TV Card on Suse 9.3 Setup Tips
 

Hi,

Another FYI (circa July 2005) for those that may run attempt a tv-card install and run into problems with suse 9.3.

Preliminary:
I've got an older stb tv/fm pci tv card that works with bttv drivers.

Setup:
1. Setup in Yast. Yast will ask for a couple of packages to complete the install.
2.Install KDE TV. There's a few dependencies that go with it. If it scans about the same number of stations as you expect, then the install is off to a very good start. Otherwise, you don't have something about the tuner configured right.
3. Install alsamixer and aumix. I don't remember which one it is, but one of them has a mixer control that the default kde mixer package does not have.
4. If video works then go to step 5. Otherwise, experiment with the alternatives in settings>video to try and get something going. I've always been successful with the overlay option if one of the other options doesn't quite work.
5. If there is no tv audio, but you can play an MP3 or some such thing. The first thing to do is change the settings>audio>oss and settings>audio>alsa. In both cases, I thought just setting to master would do, but one needed video and the other needed aux to get the volume slider working. This is more a matter of experimenting than anything else. If you can't even play an MP3, then you've got issues outside the scope of this post.

Problem:
Audio works, but it is distorted. In my case, I needed either alsamixer or aumix run as su to turn down the audio capture volume.