Ok,
I bought a WinTV HVR-1800 TV card. I can only get video in tvtime. No other apps and no audio. I’m trying to get audio working. I’ve tried motv, xawtv. No audio or video. I tried just about everything I could find regarding this matter on the web. No solutions yet. I was hoping that someone else on this forum has had the same situation/problem. Or could offer some advice on how to deal with this. If you need me to post system information or whatever let me know.
Thanks,
Ezdagor
Which version of openSUSE? We are not clairvoyant (that is, most of us).
openSUSE 12.1
The problem is related to your device having a hardware mpeg2 encoder for the streams captured from analog sources and application compatibility with that, as well as which device node is being read from by the viewing app.
/dev/video0 will be the raw bit stream (i.e. that produced after the analog signal undergoes ADC/digitized)
/dev/video1 will be the mpeg2 stream (i.e. that produced after the raw bit stream is encoded by the device’s onboard hardware into mpeg2)
Tvtime, xawtv (and its derivatives) can’t handle mpeg2 streams … they only handle raw bit streams.
I do not know how the analog audio is being handled on your device, however, by what you have described, it sounds like the signal pathway is straight into the encoder (for both the ADC and mpeg encoding). Not sure why xawtv wouldn’t be able to read the raw video bit stream off of /dev/video0 as tvtime can …
Anyway, you could try one of the analog viewing apps that is compatible with mpeg2 streams. TV-Viewer is a good bet (its a frontend to MPlayer) See: TV Related Software - LinuxTVWiki
Also have a look see here: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800 - LinuxTVWiki
Ok. Thanks for your help. I was able to get VLC working, but I can only get one channel. I’ve tried the “w_scan” utility… no help. How do I create a channel list for VLC?
Again, this is openSUSE 12.1
Thanks,
Ezdagor
Well, I guess I must say that fiddling around with things, i’ve figured that there is no “tuner” to change stations in VLC. I have to open another TV app (tvtime) to change the channel first, before returning to VLC. Is there any way to have some sort of playlist or whatever to list the channels, and be able to choose which channel I want to watch?
Thanks much,
Ezagor
Note that the w_scan frequency scanner is only for finding digital TV sources and won’t work for analog TV sources.
I assume (extrapolating from the previous discussion) that you are using the card with your cable TV line … a number of cable TV providers probably still provide a mix of analog and digital on the line (sounds like your’s still does), though the move to a pure digital transmission by cable providers is slowly taking place.
In regards to VLC, I really don’t know as I haven’t really used it (except for minor experimentation here and there) for many years. I seem to recall that you used to be able to change channels with an analog PVR card – this link describes such, but I think its probably out of date compared to how VLC works now: How to get TV working in VLC with PVR - Sabayon Wiki.
I believe that VLC uses the channels.conf format for digital TV, but not sure what it uses for analog TV (or how you go about creating such a channels list/playlist).
I haven’t used analog TV in a number of years too, so my memory is hazy of that, but you could probably use one of the command line V4L2 apps (like v4l2-ctl) to change channels too.
Well, i’ve come up with a simple solution to change channels. Just create a shell script:
ivtv-tune --channel=$1 --device=/dev/video0
Change channels by running “channel.sh <channel number>”
That’s it. I hope this helps some people who’ve had the same problems as I have. If there are any.
-Ezdagor