Is there a status for the HVR-2250 Linux driver?

[robolo]

Good news ... as of 3/7/09 development has resumed on this driver with est release in 3-4 weeks

[AndyW]

This is great news!

Will the same driver set work for the 2200 (PAL / DVB-T) as for the 2250 (NTSC / ATSC / QAM)? As far as I can see the only difference between the cards is the broadcast standards supported. Steve Toth refers to the "...the Linux HVR-2250 / 2200 driver.." in his blog - maybe if he reads this he can say or else put it on his blog. Living in UK I need DVB-T - not so worried about PAL as all the analog channels are also on digital now, and PAL is going in 2-3 years time. Maybe it is hard coded in the tuner chip firmware & so outside the driver?

[robolo]

Originally Posted by AndyW

Will the same driver set work for the 2200 (PAL / DVB-T) as for the 2250 (NTSC / ATSC / QAM)?

Sorry , I am just a messenger. As you say, maybe he will read this.

[AndyW]

Latest updates look encouraging:- steventoth.net HVR-2250

• Both 2200 and 2250 variants supported by same driver
• Uses v4l-dvb interface so will work with MythTV

[bsl]

Hey all,
I wanted to post since I found this thread (3rd from top) by searching google for "HVR 2250 mythtv".

Looks like Steve is done!!!


steventoth.net HVR-2250

May 12th 2009 9.18am
If you haven’t already caught up with yesterdays announcement then the project is slowly migrating to kernellabs.com and the main project page for the SAA7164 driver is here. If you haven’t already visited Kernel Labs then take a few moments of your time, I think you’ll like the content - I post on a regular basis and it will be easier for you to subscribe/track to it.

As more and more of the SAA7164 content is being posted to KernelLabs.com - ... it's not just another Linux blog the postings here at steventoth.net will begin to slow down and finally stop. This is intended. We’re outgrowing the steventoth.net blog and we need a site that can better present the SAA7164 driver and it’s development trees. (FAQ here)

That being said, the real news of the day:

* I’ve posted three new patches to the SAA7164 development tree, details are on the new blog here.

[bsl]

hope this doesn't double post

May 12th 2009 9.18am

If you haven’t already caught up with yesterdays announcement then the project is slowly migrating to kernellabs.com and the main project page for the SAA7164 driver is here. If you haven’t already visited Kernel Labs then take a few moments of your time, I think you’ll like the content - I post on a regular basis and it will be easier for you to subscribe/track to it.

As more and more of the SAA7164 content is being posted to KernelLabs.com - ... it's not just another Linux blog the postings here at steventoth.net will begin to slow down and finally stop. This is intended. We’re outgrowing the steventoth.net blog and we need a site that can better present the SAA7164 driver and it’s development trees. (FAQ here)

That being said, the real news of the day:

* I’ve posted three new patches to the SAA7164 development tree, details are on the new blog here.

[bsl]

Perhaps this is more informative:

steventoth.net HVR-2250

May 11th 2009 9.25am

It’s a big day and I have a few things to say:

* First, I want to thank you all for supporting the HVR-22xx project. Yes, you, Thank you.
* Second, together we’ve finally reached stage1. It’s been a long haul. Now we have a SAA7164 driver that supports ATSC/QAM and DVB-T. We’ve come this far because of your support and donations, but we’re not done yet. Stage2 (Analog support) is just around the corner and that will start soon. I hope you’ll stick around and support the project.
* I think you’re probably looking for this KernelLabs.com - ... it's not just another Linux blog

Have a great day!

May 9th 2009 11.51am

Cleanup complete. Other than final HVR2250 testing via MythTV to ensure nothing broke, I’m done.

Expect more changes shortly after release as I refactor more code and tighten things, remove debugging etc.

[AndyW]

Well I have got my HVR-2200 (Model number 89619 LF, rev. D1F2) and this is how I got on... I am running Fedora 10 (kernel 2.6.27.24) and mainly use yum for package management, so not everything here will apply to everyone.

