[ivtv-users] hvr-1600 occasionally goes red-screen

[Michael Cook]

Dale Pontius <DEPontius at edgehp.net> writes:

> Every now and then my hvr-1600 goes red-screen on me.  (Apparently this
> indicates no signal, so presumably something has gone south in the
> front-end selection logic.)

Make sure you have the latest v4l-dvb software.

http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb/

I got an HVR-1600 in December, and I was using a build of the
v4l-dvb from November, and I was getting terrible results.  Here
were some of the symptoms I saw:

 - There were lots of errors logged in
   /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log, like

   [mpeg2video @ 0xb74b5744]ac-tex damaged at 16 67
   [ac3 @ 0xb74b5744]frame CRC mismatch
   [mpeg2video @ 0xb74b5744]mb incr damaged

   Some Googling of these error messages indicated it could be a
   signal quality problem, but my attempts to improve the signal
   quality didn't help.

 - The resulting videos were badly mangled.  They were good enough
   to see that the tuner had tuned to a legitimate channel, but the
   videos weren't playable.  In fact, mythtranscode would sometimes
   crash (segfault) when trying to process these videos.  MythTV
   player would crash, too.  Windows Media Player would simply stop
   itself automatically.

 - One morning I found my backend host unresponsive.  After
   rebooting it, the CPU load was continuously at 20, even though
   the computer wasn't actually doing anything.  Also, the analog
   path of the HVR-1600 no longer worked right (video was captured
   okay, but with no audio).  Another reboot didn't fix the analog
   path; but power cycling did.

The last set of symptoms made me think it was a driver problem.
When I went to the v4l-dvb site, I saw that some significant bug
fixing activity has apparently happened in the last couple months.

So, I downloaded the latest snapshot, backed up my /lib/firmware and
/lib/modules/2.6.28-17-generic directories, and then simply did a
"make install" (it was that easy).  After reboot, the HVR-1600
digital path is working like a charm.  It has never worked this well
for me before!  The mythbackend.log still shows an occasional error
(CRC mismatch, etc), but the resulting videos transcode and play
without any trouble.

-- 
Michael Cook <michael at waxrat.com>