Mailing List Archive: PVR 250 problems

PVR 250 problems

Jun 9, 2003, 7:14 AM

Post #1 of 5 (1286 views)

MythTV rules but I am having some issues. From reading the mailing lists it
looks like quite a few of you are using the PVR250 so maybe you can help me out.

Here's what I have:

Slackware 9.0 box.
At a week ago (June 3) I had the latest CVS of the ivtv driver, alsa driver,
mythtv.
AMD 1800XP
Creative labs ensoniqe audio PCI sound card.
NVidia GForce 2 card with a tv out.
And of course the WinTV PVR 250.

In general it seems to do well except for
the random lock ups.I even have the PVR's remote working! but I'm thinking its
problems are driver related. Myth seems to run until I go the "Watch TV". This
seems to lock up on me at least 2 times a day. I've experimented with different
bit-rates (slower=jumpy/jerky audio and video). Here are my questions:

1. Is everyone experiencing frequent lock-ups with the PVR250 and if not what
did
you do to stabilize this?
2. In the past couple of days I've noticed the sound getting choppy/jerky and I
'm getting a error something like "Soundcard not reporting size correctly...
reverting to old method". Not sure If I've had this error from the beginning but
I don't think so. Could this be related?
3. When using my PVR card on a windows box I noticed that It had only 3 or 4
selectable bit-rates Anyone remember what those are and could this be related to
the smaller bitrate=choppy/jerky problem?

Any help with this would be very appreciated!

--Steve Prater

Re: PVR 250 problems [ In reply to ]

mjacob1 at san

Jun 9, 2003, 12:28 PM

Post #2 of 5 (1265 views)

Permalink

>
> 1. Is everyone experiencing frequent lock-ups with the PVR250 and if not what
> did you do to stabilize this?

Hard lockups (need to press the reset button) or application lockups? I
was having hard lockup problems when running a 2.4.20 kernel with low
latency scheduling and preemptible kernel patches. I switched to a
vanilla 2.4.20 kernel with the kraxel v4l2 patch and the hard lockups
went away.

> 2. In the past couple of days I've noticed the sound getting choppy/jerky and I
> 'm getting a error something like "Soundcard not reporting size correctly...
> reverting to old method". Not sure If I've had this error from the beginning but
> I don't think so. Could this be related?

Are you using ALSA? I have an SBLive! card and when using the oss
drivers the sound was terrible most of the time. I switched over to the
ALSA drivers last night and the audio smoothed out considerably. Now I
have to run a kernel compile and chew up all the CPU to get choppy
audio/video.

> 3. When using my PVR card on a windows box I noticed that It had only 3 or 4
> selectable bit-rates Anyone remember what those are and could this be related to
> the smaller bitrate=choppy/jerky problem?
>

I get video jitter (noticeable on the cnn crawler) no matter what the
bitrate. Experimental A/V Sync and jitter reduction do not seem to help
much either. I'm currently recording at 740x480 with bitrate=2500000 and
bitrate_peak=8000000.

Mark

Re: PVR 250 problems [ In reply to ]

steve.prater at wosc

Jun 9, 2003, 3:09 PM

Post #3 of 5 (1271 views)

Permalink

Quoting Mark Jacob <mjacob1@san.rr.com>:

> >
> > 1. Is everyone experiencing frequent lock-ups with the PVR250 and if not
> what
> > did you do to stabilize this?
>
> Hard lockups (need to press the reset button) or application lockups? I
> was having hard lockup problems when running a 2.4.20 kernel with low
> latency scheduling and preemptible kernel patches. I switched to a
> vanilla 2.4.20 kernel with the kraxel v4l2 patch and the hard lockups
> went away.

Just application lockups. I compiled my own kernel but did not include the
kraxel patch. I'll try that tonight.

>
> > 2. In the past couple of days I've noticed the sound getting choppy/jerky
> and I
> > 'm getting a error something like "Soundcard not reporting size
> correctly...
> > reverting to old method". Not sure If I've had this error from the
> beginning but
> > I don't think so. Could this be related?
>
> Are you using ALSA? I have an SBLive! card and when using the oss
> drivers the sound was terrible most of the time. I switched over to the
> ALSA drivers last night and the audio smoothed out considerably. Now I
> have to run a kernel compile and chew up all the CPU to get choppy
> audio/video.

Using ALSA as of last night. No change that I could tell.

>
> > 3. When using my PVR card on a windows box I noticed that It had only 3 or
> 4
> > selectable bit-rates Anyone remember what those are and could this be
> related to
> > the smaller bitrate=choppy/jerky problem?
> >
>
> I get video jitter (noticeable on the cnn crawler) no matter what the
> bitrate. Experimental A/V Sync and jitter reduction do not seem to help
> much either. I'm currently recording at 740x480 with bitrate=2500000 and
> bitrate_peak=8000000.

Have Played with the bitrates a bit. Never tried that exact setting will give it
a shot. The jitter seems to only be in the audio at bitrate=8000000 and
bitrate_peak=12000000.

--
Steve Prater

Re: PVR 250 problems [ In reply to ]

mjacob1 at san

Jun 9, 2003, 4:20 PM

Post #4 of 5 (1279 views)

Permalink

Steve Prater wrote:
>
> Just application lockups. I compiled my own kernel but did not include the
> kraxel patch. I'll try that tonight.
>
>

All the application lockups I've encountered were related to segfaults
of some sort. If you have the gumption to do so, rebuild mythtv in debug
mode and run mythfronend/backend in gdb.

Follow the instructions on the website for details -
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-18.html#ss18.9

Mark

Re: PVR 250 problems [ In reply to ]

steve.prater at wosc

Jun 9, 2003, 7:38 PM

Post #5 of 5 (1274 views)

Permalink

Quoting Mark Jacob <mjacob1@san.rr.com>:

>

>

> Steve Prater wrote:

> >

> > Just application lockups. I compiled my own kernel but did not include the

>

> > kraxel patch. I'll try that tonight.

> >

> >

>

> All the application lockups I've encountered were related to segfaults

> of some sort. If you have the gumption to do so, rebuild mythtv in debug

> mode and run mythfronend/backend in gdb.

>

> Follow the instructions on the website for details -

> http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-18.html#ss18.9

>

> Mark

>

> _______________________________________________

> mythtv-users mailing list

> mythtv-users@snowman.net

> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

>

Thanks I'm sure this will help. I'll be installing the new version tonight so
I'll try it then.

--

Steve Prater