Steve Toth's SAA7164 page on KernelLabs is here SAA7164 Linux Driver - KernelLabs.com - there are links there to other useful pages. KernelLabs use Mercurial for SCM so I yum installed kernel-headers, make, gcc and mercurial. I downloaded the source code & built it in /usr/local/src:-

[root@localhost /]# cd /usr/local/src
[root@localhost src]# hg clone http://kernellabs.com/hg/saa7164-stable/
[root@localhost src]# cd saa7164-stable
[root@localhost saa7164-stable]# make
[root@localhost saa7164-stable]# make install

Then reboot, or just modprobe saa7164 - syslog output from modprobe should look like this:-

May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164 driver loaded
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: CORE saa7164[0]: dev->lmmio  = 0xffffc20011100000
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: CORE saa7164[0]: dev->lmmio2 = 0xffffc20011580000
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: CORE saa7164[0]: dev->bmmio  = 0xffffc20011100000
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: CORE saa7164[0]: dev->bmmio2 = 0xffffc20011580000
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: CORE saa7164[0]: subsystem: 0070:8980, board: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR2200 [card=4,autodetected]
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164[0]/0: found at 0000:02:00.0, rev: 129, irq: 16, latency: 0, mmio: 0xfd400000
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164[0]: i2c bus 0 registered
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164[0]: i2c bus 1 registered
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164[0]: i2c bus 2 registered
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: Hauppauge model 89619, rev D1F2, serial# 6178918
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: MAC address is 00-0D-FE-5E-48-66
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: tuner model is NXP 18271C2_716x (idx 152, type 4)
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: TV standards PAL(B/G) NTSC(M) PAL(I) SECAM(L/L') PAL(D/D1/K) ATSC/DVB Digital (eeprom 0xfc)
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: audio processor is SAA7164 (idx 43)
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: decoder processor is SAA7164 (idx 40)
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tveeprom 0-0000: has radio
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: saa7164[0]: Hauppauge eeprom: model=89619
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tda18271 1-0060: creating new instance
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: TDA18271HD/C2 detected @ 1-0060
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: DVB: registering new adapter (saa7164)
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (NXP TDA10048HN DVB-T)...
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: tda18271 2-0060: creating new instance
May 29 23:00:41 localhost kernel: TDA18271HD/C2 detected @ 2-0060
May 29 23:00:42 localhost kernel: DVB: registering new adapter (saa7164)
May 29 23:00:42 localhost kernel: DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (NXP TDA10048HN DVB-T)...

In order to load the driver you will definitely need the firmware - download from here Index of /linux/hvr22xx and follow instructions in readme.txt.

There should now be two sets of device nodes under /dev/dvb:

[root@localhost dev]# ls -lR dvb
dvb:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 2009-05-29 23:00 adapter0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 2009-05-29 23:00 adapter1

dvb/adapter0:
total 0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 1 2009-05-29 23:00 demux0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 2 2009-05-29 23:00 dvr0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 0 2009-05-29 23:00 frontend0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 3 2009-05-29 23:00 net0

dvb/adapter1:
total 0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 5 2009-05-29 23:00 demux0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 6 2009-05-29 23:00 dvr0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 4 2009-05-29 23:00 frontend0
crw-rw----+ 1 andrew root 212, 7 2009-05-29 23:00 net0

For testing the card I found dvd-apps and dvbstream useful. There is a Fedora package for dvb-apps, but the utilities in it seem to lack some functionality, so I built them both. For dvb-apps use

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps

and for dvbstream use CVS:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@dvbtools.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/dvbtools login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@dvbtools.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/dvbtools co -P dvbstream

Guidance on using dvb-apps is here LinuxTV dvb-apps - LinuxTVWiki - tzap and scan are the main ones to use.

