Arch Linux

robot5x

Member

Registered: 2004-01-26

Posts: 266

TV card - no sound

I just got myself a Hauppuage WinTV pci card - basically I can get a picture but I can't hear anything except white noise. I thought I would be able to use the well-developed bttv driver but they changed the chipset so I have to use cx8800 which apparently is not so mature.
I'm running my own 2.6.5 kernel and have all the v4l stuff compiled as modules - when I do modprobe cx8800 it seems to load fine (there's no errors in dmesg) and I get a /dev/v4l/video0.
What I've tried:-
1. I have connected the audio out on the tv card to the line input of my sound card. I have the correct settings under aumix to hear the line input.
2. I can still play audio files with no problem while tvtime is running - if ALSA was being used there would be an error message between the two apps (I guess).
3. I tried various insmod parameters but it just causes fatal errors.
4. v4l-conf gives me this -
   v4l-conf: using X11 display :0.0
   dga: version 2.0
   mode: 1024x768, depth=24, bpp=32, bpl=4096, base=0xd0000000
   /dev/v4l/video0 [v4l2]: no overlay support
5. When I start xawtv I get this message -
   v4l-conf had some trouble, trying to continue anyway
6. I plugged my hifi directly into the audio out of the tv card but still no
sound.
7. It was also suggested to me that I load the tda9887 module, but it didn't help.
Maybe the cx8800 driver is just not that great - more likely I'm doing something wrong. If anyone has a working set-up (especially if they use this driver) I'd appreciate hearing what they did to get it working.

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,896

Website

Re: TV card - no sound

Hi,

http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/bttv.html

It says for 2.6 kernels.....

Does it work running as root ??

HTH

Mr Green

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Mr Green

robot5x

Member

Registered: 2004-01-26

Posts: 266

Re: TV card - no sound

Thanks Greeno but the bttv module is only for the bt878 chipsets - I have to use the cx8800 module.
At the mo, I'm running it all as root - I want to get the darn thing working before I muck around with permissions.

morphus

Member

From: Braunschweig

Registered: 2003-08-06

Posts: 145

Re: TV card - no sound

modprobe tuner type=1
modprobe bttv card=39
#tvtime-scanner --norm=PAL
tvtime --norm=PAL -fcustom

that's how I start my tv-card. Perhaps you should try something with the tuner module...
xawtv is not working for me, I think because of the xfree 4.4 update. Since tvtime is doing fine, I don't care

Mr Green

Forum Fellow

From: U.K.

Registered: 2003-12-21

Posts: 5,896

Website

Re: TV card - no sound

http://hauppauge.com/pages/support_pci_boards.html  :?:

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Mr Green

hkctr

Member

Registered: 2003-09-10

Posts: 26

Re: TV card - no sound

Don't know if any of this applies to you but FWIW -

If your tv-tuner card has an internal audio out jack, use a 4-pin audio cable and connect it directly to you sound card aux input.  This works better than connecting the sound externally with the patch cord.  Some cards have this feature and some don't.

Is your sound card built into the motherboard?  If you have 5.1 audio set-up, most boards will change the audio-in/mic jack to a sub-woofer/surround speaker jack.  Obviously, this will render the audio-in/mic jack useless unless you change it back to the default setting.

robot5x

Member

Registered: 2004-01-26

Posts: 266

Re: TV card - no sound

Thanks for the tips guys, but I just checked the kernel documentation and it doesn't look good -

video
        Basically works.  Some minor quality glitches.  For now
        only capture, overlay support isn't completed yet.

audio
        Doesn't work.  Also the chip specs for the on-chip TV sound
        decoder are next to useless :-/

That's pretty conclusive! Maybe there is an update for this driver but if not it looks like I'll have to buy a card based on the bt878 chipset. Bah.

evan

Member

Registered: 2004-03-27

Posts: 2

Re: TV card - no sound

I've got an ATI TV Wonder Pro based on the same chipset.  I had the same problem with the stock cx88 kernel module.  There were two problems: 1) audio would not route to the line out on the TV card, 2) volume control on my cx8800 chip was inverted (max = 0; mute = 255).

I had to go into Windows, get a register dump of the card, patch the module source code to load those magic settings, then lock the volume at 0.

It works fine now.

robot5x

Member

Registered: 2004-01-26

Posts: 266

Re: TV card - no sound

Thanks for the tip evan, it was interesting to hear - unfortunately, I dumped the card for a Grandtec bt878 already...still having some problems with this one, but it's all part of the fun (!)