I have had a very robust MythTV setup since spring 2005 using a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 Media Center edition. Given the impending conversion to ATSC digital TV in February 2009, I ordered a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q external USB digital TV capture device.
Meanwhile, to reduce noise, heat, and power consumption, I am also switching from an i386-based workstation/server to an almost silent Mac Mini PowerPC G4 1.25 GHz running Ubuntu Hardy server with the lightweight Xubuntu desktop.
Today, I received the 950Q and was able to install it on the Mini without any trouble following Scott Bronson's detailed instructions to the letter. Thanks, Scott, for providing these wonderful, accurate instructions!
The Mini is too slow to play live video without mplayer's -framedrop option, but it is mostly a server anyway. The next step is to configure MythTV to record from the 950Q...no problem.
Meanwhile, I have upgraded all my systems to Jaunty, where the device is supported out of the box once you copy the firmware to /lib/firmware. Please see my recent comment for more details.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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15 comments:
I notice your comment about not being able to play live video without framedrop... is this just regular MPEG-2 you're playing back? Positive you have hardware acceleration for that? I've used a PIII/133 for playback of recorded TV at high bitrates without problems using an old nvidia card.
I am referring to live video that mplayer plays directly from the digital tuner device. The image size is 1920x1080. That might have something to do with it. The video card is supposed to be an ATI Radeon 9200.
Doh! Forgot that this is a digital / HD tuner...
Fortunately, my friend George gave me a Mac mini Core Duo to replace the G4. Because this is a much more widely supported architecture, things have now gone a lot smoother.
Nice! I have heard that the Duos are great chips. My 'carputer' won't boot anymore, and I've been trying to decide on a mini-itx solution for it. There are some boards that support intel, as well as AMD Phenom. I'm tempted to go Phenom and upgrade my desktop as a result. ;)
the referenced link is DEAD! any follow-up?
Yeah looks like that site is down. This may help... Scott posted a response there too.
http://lunapark6.com/usb-hdtv-tuner-stick-for-windows-linux-hauppauge-wintv-hvr-950.html
I'm thrilled to see that someone's gotten this card working. I took a look at the link that you posted to detailed instructions. I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 running Jaunty 64-bit. I followed the instructions for installing under feisty but when I got down to ...$make I saw this message:
"the em28xx-new driver project has been discontinued, in order to provide
optimal Linux support you can have a look at http://shop.sundtek.de
for fully supported Linux based TV devices.
Support for Sundtek devices is provided at http://support.sundtek.de"
make install doesn't do much of anything at this point, of course. Do you have any insights on this? Is there another driver that has replaced this old one or what?
Hi Michael, thanks for your feedback. I have upgraded all my systems to Jaunty and have had no problems with this device. Actually, I probably never used the discontinued em28xx-* driver because the device is supported out-of-the-box once you install the firmware. It shouldn't be necessary to build anything; those detailed instructions apply only to older kernels, if I remember correctly.
The current drivers for this and similar devices are listed here:
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATSC_USB_Devices
Here is my dmesg excerpt, which is consistent with the above.
[18235.594612] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[18235.758397] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[18235.931611] au0828 driver loaded
[18236.334315] au0828: i2c bus registered
[18236.435694] tveeprom 9-0050: Hauppauge model 72001, rev B3F0, serial# 5156487
[18236.435703] tveeprom 9-0050: MAC address is 00-0D-FE-4E-AE-87
[18236.435708] tveeprom 9-0050: tuner model is Xceive XC5000 (idx 150, type 4)
[18236.435713] tveeprom 9-0050: TV standards NTSC(M) ATSC/DVB Digital (eeprom 0x88)
[18236.435718] tveeprom 9-0050: audio processor is AU8522 (idx 44)
[18236.435722] tveeprom 9-0050: decoder processor is AU8522 (idx 42)
[18236.435727] tveeprom 9-0050: has no radio, has IR receiver, has no IR transmitter
[18236.435731] hauppauge_eeprom: hauppauge eeprom: model=72001
[18236.561178] xc5000 9-0061: creating new instance
[18236.564919] xc5000: Successfully identified at address 0x61
[18236.564925] xc5000: Firmware has not been loaded previously
[18236.564934] DVB: registering new adapter (au0828)
[18236.564940] DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Auvitek AU8522 QAM/8VSB Frontend)...
[18236.565693] Registered device AU0828 [Hauppauge HVR950Q]
[18236.565763] usbcore: registered new interface driver au0828
[18236.797344] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
I hope this addresses your problem even on your 64-bit system.
Thanks for the reply. I followed the instructions at the link that you posted and I now have the same dmesg output as you have. However, when I fire up tvtime, I get this error message: "videoinput: Cannot open capture device /dev/video0: No such file or directory." I didn't find /dev/video0 but I did find /dev/dvb/adapter0/ containing the files: demux0, dvr0, frontend0 and net0. Totem recognised a "DVB Adapter 0" the first time that I plugged in the tuner but still complains that "Totem is missing a channels listing to be able to tune the receiver." I feel like I'm missing a step. You mentioned that you watch live video in mplayer. Where does mplayer actually read from when you watch live video?
Hi Michael,
Glad to hear your system is recognizing the device!
These instructions describe how test the setup using mplayer. You would probably have to configure tvtime and Totem similarly.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Testing_your_DVB_device
I hope this helps.
Hi!
I have a 950Q and am running the eeebuntu version of 9.04. I've got the firmware in /lib/firmware, but when I plug the device in all I get in dmesg are two lines:
[ 406.304110] usb 5-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
[ 406.459622] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
and /dev/dvb is not created.
When I try to run a scan (as suggested by the linuxtv 950Q entry), there is no new dmesg and I get an error complaining about the lack of a /dev/dvb/adapter0 .
Is there some step you can think of that I am missing? I had this working on another machine back when the em28xx driver was in use, and it still works on that machine after upgrading to Jaunty.
@Andy It seems that Eeebuntu uses the Array kernel. That could make a difference. I have no experience with it.
The device works out of the box for me with Jaunty on both a Via C7 and a PowerPC G4.
I hope you can still get it to run on your box.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I had assumed that they just added some drivers in the netbook kernel, but I guess the changes were more drastic :)
I switched to a generic kernel and the 950Q worked for me "out of the box". Thanks again.
I'm testing out the 950Q on my N280 netbook before buying a low power home server/proxy/htpc to get a feel for what I need for ATSC recording/playback. The N280 can handle standard NTSC ATSC signals, but higher resolutions stutter a bit. I'm hoping the atom 330 boards will be able to handle the 720i signals a few local stations are using these days. Given the N280's performance I think that is possible.
Thanks again,
-Andy
@Andy Glad to hear you got it to work out of the box with the standard kernel!!
Please keep me posted on your findings w.r.t. playback. I am very interested in low-power HD-capable front ends.
My experience with the Mac mini G4 and the J7F2WE/VIA C7 Mini-ITX is that neither can play back anything beyond standard definition.
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