Having problems (as I'm sure are so many others) with my TV tuner card.
This is where linux has failed for me in the past as a completely useful OS - If I can get my TV tuner card working in Linux, I can just about say bye-bye to Windows forever.

I am trying to use TVtime to start with (latest available installed by yum). My problem is that the application only gives me options to select input sources "Composite" and "S-Video", but doesn't give me any option for "tuner" or anything similar.

Works fine in Windows, so there is obviously no hardware problem.

The tuner card itself is a Compro Videomate DVB-T200. Following are some excerts from dmesg:


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Linux version 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 (bhcompile@hs20-bc1-3.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.1.0 20060304 (Red Hat 4.1.0-3)) #1 Tue Mar 14 15:48:33 EST 2006

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Linux video capture interface: v1.00
saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC1] enabled at IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:0a.0[A] -> Link [APC1] -> GSI 16 (level, high) -> IRQ 17
saa7130[0]: found at 0000:01:0a.0, rev: 1, irq: 17, latency: 32, mmio: 0xec000000
saa7130[0]: subsystem: 185b:c901, board: Compro Videomate DVB-T200 [card=71,autodetected]
saa7130[0]: board init: gpio is 843f00
input: saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV as /class/input/input2
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 00: 5b 18 01 c9 54 20 1c 00 43 43 a9 1c 55 d2 b2 92
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 10: 00 ff 86 0f ff 20 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 20: 01 40 01 03 03 ff 03 01 08 ff 00 88 ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 30: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 40: ff 02 00 c2 86 10 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 50: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff cb
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 60: 30 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: i2c eeprom 70: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7130[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]
saa7130[0]: registered device vbi0

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All looks OK to me, but I am a newbie to Linux. I've worked out a fair bit on my own as far as getting multimedia support, but this one has stumped me.

Does anyone have any suggestions about TVtime regarding this issue? or any suggestions of another TV-tuner application to try that is compatible with the Phillips 713x chipset?

Kind regards,
Steve.

I just intalled fusionhdtv card. It worked (ntsc) out of the box with tvtime-1.0.1-3.2, kernel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5.
tvtime has 3 modes composite, svideo, and tv.

I looked up your TV card and it uses the Conexant chip whereas mine uses the Phillips chip - big difference.

I have just updated to kernel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5, so I'll try it again now anyway, but I have a feeling the problem is with the driver for the Phillips 7130/7134 chipset my card uses.

stevod333, in case you're still wondering, and for the sake of others, the Compro card is actually a digital broadcast (DVB) card, while TVtime is for analog inputs. Thus, its not unusual to get only analog inputs available in TVtime. For viewing digital broadcasts, you'd need a DVB application. Kaffeine (media player) is probably the easiest to get going. And yes, you may also have to upgrade the kernel so the appropriate drivers are available.

While I don't have the Compro card myself, I have another DVB card (Avermedia) that I'm using under Linux, and I'm also considering getting the Compro as well. So the above is based on my experience so far. I hope it helps for others trying their cards out.

Thanks for your reply winno, much appreciated.
You're right, it seems that tv time is an analogue only application - I have discovered this since I upgraded to the DVB-T300 card, and tv time only runs it in analogue mode (as this one is a hybrid card).
I have gotten this one to work quite successfully though, using Kaffiene.
The key to it, as I suspected in the beginning, is having the correct tuner type associated with the saa7134 module. Most times at bootup, the OS (SUSE 10.2 now) will autodetect the card and tuner type, but sometimes it does not and dmesg reports it as "unknown/generic" - in this instance I must unload the module with modprobe -r saa7134 then reload it using modprobe saa7134 card=70 - once the card is registered, the tuner type is automatically assigned. Most importantly after that, I must load the DVB module using modprobe saa7134-dvb to have it working in digital mode - after that, it works beautifully.
I need to define these parameters for boot-time, but can't recall how, and havn't gotten around to looking into it yet.