Troubleshooting
I am often asked for help on various problems with PVR-500 and PVR-150 cards. To fix things when they don't work, you need two things. 1) An understanding of how the thing is suppose to work and being methodical in your approach.
Step 1 - Signal Input
Check the signal input. If you are using a coax cable for signal, then plug a tv into the end of it and verify it can infact pickup good strong TV signals. If it can't then there is no hope of the system working!Step 2 - Back to basics
Disable mythtv from starting automatically, and remove any automatic module loading commands (eg from /etc/modules or elsewhere). Now try inserting the module in the order you believe is correct. (This site has a init script0 which loads each module with what I believe are the correct parameters for ivtv-0.3.6u on a PVR-500 card).
You should also initialize the card with ivtvctl as well. The commands I use are below:
ivtvctl -d /dev/video0 -p 6 -f width=720,height=576 -u 1 ivtvctl -d /dev/video1 -p 6 -f width=720,height=576 -u 1
Step 3 - Try reading directly from the card
Change the card to the correct TV channel. Here it may be a bit hit and miss, depending on your location, but see here for a list of TV channels, numbers and frequencies. Use this command to change the channel:
ptune.pl -f pal-newzealand --input /dev/video<num> -c <chan>
(Where <num> is the video number (eg 0 or 1) and <chan> is the channel.
Now try reading directly from the mpeg stream with this command:
cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/video0.mpg
(Hit Ctrl+C after 5-10 seconds)
And now play the mpeg file with your favourite mpeg player (such as MPlayer. If you have a good file, then it is working. Repeat the above tests (channel and read) with video1 as well and verify both tuners are working (assuming you have a PVR-500 card).
Step 4 - Start MythTV
Whilst you still have a working setup (eg before you reboot), start mythtv on the system and see if it works through MythTV.
If you are getting static/nosignal with MythTV, it may be because MythTV has the wrong channel number, or PAL/NTSC not set correctly. Both of these settings are in the MythTV config program.
Step 5 - Setup the system
Now you have a working setup (hopefully), set up the system so it loads the modules in the same order you did, with the same parameters. You may choose to use modules, however I simply used a shell script, and called that script before mythtv-backend starts up.
Now reboot the system, and see if it still works. If it doesn't, then there is something in your startup sequence which is affecting it.
[Step 4] [Up] [Appendix 2]
Contact me: zaf@nrc.co.nz with any updates or suggestions, or maybe questions if they are intelligent ones.