HVR1600 PCI card almost does not work in a linux box

[vvvmay]

This TV tuner PCI card does not work with my linux. I tried it in a windows box and it worked great. I tried it with MythDora and found it non functional. Hauppage says that it should work with linux. VLC plays the out put of the tuner card just fine but cannot change channels.

---------- Post added at 12:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:48 AM ----------

this Linux box has 8 gigabytes of ram and is running x86_64 version of Linux

[kdemello]

You need the cx18 firmware.

http://dl.ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/firmware/

Unpack it, place the .fw files in /lib/firmware and reboot.

[vvvmay]

I am getting errors every time I start an app that the tuner is required in:
cx18: Invalid argument
Cannot open capture device /dev/videoO

All the firmware files are present and accounted for.

My guess at this point is that the card is not a cx18.

The numbers off of the card is:
HVR1600
Revision c686
CX23418-22ZZ
Samsung 55H1409 QAM/8VSB Frontend

[vvvmay]

I looked up on Bugzilla and somebody has already reported that this does not work on linux

[AndrewSerk]

Hello,
You may consider posting some more info on the card in case someone has a idea.
Use lspci -nn to get the text and numeric ID.

su -
lspci -nn

and use the numeric ID of the card to get the detailed info on the card:

lspci -vvv -d ABCD:1234

I don't know if this will help but should give you more info on what is in the card.

[vvvmay]

Multimedia video controller [0400]: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23418 Single-Chip MPEG-2 Encoder with Integrated Analog Video/Broadcast Audio Decoder [14f1:5b7a]

Multimedia video controller: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23418 Single-Chip MPEG-2 Encoder with Integrated Analog Video/Broadcast Audio Decoder
Subsystem: Hauppauge computer works Inc. WinTV HVR-1600
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 64 (500ns min, 50000ns max), Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 21
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data
pcilib: sysfs_read_vpd: read failed: Connection timed out
Not readable
Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Kernel driver in use: cx18
Kernel modules: cx18

[nealzimm]

Judging from your postings, you are trying to access the card with totem or mplayer. I have not
had any luck with mplayer and Fedora states that totem does not and will not have astc capabilities.

You need vlc to use the card (or perhaps MythTV, I haven't tried that in a long time). Also the
correct link is /dev/dvb/adapter0, /dev/video0 is not used with the v4l drivers.

While capable of receiving NTSC television, linuxtv developers have stated that drivers for it
will not be made available soon, if ever.

[AndrewSerk]

I can view tv from a antenna with my Hauppauge card (Conexant CX23855) and mplayer or kaffeine. In order to use mplayer the following steps where needed for the USA:

su -
yum install w_scan dvb
w_scan -c us -M > /etc/mplayer/channels.conf
logout
mplayer dvb://

Kaffeine is easier to use but I have found that mplayer has a better picture.

[vvvmay]

the code AndrewSerk gave me only generated errors during the scan
so I tried Kaffeine also gave me errors when I did a channel scan.
I tried MythTV and It would not install due to the fact that it could not detect a tuner.
I have also tried Me-TV and TV-Time with no luck.

[AndrewSerk]

Hello vvvmay,
In order for anyone to be able to help you, you will have to provide/post the error/s you receive. Without the error it would be very difficult to give any help.

According to this page the card is supported in linux with a exception note:http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Ha...WinTV-HVR-1600

Note: There are two new versions of this device as of January 2011 which are not yet supported. They are models 74301 and 74321. A patch has been accepted upstream and support will be available in the 2.6.39 kernel.

I found this link that was helpful to me when getting my card to work:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DavidTimms/DVB

I did a google search for your card and found reports of people able to get it to work:
http://www.mythdora.com/?q=node/5602
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=44630
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...v/users/373504

[vvvmay]

Kaffeine gives an error message "Tuner not found." Andrew thanks for the input and the links, but none of them got anything more than "Tuner not found" error. The problem is that this is a very new version of the HVR-1600, less than a month old. This tuner has three cable F connectors and three different tuners on board, One is for FM radio, one is for analog and one if for Atsc/Qam.

[AndrewSerk]

Even the two new models for this year 74301 and 74321 are supposed to be supported with kernel 2.6.39 or newer. I would think you should be able to get the Atsc/Qam working even if the other tuners are not supported. Analog has been pretty much a no go.

[vvvmay]

So if kernel 2.6.39 it is supported then me having 2.6.35 would be a problem. How can I get my computer to update to 2.6.39??

[AndrewSerk]

Originally Posted by vvvmay

So if kernel 2.6.39 it is supported then me having 2.6.35 would be a problem. How can I get my computer to update to 2.6.39??

Well, the 2.6.39 kernel was forked, but now I see they have pulled back to 2.6.28...... I don't know what happened to make them pull back the ...39 or if the new ...38- has support. It might be worth it to try the 38 and see if you have support.

Well, just saw that kernel-2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.fc16.src.rpm is available now (it wasn't there just a hour or so ago when I built the latest 38 )

You will have to rebuild the src.rpm for fedora 14 if that is what you are using. You can rebuild the kernel for your system by opening a terminal and running the following commands one at a time. The last command will build the kernel while the first two are to install and setup the rpmdevtools/user space that are needed to build the kernel. This is a very processor intensive build and will require some time to complete. (15-90 minutes depending on your sys.)

su -c 'yum install rpmdevtools yum-utils'
rpmdev-setuptree
cd ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS
wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/kernel/2.6.39/0.rc0.git11.0.fc16/src/kernel-2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.fc16.src.rpm
su -c 'yum-builddep kernel-2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.fc16.src.rpm'
rpmbuild --rebuild --with baseonly  --without debuginfo --target=`uname -m` kernel-2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.fc16.src.rpm

When the above command has completed you should have the new kernel, kernel-header, kernel-devel in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/...... ether i686 or x86_64 folder.
cd to the folder that contains your new rpms. Change <version> to the version you have built and install with:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck kernel-<version>.rpm kernel-headers-<version>.rpm kernel-devel-<version>.rpm'

hope this helps,

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 PM ----------

EDIT:I can't get the kernel-2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.fc16.src.rpm to build on my f14 x64. I am going to wait a few days and check in at koji.fedoraproject.org to try the next git kernel. I will post back when I get a ...39 to build.

---------- Post added at 10:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

EDIT-1: It built fine on my i686 sl/el6 .

$ uname -r
2.6.39-0.rc0.git11.0.el6.i686

[DBelton]

do you have an nvidia video card? if so, you may need to add vmalloc=256M to your kernel line to get them both to work together.