Hello agaim, fello "Slack"ers!

I am currently going through the motions of getting my Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150 card working in Slackware, and I could sure use a little help!

First off, I learned my lesson from trying to get my wireless NIC to work under Slackware, and was quick to execute dmesg after I had installed the card to see what Linux might have reported about the hardware. I was quickly aware that I was missing FIRMWARE (specifically, the v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw file), and so I went about trying to acquire that. I found a perl script that indicated it might be able to "extract" this firmware file from my original Windoze installation CD, and so I utilized that script and VOILA! It found BOTH required firmwares (I also required the v4l-cx25840.fw firmware file...). Ok, that settled, Slackware tells me that my WinTV card has now been INITIALIZED! Whew!

Now, here is where I need a little assistance! I think that for a person fairly new to Linux, the installation and configuration of MythTV would be quite a daunting task, and I just don't think I require all that much "power"! I simply want to watch TV on my computer, change channels with my IR remote (preferably!), and record the odd show now and then (with or without automated ("timed") operation of the recordings). Thats it!

So, I would like to know what other program would be more suitable for a "newbie" user to either simply install, or build and install from source...; I have looked in SlackBuilds, and NONE of the other packages I am aware of are present in the repository!!!

I was sort of leaning towards XawTV, and was sort of bummed when it wasn't available at SlackBuilds! Is XawTV difficult to build for Slackware, and, if not, why is it not available?

I have no idea whether XawTV is even the "best" for what I am after (as previously described...); any suggestions for me? Preferably, something that will install and configure without requiring a ton of documentation just to get an image on-screen!

Other programs that I am aware of are:
xdTV; KWinTV; wmTV; bttvgrab.

Are there many others?

Also, even though, like I said previously, dmesg says my WinTV-PVR card IS INITIALIZED, is there anything else I need to do now before ANY of these applications will work for me? Are there other steps I might not be aware of? For instance, do I get NOTHING when I type "modprobe bttv"? I "think" bttv is already installed in Slackware? I mean, the word "bttv" is found ALL OVER my system(s)! But I do not even know how to tell for sure! Any recommendations on a good source of info. on this topic?

All help will be greatly appreciated!

Yours,

Andre. (Z_Tagr)

UMPlayer should work with TV capture cards as far as it working with IR receivers... I have no idea. I know Bluetooth works fine.

Your Hauppauge card should be auto-detected and loaded by the kernel at boot-time. I'm not sure which exact module it uses but if it is initialized, then it is initialized as it should be.

All you have to do basically is load a media player like UMPlayer and select the TV controls and it should work.

As far as XawTV... packages get deprecated by other packages that can replace or work better than other packages. There are other Slackbuild projects out there that could have XawTV, but SBo usually carries the most useful packages usually.

Greetings! I have that particular card, so I am very familiar with it. First of, what version of Slackware are you using? From version 13 and on (I think), the driver is automatically included in the kernel. You will however need the firmware. You can download the firmware here. Then do the following as root:

tar xzf ivtv-firmware.tar.gz
mv v4l-* /lib/firmware/
reboot

Your card will now be initialized correctly. You can make sure by running "dmesg | grep -i ivtv" from the command line. Which source are you planning to use? S-Video, Composite? You can control which input what want to record with the v4l-ctl command utility.

In order to test if your card is working, run the following command:

cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg

Hit control-C when you are done. You can play your video with mplayer (mplayer test.mpg).

You definitely don't need to use MythTV for that. I wrote my own custom scripts that will record my shows for me.

Feel free to ask me any questions. That has been a good card. I have now moved on the the hvr-1600.

Thanks for the response to my post, stormtracknole!

After I finished posting that question, I fell upon some new info. on the net that got me through quite a bit of my question!

I found out about the "v4l2-ctl -I" command, the "v4l2-ctl -i0" command(s) (ie. for MPEG1/2, composite and S-Video inputs), and I also found out that I could actually VIEW the MPEG output by typing the command "mplayer /dev/video0"!

At the same time, I also found out about saving the output from the WinTV-PVR card to a file as you demonstrated in your response to my posted question!

One thing (or is it TWO?) I'm still "stuck" on though...; I do NOT know how to change the tuner channel on the card! All I can watch / record at the moment is my local cable channel 2! Now, I am aware of a command that is supposed to perform this function, but it requires something called ivtv-utils, and the command is called "ivtv-tune". But I know that this command is NOT available in MY version of Slackware (13.37, I guess I forgot to mention that last time! Sorry...).

I checked at Slackbuilds, and the "ivtv-utils" package does NOT appear to be there. Is there by chance a method to change the channel using some form of "ioctl" command or such? This is really the only problem I have left with this issue!

