[pvrusb2] Unable to play video

[Mike Isely]

On Sat, 3 Feb 2007, Phudgee wrote:

> 
> I'm not sure what I need to do. I've tried many other TV apps (TvTime,
> KDETV, kplayer) and they all have issues, so I'm inclined to think it's
> something with the driver install, and not so much a particular application.

TvTime will likely never work with this driver, due to the fact that it 
does not handle mpeg decoding.

KDETV is primarily a DVB application not a V4L application.  I've heard 
that it can be coaxed to work, but I would not use that to judge the 
configuration of the driver.

> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions, as to how I can get this working?

If you just plugged the device in and then ran mplayer, then who knows 
what the heck you are tuning.  The driver will start in TV mode with the 
frequency set to correspond to US broadcast channel 7, however if there 
is no such station in your area (or you don't have an antenna connected) 
then you're going to have problems.  You need to tune the device.

If tuning problems are suspected, consider trying the composite or 
s-video input.  (Hook up a VCR or a DVD player to that input.)  That 
operates downstream of the RF section so if you can get that to work 
then you know that the remaining problem(s) are tuning related.  You can 
use the sysfs interface to control the input selection.

The fact that the driver is reporting successful initialization is a 
good sign.  For that to happen the driver has to be successfully talking 
to the device and both the FX2 and the encoder's firmware had to have 
been successfully loaded.  You might still have issues with some of the 
chip-level drivers that need to attach, but a cursory glance at your 
log output suggests that the right modules are connecting into the 
driver for a 24xxx device.

Another thing you can do is just "cat /dev/video >/tmp/foo.mpg".  Then 
from another window see if that file's size is growing.  If mplayer is 
sticking then I would expect this file to remain at 0 bytes, but if the 
file is getting data then I would start looking at your mplayer 
configuration.  Note also that you can of course then take /tmp/foo.mpg 
and just pump that into mplayer later.

  -Mike

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