generating a channels.conf for Xine?

electronics45 · 10-04-2005, 07:17 PM

Hi,
I have been trying for some time now to set up my DVB-t card (avermedia dvb-t), with my distro (Xandros 3.0).

All the dvb modules are installed by defult, and my dvb card is autodetected, and setup. I then try to use "scan all" to scan for stations, but I get this error message;

andreas@Andreas:~$ scan all
scanning all
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
main:1882: FATAL: failed to open '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0': 2 No such file or directory

When I went and had a look, I saw that the dvb folder with the devices was mounted in the root directory, instead of /dev, so I made a symlink to the dvb folder in /dev, yet I still get an identical error message.

does anyone know whats going on?

Is it posible to manually make up a channels.conf, getting to appropriate info from an XP installation I still have?

Thanks for your help.

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-05-2005, 09:11 AM

I would say you have no driver loaded for the card. Alternatively you are using udev to create device files on the fly and it is naming them differently.

Listing loaded modules with 'lsmod' should give some indication of whether drivers are in place.

As for getting a channels.conf, check the pc-card forum at www.dba.org.au to see if there is a ready-made one for your area (ACT?).

electronics45 · 10-05-2005, 05:50 PM

Thanks for your help. It turned out, that even though it detected I had a dvb card, the dvb modules weren't loaded.

I run modprobe dvb_ttpci, and the dvb modules are now loaded. ...but there is no change in getting scan to work.

would you happen to know how to load the drivers at start up?

I did eventually find a channels.conf in the dba forums, but now when I run dvb in Xine I get the error message "there is no available input plugin to handle 'dvb://ABC HDTV Mabye Mrl syntax is wrong or file/steam source doesn't exist."

And I'm afraid I'm not familar with udev. Do you know where I can find the manual?

Thanks again

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-05-2005, 09:16 PM

I don't know if your distro uses udev. If you run 'ps aux | grep udev' and see a process called udevd running then you're using udev. Otherwise not. If udev is running the devices should appear/disappear automatically as the driver modules are loaded/unloaded.

It may be your version of xine was compiled without dvb support. A better test is to try to tune to a channel with e.g. 'tzap 'ABC HDTV''. If you get a continuous stream of 'FE_HAS_LOCK' then you are OK.

If you have dvbstream installed you can still use a dvb-less player. Set dvbstream to the channel you want and pipe the output into the standard input of xine or mplayer. VLC (www.videolan.org) is another player that works well with DVB.

electronics45 · 10-06-2005, 12:52 AM

ps aux | grep udev reveals that I do use udev ;
root 1516 0.0 0.0 168 52 ? S<s 08:22 0:00 udevd
andreas 18685 0.0 0.1 3676 592 pts/3 S+ 15:41 0:00 grep udev

And nothing new appears after I load the dvb modules

Quote:

It may be your version of xine was compiled without dvb support

No, It was definatly compiled with dvb support.

Quote:

e.g. 'tzap 'ABC HDTV''

andreas@Andreas:~$ tzap ABC HD
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
ERROR: could not find channel 'ABC' in channel list

mabye it'll help if I show you my dmesg ;

bttv: driver version 0.9.15 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0b.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0b.0, irq: 23, latency: 64, mmio: 0xefefe000
bttv0: detected: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124], PCI subsystem ID is 1461:0761
bttv0: using: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=009c001d [init]
bttv0: using tuner=-1
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv0: add subdevice "remote0"
bttv0: add subdevice "dvb0"

After modprobe dvb_ttpci, the only extra line that occurs is;

saa7146: register extension 'dvb'.

Thanks again for your help. Any suggestions are appreciated.

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-06-2005, 01:29 AM

If you created symlinks in /dev/dvb/adapter0 I suggest you delete them again as they may screw up the operation of udev. Also you should probably have a line in /etc/udev/rules.d/udev.rules (assuming standard sort of setup) remapping the dvb devices, starting something like

KERNEL="*dvb*" ....

