Re: [tlug] My first PVR project - advice will not be distained

[Joshua Eli Bearden <j3b@example.com>]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 07:49:40PM +0900, Jim Tittsler wrote:
> On Jun 13, 2006, at 11:13, Joshua Eli Bearden wrote:
> 
> Have you tried all of the (many!) card/tuner options in your  
> modprobe.conf?
> 


> I bought a Keian JH-TV7131R for under Y4000 at my neighborhood shop 
> [1].  It took a lot of Googling and experimenting to discover that
>    options saa7134 card=65 tuner=54
> seems to work.  And that the card is a variant of the Kworld TV  
> Terminator.  Even after finding the Kworld clue, it took some trial- 
> and-error with several card/tuner combinations until I found the one  
> that worked with this particular implementation.

I found a number of similar incantations on mailing lists.  I didn't
know where to find modprobe.conf (if it even exists on my system) but
I used a command like: 
# modprobe saa7134 card=32 tuner=50  # different numbers

modprobe didn't complain so I thought it must be working. But maybe I was
completely mistaken about how to use modprobe.

> 
> I haven't been able to get the IR receiver working.  And the tuner  
> does not appear to cover the BS-analog downconverter I/F frequency,  
> so I end up using the tuner in the VCR if I want to record BS.   
> Simultaneous software encoding/decoding with mencoder/mplayer works  
> fine in the 2.4GHz P4 cube that is under the TV.  ffmpeg and  
> transcode help with making VCDs and small versions that I can fetch  
> from bandwidth starved countries.
> 
Oh it sounds like you've achieved my nirvana. I on the other hand have 
descended into hell: yesterday in despair I bought yet another tuner/capture 
card: Haupage PVR 150.  It seemed, according to lspci and dmesg to almost
completely recognize the card.  But noe of the applications were actually
working yet. Instead of reacting calmly I decided just to reinstall the
whole dsitro from disc in the hopes that the installation scripts would
magically fix everything for me.  But in my sleep deprived state of idiocy I 
thought this would also be a good time to add a second hard drive and fiddle
with some bios settings that I knew nothing about.

Things just went from bad to worse and I went into a mental tailspin.  By the
time I went to bed I had a computer that could no longer boot from its
hard drives or cd-rom.  I'm going kayaking in the rain for two days as 
pennance and I can only pray that starting monday I can find something
to salvage on my computer desk.

Yours Truly,

Joshua "the hardware destroyer" Bearden