hi! recently I install mandrake 10 on my pc. everything works, sounds, video and tv tuner. i was able to watch tv using tvtime. Now, i'm using slackware 10 but i couldn't figure out how to install my tv tuner driver. i think the chipset is btxxx. i'm not sure about the number. somebody please help me. thanks!

First I suggest you compile your kernel with video4linux support, things you should enable are:

In kernel config section: Device Drivers subsection I2C support you should enable:

<*> I2C support
<*> I2C device interface

In I2C Algorithms ---> enable

<*> I2C bit-banging interfaces

In Device Drivers subsection Multimedia devices ---> enable as module

<M> Video For Linux

In Video For Linux --->

<M> BT848 Video For Linux

That's it, hopefuly when that's all done modprobe your bttv driver with appropriate card_id.

Hope this helps a bit.

The default kernel that ships with Slackware
has bttv compiled as module.
You can try
/sbin/modprobe bttv card=xx radio=1
where xx is your TV card's number in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/CARDLIST
(I suppose you have the kernel sources installed).
For automagic module loading try this:

cd /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv
cat Modules.conf >> /etc/modules.conf
vi /etc/modules.conf
(change card=2 with card=xx)

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Add the following line after Load "glx"
Load "v4l"

That's all!

thanks i'll try it tonight.

i wonder what those lines of code means. can you explain, please. thanks

ok i tried it. i think the driver is installed already, i issue lsmod and bttv is there but with unused remark. i don't know if its working properly or not. so from here whats next if i want to watch tv? i downloaded tvtime and install it using pkgtool. but everytime i run the program, it crashes, i don't know whats wrong. please help. thanks a lot.

jag, I've tried to get my bt878 working in slackware with minimal results.
I usually can watch things, I just can't record them - which is why I have
the card (but thats a software/codec problem I'm having - not drivers).

When I lsmod here is my output:
These are all the lines relevant to the bt878 card. With all this, to my understanding,
the driver is installed and functional. Compared to yours, is there a difference?
My thought is now you have an actual working output to compare yours too.

let us know - tw
(i know this might be backwards 1 step from where you are at, but just double checking)

p.s - and just to double check, I installed tvtime too (dl'd from linuxpackages.net -
as a user, it tells me to run it as root, or suid tvtime.

So I SU and try again - error is:
whats your error message?
( I have had marginal luck with kdetv)

i'll compare the result tonight. i think my problem is already in the software (tvtive). i probabbly need to do some configuration but i don't know where to start. i'll check it's documentation and see what i can. can you tell me how did you setup and configure tvtime in your system? really a lot of thanks.

this is the error i get when i run tvtime.

Running tvtime 0.9.12
Reading configuration from /etc/tvtime/tvtime.xml
Reading configuration from /root/.tvtime/tvtime.xml
xvoutput:No XVIDEO port found which supports YUY2 images.

***tvtime requres hardware YUY2 support from your video card
***driver....
***if unsure please check with your distribution to see if your X driver supports overlay surfaces.

I don't know what to do. I'm pretty sure it's just in the cofiguration or setting because it works berfore in mandrake 10. Please help.

check here:

http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/problems.html#fgloverlay

This might be the fix you need.
or maybe somewhere else on this page.

i'll check it out. thanks a lot.

i found the problem. it's the video card driver that's causing tvtime not to work. the driver that was installed by default was a vesa driver. i just replaced the driver with savage and tvtime works. now i still have one more problem, re-channeling the tuner. thanks again tw001_tw!