Your tzap response looks like a quoting problem. Command line should say just

tzap 'ABC HDTV'

or maybe

tzap ABC\ HDTV

so that channel name is parsed as a single token. Otherwise dmesg looks OK. The non-HD channels are also a better bet. If your PC is not fast enough or the signal less than perfect you can run into problems.

electronics45 · 10-07-2005, 05:55 AM

Quote:

If you created symlinks in /dev/dvb/adapter0 I suggest you delete them again as they may screw up the operation of udev.

No need to. It's already deleted it's self.

Quote:

Also you should probably have a line in /etc/udev/rules.d/udev.rules (assuming standard sort of setup) remapping the dvb devices, starting something like

KERNEL="*dvb*" ....

Well I don't have a udev.rules, but I have a 50-xandors-udev.rules. I added that line into it (exactally as you had it). So, now what? I don't notice anything happening.

Quote:

Your tzap response looks like a quoting problem. Command line should say just

tzap 'ABC HDTV'

andreas@Andreas:~$ tzap 'ABC HDTV'
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
ERROR: error while parsing transmission_mode (syntax error)

Quote:

or maybe

tzap ABC\ HDTV

andreas@Andreas:~$ tzap ABC\ HDTV
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
ERROR: error while parsing transmission_mode (syntax error)

Is any of this supose to mount dvb in /dev? I have a felling that would really help the situation.

Thanks again for your help.

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-07-2005, 07:05 PM

Sorry - I wasn't clear enough about the udev configuration. In udev.rules (or equivalent) there should be a line something like

# dvb devices
KERNEL="*dvb*", PROGRAM="/etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh %k", NAME="%c", GROUP="video", MODE="0660"

and an associated script as cited there - in my case containing

#!/bin/sh
/bin/echo $1 | /bin/sed -e 's,dvb$[0-9]$\.$[^0-9]*$$[0-9]$,dvb/adapter\1/\2\3,'

This changes the name of the device assigned by udev to what the DVB software is expecting. Again your file layout might be a bit different. After rebooting and loading drivers you should have directories /dev/dvb/adapter0 (and 1,2,3 also) containing the dvb interfaces. Make sure the script is executable. Google for 'dvb udev' for more detailed explanations.

I don't recognise the tzap error. Here is the ABC HDTV line I have in channels.conf

ABC HDTV:226500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_1_2:
QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE:
2307:0:544

(I split it to fit it in) I guess yours would be the same except for frequency and maybe the last few numbers.

electronics45 · 10-08-2005, 06:26 AM

I added the lines to 50-xandors-udev.rules, and made the shell script in /etc/scripts/, but it didn't appear to do anything. The lines I added looked fine to me, but I don't really know what the script means, so I wouldn't know how to modify it if I needed to. (shouldn't their be some reference to /dev? )

My entry in the channels.conf I put in .tzap looks pretty much identical to yours.

This might be a good time to mention that the dvb modules don't load at startup. I can load them with modprobe dvb_ttpci, but after a reboot their not loaded anymore. Would you know how to make sure they load on boot up? Theres a slight chance that due to Xandros's hardware detection system, this might make a difference.

Thanks again for your help.

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-08-2005, 06:36 AM

Any modules listed in /etc/modules are loaded on startup.

You should be able to turn on udev logging in the file /etc/udev/udev.conf (or at least that is the standard place) and then check for error messages in /var/log.

I don't understand the tzap error at all if your channels.conf is valid.

electronics45 · 10-08-2005, 08:18 AM

Ok, I just added a those modules to etc/modules, and at the same time realized I hadn't loaded the dvb_bt8xx module.

