Problem w/ TV card on Linux

[Alex LeDonne]

On 9/3/07, Vaughn Treude <vltreude at deru.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone:
> Here's a question for the MythTV experts in the group.
>
> Here's the background - I had a Hauppage TV card (which I used for video
> capture) running fine under Mandrake 10.  Then the system's motherboard
> died, taking the Hauppage card with it.  I recreated the system on a new
> mobo, installing Mandrake 2005 (mainly because I had a set of those CD's
> laying around.)  So I got everything reinstalled and working on that.  I
> just needed a new TV card.  I recently purchased a Hauppage PVR-150, and
> although the system detects its presence, the card won't work.  I've
> downloaded IVTV drivers for my kernel (the old 0.49 versions for 2.6.11)
> and those load without error, but will not talk to the card.
>
> All of the "how to" instructions I've found so far say you should test
> by doing a "cat" from /dev/video0.  The problem is that on my system
> this device doesn't exist.  One of the "how to" documents said you could
> create the /dev/video* devices manually, which I tried, but they were
> gone after reboot.  So I imagine that udev (if I understand its purpose
> correctly) isn't seeing the card.  Do you think this might indicate that
> the Hauppage might be bad?
>
> Another bit of info: this is a dual-boot system, with Windows 98 on the
> other partition.  I tested the previous TV card first under Windows, and
> it worked right away.  But the drivers that came with the PVR-150 are
> for XP, so although Windows detected and identified the card correctly,
> the drivers wouldn't install.  After some searching, I downloaded a
> driver that might _possibly_ be right for the PVR-150 (it was supposed
> to support all cards with its particular chipset), but they didn't work
> either.  When I try to start WinTV 2000 it says it can't find some sort
> of filter device.  That could mean the card's bad, I suppose, or it
> could just be the wrong driver.
>
> I'm thinking I may be missing some video components on Linux, since it
> doesn't create /dev/video* and I haven't tried a TV card before on this
> install.  But it doesn't seem likely, as I've downloaded and installed
> the many, many video-related packages to get Xine working.  But I'm
> still hopeful that I won't have to return this card.  Any suggestions of
> video-type packages that I might have missed?  (I suppose I could try
> upgrading to kernel 2.6.18 as the IVTV docs suggested, so I can get more
> recent drivers, but I think my problem is more fundamental than that.)
>
> Thanks,
> Vaughn

I'm not a MythTV expert, but I remembered reading something... ah,
here it is. On http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1

"NOTE: There have been reports (2006-12 timeframe) that Hauppauge is
putting the HVR-1600 inside of the PVR-150 box; if you're purchasing a
retail PVR-150, carefully examine the packaging - there should be some
indication that the hardware inside is actually a HVR-1600 and not a
PVR-150."

This is in the bullet point where the HVR-1600 is listed as Not
Working. Are you 100% sure you have a PVR-150? Just one data point to
check.

-A