PCTV pro with MT2050 only gives snow...

greggy69 · 10-06-2005, 08:28 AM

Finally I've found time to install my Pinnacle PCTV Pro (red card using BT878) in my Slack 10.0 machine. This machine would be my PVR and record all my favourite TV-shows. I THOUGHT....

Unfortunately, this card has a not supported 'exotic' chipset: MicroTunes MT2050. With Slack's default 2.4-kernel I only got noise (B/W + some color) in the top section of the screen using xawtv-3.95 and bttv 0.7. I upgraded to 2.6.13 and now I get more snow! About 50-75% from the top; mostly B/W. Using same xawtv-3.95 but now with bttv 0.9 drivers. All latest stuff; it also recognizes the MT2050 in a dmesg command.

Now I heard about wrong tuner-settings for this MT2050 chip.

Can be IMHO because scanning doesn't give anything but noise. Does anyone have this card and got it workin'?

Please help me...

GReg

maroonbaboon · 10-07-2005, 12:29 AM

All the drivers you need should be in the 2.6.13 kernel. Card/tuner are already in the 2.6.12 documentation file. Have you tried loading the driver module with parameters

card=52 tuner=33

for this hardware?

You also need a decent antenna. My own experience is that the card is more demanding than a standard TV on this.

Satriani · 10-08-2005, 04:09 AM

I have the same probem here. Running PCTV with saa7134 chipset on kernel 2.6.7

All i see in AWTV is snow.
When running tvtime it searches for channels, but it keeps telling me there's no signal.

I cannot seem to find which tuner I should use, so i guess thats part of the problem...

Any help is appreciated!!!

Satriani · 10-08-2005, 10:52 AM

Finally got it working... build a new kernel 2.6.13
However, it seems i can only find a few channels... IE, in holland, Ned1 is on E9 but there is no signal there???
Can this be because of the wring tuner, or some other setting???

Thanks

Satch

greggy69 · 10-10-2005, 09:46 AM

Maroonbaloon, I have cable TV attached to the card with an amplifier. Signal is excellent. Card=52 and tuner 33 doesn't work for me. Even with 2.6.13.3 and all latest drivers it only noise I get. So, it looks like I have to tweak the tuner.c files a bit as I read on some forums. Problem is that all patches are already in the latest drivers (I thought so).

I've got this card for almost one year now so it must be supported by now I think. Or am I the only one with this card and PVR ideas on linux??

Please help me. After weeks now, I'm getting desperate...

Greg

Sate: got your channels right already?

maroonbaboon · 10-10-2005, 05:29 PM

It's a while since I had an analog card installed, so I can't check exactly what worked for me. You are showing Redhat 9 as your distro, which is a bit old isn't it? There were some complications a while back with video4linux moving to a new version as well as sound switching to ALSA.

Other than making sure the right modules are loaded, and experimenting with options, it's hard to know what to suggest.

You could try the multimedia kernel patch (mm3 for 2.6.13 I think), which seems to have some new and relatively untested drivers. Not sure if it has anything in this area tho'.

Or try a new distro or live CD. Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org) is lightweight at 400Mb and should soon have the 2.6.13-mm3 kernel, and there is always Knoppix. Both seem to have good automatic hardware detection.

greggy69 · 10-10-2005, 06:21 PM

Thanks for your reply. But sorry, old profile...

I have Slack 10.0 running now on 2.6.13.3. Runs great!

All latest drivers. But... When booting without stuff in my modprobe.conf I get quite good snow... Only I cannot find any channel out there.

Searched everywhere but no signals of cards working like on my system...

TIA,
Greg