First thing is to find the lists of transmitter frequencies supplied with dvb-apps. In my system these are in /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t though the location may vary. Find the file that corresponds to your local transmitter - I am in London so use uk-CrystalPalace, which looks like:

# UK, Crystal Palace
# Auto-generated from http://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/dtt_channels.html
# and http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/reception_advice/index.asp.html
# T freq bw fec_hi fec_lo mod transmission-mode guard-interval hierarchy
T 505833000 8MHz 3/4 NONE QAM16 2k 1/32 NONE
T 481833000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM64 2k 1/32 NONE
T 561833000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM64 2k 1/32 NONE
T 529833000 8MHz 3/4 NONE QAM16 2k 1/32 NONE

The coverage of transmitter looks pretty comprehensive; if any are missing I guess the information is available from public sources. Next use the scan utility to build a channels.conf file of available digital channels - this will be used later to add channels in MythTV.

scan ./uk-CrystalPalace -o zap | tee ~/.mythtv/channels.conf

The channels.conf file contains entries like this:

BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
BBC THREE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:0:0:4351
BBC NEWS:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:640:641:4415

To test the tuning use the tzap utility. Specify the location of channels.conf with the -c parameter, and use -r to specify the channel to tune to, using exactly the string in channels.conf e.g. for BBC1

[root@localhost .mythtv]# tzap -c ~/.mythtv/channels.conf -r 'BBC ONE'
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
reading channels from file '/root/.mythtv/channels.conf'
tuning to 505833330 Hz
video pid 0x0258, audio pid 0x0259
status 00 | signal 8888 | snr 0029 | ber 0000ffff | unc 00000000 |
status 1f | signal fefe | snr 00f6 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1f | signal fefe | snr 00f6 | ber 00000001 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1f | signal fefe | snr 00f6 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status 1f | signal fefe | snr 00f6 | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

"FE_HAS_LOCK" indicates the tuner has locked on to the signal, and low values in the "ber" and "unc" fields indicate good quality data (see LinuxTV wiki for more info on this output). While tzap is still running in one shell session, open dvbstream in another and pipe the output to mplayer. The two numeric parameters to dvbstream are the PIDs for the channel, which are the 3rd and 2nd to last fields in channels.conf i.e. 600 and 601 for BBC1:-

[root@localhost .mythtv]# /usr/local/src/dvbstream/dvbstream -ps -o 600 601 | mplayer -

If an mplayer window pops up with live TV you will know a) the hardware works b) the fireware and driver module have loaded correctly c) the tuner can lock onto a specified channel and d) the signal quality from the aerial input is good. It is also possible to do the tuning in dvbstream as well.

In mythtvsetup > Capture cards add a device of type "DVB DTV capture card (v3.x)" The DVB Device Number should default to 0 and the Frontend ID should display "NXP TDA10048HN DVB-T" (a couple of times there was an error probing the card for the ID). Save and add another device - this time the device number should default to 1.

In mythtvsetup > Video sources set up a suitable source e.g. "Freeview" for UK digital TV. In mythtvsetup > Input connections associate both devices with this source. In "Scan for channels" I found scan type "Import channels.conf" worked best, using the file created earlier (enter the full path including the filename). "Full scan" ran without error, but didn't detect anything. It might be possible to use the other options and enter some of the tuning data, but I think building channels.conf with scan and tzap does the same thing, quicker and easier.

I still have a few issues; however some of these I think are unrelated to the card and in any case the driver is still not finalised.

• I can't see program data in the EPG, even though I have run mythfilldatabase and the program table contains the right data. I think this is nothing to do with the card.
• Can't switch between the digital tuners - these should behave as independent devices even though they are on the same card.
• No analog capability, either through tuner or S-Video input (Steve is going to add this to the driver).
• I often get prebuffering errorsafter switching channels:

2009-05-30 16:49:01.707 NVP: prebuffering pause
2009-05-30 16:49:03.308 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.
2009-05-30 16:49:04.908 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.

Big thank you to Steve Toth for his work on the driver.

Andrew

[epi1:10,000]

The OTA ATSC reception on this card is great but I haven't figured out how to get good QAM-256 reception yet. The driver is brand new so it can only get better.

[rbalik]

I'm using this with QAM on Comcast and it works pretty well. Occasionally I get a channel that breaks up a little or the picture jumps around, but most of the time things look good, especially the HD channels. I'm hoping he adds analog support soon so I can get comedy central and espn and everything.