Let me know what you know about this issue, please!

And, if you have a source for some good reading on this or ivtv in general, that I should bwe aware of, please let me know! I have tried "man ivtv", and there do not appear to be any manual pages on this driver...

Thanks in advance! It's good to know someone here at LinuxQuestions that is using the same TV / Capture card!

Andre. (Z_Tagr)

Thanks for the replay, Reaper!

Yea, I found out a little after I posted the question that xawtv doesn't use MPEG1/2 input, and that the YUV output of the Hauppauge card is not the same type that xawtv requires...; thus, that package is USELESS to me!

Anyways, I later found a way to view the output from my WinTV PVR card, as well as a way to RECORD its output (too simple, really!), so I guess I'm pretty good on that aspect of my question.

But, while I'm responding, do YOU know how to change the channel on the Hauppauge card? I can only view my local cable channel 2 currently! I have seen a method that uses a package called ivtv-utils, and a command "ivtv-tune", but the ivtv-utils package does not seem to be available at SlackBuilds!

Do you know of a version that would be compatible that I might download elsewhere? Or, moreover, do I actually NEED ivtv-utils to do this?

Once that question has been answered, this topic will be closed!

Thanks in advance,

Andre. (Z_Tagr)

Ah, changing channels that way is something that I have never done. I have always used the S-Video input from my satellite box. Try building tvtime or kaffeine (both are available at Slackbuilds.org). I know that tvtime will play nice with cable (not involving a set-top box). You can try building ivtv-utils from source to see if you can use the utility to change the channel through the command line. Try the easier route first with using tvtime.

I hope this helps. Keep us updated!

The same v4l2-ctl command has a -f option to set the frequency to tune. You will just need to find a frequency table file for you needs since channel numbers correspond to different frequencies depending on whether you are looking at OTA, cable, etc.

http://www.jneuhaus.com/fccindex/cablech.html

You could make a file with two columns with the channel number and corresponding frequency, and then write a shell script that takes the channel as an argument and finds the correct frequency from the file to call v4l2-ctl.

Maybe something like

#!/bin/sh

FREQ=`awk -vLOOKUPVAL=$1 '$1 == LOOKUPVAL { print $2 }' < channelFreqTable`
v4l2-ctl -f=$FREQ

http://tv-viewer.sourceforge.net/ <<--- Haven't used this, but looks nice.

Xine used to support ivtv devices (Included in Slackware). Have not used Xine since ivtv updated it's recording API. The controls are currently there. Unable to test, as we've upgraded all or our analog cards to digital.
Mplayer supports ivtv devices (Included in Slackware)
VLC, available from Eric (Alien Bob) http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/

Kaffeine only supports digital broadcasts, and a stellar job it does. Everything from scheduling, EIT support, channel guide .... Perfect for that something between cat /dev/$VIDEO.DEVICE and MythTV.

Xine has been iffy as of late. Whenever I have tried to use it, the program hangs up when I try setting it up for my system and causes a need to shutdown my Xserver and restart it.

UMMplayer, MPlayer, and Gnome-MPlayer are probably your best bet. MythTV maybe as well. There's also a SlackBuild for TVTime. Haven't used it yet, but it looks like you can use it to channel surf.

Thanks for the response, octoberblu3!

I must have missed the -f parameter for v4l2-ctl! Yea, that's what I was talking about! I just need to know the frequencies that my local cable provided transmits on! Excellent!

Actually, I tried it with channel 3 with the rf-output from a VCR (I also tried channel 4!) and BOTH worked great!

BUT! When I tried to tune in channel 3 from my CABLE RF SIGNAL, all I got was "static"!? What, does a VCR send its signal "differently" than the cable providers?

I also tried to tune in channel 4 (which, on our cable, is "Turner Classic Movies"...; still just "static"!!!

Man, that's a puzzler! I don't know much about the way a VCR's rf output differs from a "standard" NTSC CABLE SIGNAL! Does anybody have a clue as to what might be happening here?

I have as yet been UNABLE to tune in ANY of my local cable channels! Even the channel I was ORIGINALLY receiving (channel 2 from my cable) is no longer coming in! All I ever receive is "static"...

But, I will do some more research, and let you know what the result was before I close this topic!

Thanks again!

Andre. (Z_Tagr)

Oh, yea! Sorry, octoberblu3!

I forgot to thank you for the link to the FCC's channel / frequency listing! This will come in handy as heck! Also, thanks for the sample script; I can use all the examples I can get for "real-world" Linux scripting, and this will come in handy as well!

bfn,

Andre. (Z_Tagr)