Anyway, Things are finally startig to look the way they should!!

bttv: driver version 0.9.15 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0b.0[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0b.0, irq: 23, latency: 64, mmio: 0xefefe000
bttv0: detected: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124], PCI subsystem ID is 1461:0761
bttv0: using: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=009c001d [init]
bttv0: using tuner=-1
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv0: add subdevice "remote0"
bttv0: add subdevice "dvb0"
bt878: AUDIO driver version 0.0.0 loaded
bt878: Bt878 AUDIO function found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0b.1[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
bt878(0): Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:0b.1, irq: 23, latency: 64, memory: 0xefeff000
DVB: registering new adapter (bttv0).
DVB: registering frontend 0 (Spase SP887x DVB-T)...
w83627hf 2-0290: Reading VID from GPIO5

and I have a /dev/dvb aswell.

we also have new problems!

Code:

andreas@Andreas:~$ scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/au-sydney_north_shore
scanning /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/au-sydney_north_shore
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
initial transponder 226500000 1 3 0 3 1 1 0
initial transponder 177500000 1 2 0 3 1 2 0
initial transponder 191625000 1 3 0 3 1 1 0
initial transponder 219500000 1 3 0 3 1 1 0
initial transponder 571500000 1 2 0 3 1 2 0
>>> tune to: 226500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 226500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE (tuning failed)
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 177500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 177500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE (tuning failed)
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 191625000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 191625000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE (tuning failed)
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 219500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 219500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16:HIERARCHY_NONE (tuning failed)
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 571500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
>>> tune to: 571500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE (tuning failed)
WARNING: >>> tuning failed!!!
ERROR: initial tuning failed
dumping lists (0 services)
Done.

After accessing the card I get these weird lines added to dmesg;

Code:

sp887x: waiting for firmware upload (dvb-fe-sp887x.fw)...
sp887x: no firmware upload (timeout or file not found?)

and it repeates for however many times I access the tuner card

It might also help to know that this model dvb card isn't known for strong reception. :|
In windows I can get a clear image and uninterupted sound, but just bearly. Where I am now (Glenorie) I only just get enought signal (in the winsow$ app its 3 bars out of 5) to get a decent picture. If you look at any reviews you'll see my card is probobly the worst at picking up weak signals.

Thanks you very much for your help.

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-08-2005, 09:18 AM

I'm not at all familiar with that unit or the firmware errors. The forums at www.linuxtv.org or just google are probably your best bet.

For reception problems tzap will tell you the signal strength, signal to noise ration and number of errors, correctable or otherwise, in the incoming signal, so it is easy to spot a reception problem. With line of sight to the transmitter a typical output line looks like:

status 1f | signal ff1a | snr eded | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

electronics45 · 10-08-2005, 08:57 PM

I can finally get a picture !!!

http://tcwozere.co.uk/smileys/ac15.gif

Using Kaffene I can pick up all channels (exept for ftv guide and d40, but those arn't listed in channel scan file). Most channels are have a decent picture exept for Ten, which is extreamly blocky, skips heaps of frames, and the sound is compressed into a a bunch of squeeky noises. There is also quite a bit of ghosting. and If sometimes if I leave it on for a while, It slowdown a whole lot, and the sound will cut out. selecting the channel again instantly fixes that.

To get it working I had to copy the firmware over from my win installation, put it into /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware, and rename the file to dvb-fe-sp887x.fw.

And I'm still having trouble with Xine. I ran scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/au-sydney_north_shore
and a bunch of stuff happend (I won't list it because there was so much output that it went off what I could scroll back to). But I can't find the channels.conf it generated or what ever it made. and Xine is still giving the same error. Tzap is also giving the same errors.

Thank you sooooo much for your help! I've been waiting 3 years to get this card working!

-Andreas

maroonbaboon · 10-09-2005, 10:10 PM

Glad to hear you are making progress. The blocking/squeaking is typical bad reception. If it is just one channel a better antenna/cabling might help. You could ask at www.dba.org.au for more advice in that direction.

You also need a reasonably fast video card to keep up with the data flow.

If tzap still does not work I can only think there is something wrong with your channels.conf file. You could try cutting it down to one line for a channel you know you can receive and see if you still get the syntax problem.