Help installing PCTV 340e USB tuner (was working in 12.3)

English Hardware
#1

I have this USB tuner and with 12.3 to get it to work I had to copy the firmware file by hand in the /lib/firmware directory but otherwise was fine. I did an upgrade to 13.1 (not a fresh install) and now when I plug the tuner in I get from dmesg the output that the device is recognized, firmware is loaded and finally the messsage “dvb-usb: Pinnacle PCTV 340e HD Pro USB Stick successfully initialized and connected.”

However, no symlinks appear in /dev or /dev/v4l pointing to the device. Note that I have also a webcam that is correctly recognized whose links appear correctly in /dev, so in general v4l seems to be healthy.

Any clues on how to troubleshoot this?

#2

Anything useful show up in

dmesg|tail

after you plug it in?

From a quick search, I note some references to ‘/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0’ (or similar) being created by the driver.

#3

This is what I get when I plug the USB stick. Everything seems to be correct, no errors, but no links appear anywhere (such as in /dev/v4l or /dev/videoX)

  122.496021] usb 1-6: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
  122.610926] usb 1-6: New USB device found, idVendor=2304, idProduct=023d
  122.610930] usb 1-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
  122.610933] usb 1-6: Product: PCTV 340e
  122.610936] usb 1-6: Manufacturer: YUANRD
  122.610938] usb 1-6: SerialNumber: 0B009592B7
  122.676045] dvb-usb: found a 'Pinnacle PCTV 340e HD Pro USB Stick' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
  122.719821] dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw'
  122.920294] dib0700: firmware started successfully.
  123.421182] dvb-usb: found a 'Pinnacle PCTV 340e HD Pro USB Stick' in warm state.
  123.421248] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
  123.421322] DVB: registering new adapter (Pinnacle PCTV 340e HD Pro USB Stick)
  124.214301] usb 1-6: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (DiBcom 7000PC)...
  124.253042] xc4000 4-0061: creating new instance
  124.258172] xc4000: Successfully identified at address 0x61
  124.258174] xc4000: Firmware has not been loaded previously
  124.307009] Registered IR keymap rc-dib0700-rc5
  124.307142] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-6/rc/rc0/input10
  124.307208] rc0: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-6/rc/rc0
  124.307310] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 50 msecs.
  124.307316] dvb-usb: Pinnacle PCTV 340e HD Pro USB Stick successfully initialized and connected.
  124.307515] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_dib0700
#4

Additional info, yes you’re right, when the device is plugged in I have also


ls -la /dev/dvb/adapter0/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     120 feb 10 17:24 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root      60 feb 10 17:24 ..
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 212, 0 feb 10 17:24 demux0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 212, 1 feb 10 17:24 dvr0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 212, 3 feb 10 17:24 frontend0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 212, 2 feb 10 17:24 net0

And the vendor and product info matches the DVD stick as it appears on /sys/dev/char/212:0/device. So it looks like these block devices are being created pointing at the DVB-T USB stick.

Perhaps this is something that has changed with 13.1? Because in 12.3 apps were looking for (and finding) video devices in /dev/v4l or /dev/videoX I realize I don’t know which component is/was responsible for creating these links?

#5

Replying to myself, the entries in /dev/dvb/adapter0 are for the plugged in Webcam, not for the DVB-T device.

#6

Again, replying to myself. Maybe it is too late in the day, these entries in /dev/dvb are indeed correct and related to the DVB-T. They even appear and disappear as I plug and unplug the DVB-T stick.

#7

The following two links should provide some background for you that is relevant to your hybrid device:

124.258174] xc4000: Firmware has not been loaded previously
Do you have the firmware for the xc4000 in your /lib/firmware directory?

#8

Thanks for the links, and according to these everything seems correctly created in /dev/dvb/adapter0 when I plug the device . Still not clear why kaffeine can’t find the device. Everything is ok in theory yet kaffeine does not identify the DVB-T tuner, and in 12.3 was working perfectly. The dmesg output

  122.719821] dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw' 
  122.920294] dib0700: firmware started successfully.

seems to imply that the firmware is loaded correctly (in my system is located in /lib/firmware)

#9

Some progress: I found that when I scanned for channels in Kaffeine dmesg was showing some nasty driver messages related to the xc4000 module. I was -naively- using the 1.4.1 firmware after reading from kernellabs that it was the latest one. After replacing it with the 1.4 firmware the ugly driver crashes are gone and kaffeine recognizes the device and scans for channels from end to end.

Does not find any, however. The SNR stays at 1% during all the scan.

#10

Are you in a position to test this device within a windows environment (just to eliminate potential reception issues)?

#11

I’ve checked with another antenna cable, and with a TV set plugged on the same cable being able to tune all stations it seems that the problem is somewhere between the device and my screen.

However, installing the windows software would mean hours to set up all the Pinnacle suite, leaving my Windows partition littered with all kinds of unwanted things and taking a few hours. Probably Pinnacle does this with their best intentions, but in order to simply being able to watch TV on your PC they make you install a full suite able to time shift, record, and do a lot of things with the video signal.

Maybe if I get very, very frustrated I will try it on Windows, but for now I prefer to explore other possibilities. I read in the kernellabs site that loading the wrong firmware file may very well brick your device, so it could be that it is not going to work under Windows anyway.

#12

I’m not sure that this is an openSUSE-specific issue. I think your best chance of success with this might be to cast your net wider eg mailing list support at http://linuxtv.org/lists.php

#13

A thought I just had: is the user a member of the ‘video’ group?

#14

Yes, it is.

#15

Update: tested in Windows 7 and it works. I managed to download just the drivers and some Media Center extensions, just enough to be able to use Media Center to watch live TV.

One thing that I noticed was that the channel scan took much, much longer than the default Kaffeine timeout. Tried again with a longer timeout with Kaffeine and the result is the same: no channels found.

#16

On Thu 13 Feb 2014 12:16:01 AM CST, barbolani wrote:

Update: tested in Windows 7 and it works. I managed to download just the
drivers and some Media Center extensions, just enough to be able to use
Media Center to watch live TV.

One thing that I noticed was that the channel scan took much, much
longer than the default Kaffeine timeout. Tried again with a longer
timeout with Kaffeine and the result is the same: no channels found.

Hi
Have you tried a command line scan, I use the followingn(US based)?


scan /usr/share/dvb/atsc/us-NTSC-center-frequencies-8VSB -o zap | tee ~/channels.conf

You would need to adjust for your locale.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) GNOME 3.10.2 Kernel 3.11.10-7-desktop
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please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

#17

Okay, good to know.

One thing that I noticed was that the channel scan took much, much longer than the default Kaffeine timeout. Tried again with a longer timeout with Kaffeine and the result is the same: no channels found.

I wonder if an alternative DVB viewer is worth trying eg me-tv or vlc perhaps?

#18

Thanks for your suggestion. Tried that and same result: no channels found. I’m startint to think that it is not an OpenSUSE specific issue, as mentioned by another post.

#19

Tried both, same result: no channels found.

#20

Found this in the LinuxTV wiki (http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:Pinnacle_PCTV_Hybrid_Pro_Stick_340e) … “*under ubuntu 13.10 tunning works fine when when bootin with kernel version 3.8 but when using the standard kernel (version 3.11 ) tzap is unable to get a lock, there don’t appear to be any error messeges”
*
So looks like it is a generic problem with kernel 3.11 version. Sigh. Thanks to everyone that tried to help.