously on ABC/SBS stations (like the Tour and the 
Ashes...) This is probably related to Problem 3. Any ideas? A slight 
problem with overcoming this problem is that I'd rather not use the USB 
capture device if possible, because then I'd have it spare to take 
travelling.


Problem 3): In order to hopefully circumvent both of the above problems, 
I recently bought a Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Express PCI Express 
card, which I was assured was highly linux compatible and would work 
fine. However, it won't lock onto ABC (haven't tested SBS) D'oh!! Web 
surfing suggests that this may be because ABC Canberra uses an offset 
frequency and the current linux driver doesn't deal with that properly?? 
Is this true? Have others encountered the problem, and more importantly 
know of a way of fixing it?  I have tried building and installing the 
v4l-DVB driver in the link below, with no success. Getting this working 
would be the best because it only involves one PCI card, and leaves the 
USB device in the draw. It would also mean that I'd have the two 
Technisat cards lying around looking for a good home...


Any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome!

John



Technisat AirStar 2 DVB-T:
http://www.digitalnow.com.au/dvbtcards.html

DigitalNow tinyUSB 2 DVB-T Receiver: 
http://www.digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/tinyusb2.html

Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Express PCI Express:
http://www.dpanda.com.au/p/372746/dvico-fusionhdtv-dvb-t-dual-express-pci-express.html

v4l-DVB driver:
http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip

Consider:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/521910.html

...which says:

"This is actually an issue with the linux driver for the capture card. 
Unfortunately the author of the driver has been unable to get any 
technical documentation for the ZL10353 from either Intel or Zarlink, 
which makes it basically impossible to automatically compensate for 
stations who's frequency is offset."





-- 
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr John Brown, PhD(Clin.Psych) MAPS
Clinical Psychologist, PsychSessions
Ph 02-6247 5485
Mobile: 0429 455 504
Email: reception at psychsessions.com.au
Web: www.psychsessions.com.au