PVR-350 and the pvr250 port - report

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:01:42 -0500
"Rick C. Petty" <rick-freebsd at kiwi-computer.com> wrote:

> I thought the -m option was tha channel set for if you specify a

Yes, that's what the '-m' option is for. It's just a leftover from
earlier testing with channel sets.

> channel (not a frequency)?  You've already set the geometry and
> selected the input in the first command.  What happens if you remove
> the "-m 4" option?

Nothing. :-)
Ie, the setchannel command work as good or as bad as before.

> AFAICT, whenever you set the frequency, the tuner resets itself, so it
> doesn't matter whether that frequency was working previously.  As
> usleepless suggested, it sounds like an AFC problem.  Maybe AFC isn't
> working correctly?

I'm just reporting my experience, I haven't (at this point at least)
got any clue to what is causng this behaviour.
Perhaps, AFC isn't working properly - impossible to tell. I do know
that adding '-a on' or -a off' to the setchannel command don't change
anything, AFAICT.

> The seek fails because of some buffering problem between mplayer and
> the device.  I've had a terrible time getting this to work.  Try this

I will hasten to point out her that 'mplayer /dev/cxm0' works *most* of
the time. It fails in perhaps one of five attempts.

> 	cat /dev/cxm0 > somefile.mpg &
> 	mplayer somefile.mpg

For some reason, this command fails more often (2 out of 3 attempts)
than the other command.

> and I'll bet your seek problems will disappear (until you seek past
> the end of the stream, obviously).

How much did you bet? :-)
Seriously, my guess is that the failures are related to this message
in /var/log/messages:
Oct 12 18:00:04 kg-quiet kernel: cxm0: encoder dma not enough buffer space free
Oct 12 18:00:04 kg-quiet last message repeated 21 times

> This sounds like an AFC problem.  Try the setchannel with "-a on" and
> make sure to do the cat & mplayer separately.

I've tried, it doesn't change anything.
Today, the pictures are  better than yesterday. Reason unknown.
-- 
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen