Problem in installing TV tuner

vijay_babu1981 · 11-09-2009, 07:56 AM

Hello sir,

After searching a lot on internet and not finding the information I need I write to this forum.

I have an Adcom TV tuner card with Conexant bt878 capture card chip on it. And a Philips chip which looks like the tuner.

I am not able to configure the device on Fedora 11 linux.

I did the following (cant write the output of commands as that is my home pc without internet):

Code:

lspci

saw something called Brooktree Multimedia TV etc etc... 2 lines of info.

then I did

Code:

sudo modprobe bttv

It runs silently.

Code:

dmesg

shows that bttv was loaded for some UNKNOWN/GENERIC card.

Then I did

Code:

 sudo modprobe tuner=5

assuming I have a phillips PAL tuner. It runs silently.

Code:

dmesg |grep tuner

says "tuner type unset"

"lsmod" shows lot of bttv modules loaded. "lsmod |grep" tuner also shows something is loaded for tuner.

Now my problem is that when I run tvtime-scanner, it says: no tuner found on input 0, If you have a tuner select a different input.

mplayer tv:// also says tuner not present.

Can someone help me? How do I know that things got installed/loaded properly or not?

Regards

AwesomeMachine · 11-10-2009, 01:32 AM

Bttv supports the Conexant chip. But bttv may or may not support the tuner. If you install the kernel-doc, it will be in the '/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.6.30.9/' directory. There are instructions for the latest bttv module. I don't know how to do exactly what you're asking. But from what I've been able to glean, you probably need another module loaded for the tuner chip.

Your post left out some important information:

What model Adcom card?
What exact tuner chip?

Fedora 11 works with every piece of hardware I've ever tried. But it might not work with that particular card. It should load the modules automatically. One thing is that you have to select "Composite" or "S-video" when you load the module for the frame grabber (Conexant chip). I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help. Try updating the post with the missing information.

vijay_babu1981 · 11-10-2009, 07:35 AM

Dear AwesomeMachine,

I do not have the Doc installed. But I see two lists at http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentat...CARDLIST.tuner and http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentat.../CARDLIST.bttv for tuner and card.

It seems Adcom capture card is not present in the second list.

I also see the proper argument list at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/BTTV/options.html for both bttv and tuner. Amazingly "modprobe tuner type=n" is not working for me. It says incorrect argument 'type'. Have they changed argument list of bttv.o/tuner.o in Fedora 11?

Can you tell me the difference between a tuner and card (two lists)? I have a single PCI card which has both tuner and Capture chips present on it. I am sure that the capture chip is Conexant bt878 and the tuner chip is some Philips make (Will send you the exact name/number tomorrow). Half of the tuner is within a metal covering (probably some RF stuff or inductors etc) which is not visible.

I dont know what to do now, Will send the information you required though. Also I need to get internet so that I can paste the exact commands and their outputs. That will take few days.

Thanks for help.

vijay_babu1981 · 11-10-2009, 08:26 AM

I think I will try:

Code:

sudo modprobe bttv card=0 tuner=5

card=0 because Adcom is not in the list. May be I will try card=10 as Hauppage bt878 may be pretty similar to what I need.

I think this was wrong: "sudo modprobe tuner=5" and this was wrong: "sudo modprobe tuner type=5".

Also, there is one confusion about tuner, in windows when I configured my tuner, it could do all standards PAL, PAL-BG, SECAM, NTSC everything. I am just choosing tuner=5 as I think India uses some sort of PAL. Dont know the difference between PAL and PAL-BG etc.

Regards

vijay_babu1981 · 11-12-2009, 05:21 AM

Hello everyone:

The following worked for the Adcom TV tuner+capture card:

Code:

sudo modprobe bttv card=10 tuner=5

I think there is a lot of confusing information on the internet, which sometimes talks about loading tuner.o which is really not required for such type of cards. So "modprobe tuner" is not at all required. BTTV supports both tuner and the capture card.

Unfortunately, Adcom is not supported directly, but I used card=10, tuner=5 arguments (Hauppage bt878 card with Phillips PAL tuner) and it works fine. I am able to run tvtime-scanner now which scans from 40MHz to 840MHz (or something like that). I dont have cable connection right now so really dont know whether it would scan and set real channels or not! Will drop a word when I am able to do that.

I can also run mplayer tv:// freq=xxx and I see snow. Probably I will first try tuning to the terrestrial channel with a rudimentary antenna.

Regards,