WinTV Express in Ubuntu 6.10

pickarooney

I bought a WinTV Express card with a BT878 tuner last week and stuck it in my PC. I tried installing a series of TV utilities until I found one that worked - sort of. TVTime tuned in and displayed 7 channels but with no sound. I've since tried to follow instructions on a load of different sites, but have just ended up confusing myself and screwing up the installation to the point where I have no longer any picture (and still no sound) and don't know whether I'm coming or going in terms of modules, drivers etc.

I'm trying to install on Ubuntu 6.10

Can anyone help me install the thing in simple terms?
Tell me what dmesg or other output I need to post up if necessary.
Thanks.

niallb

Hi P,
You might try modprobe snd-bt87x.
This could give you an extra mixer device you can then use.

I had one of those cards, and you'll have to either take a cable from
line out on the TV card to line in on your soundcard, or add a
module to get a mixer activated for the TV card.


modinfo bttv or modinfo snd-bt87xwill give you all the possible options. Make sure the card type is correctly selected.

TVtime is great when everything is working,
but it'll hide anything that isn't working fully.
I'd suggest the old xawtv while you get it there.


Good luck with it,
NiallB

PS, are you using it for PAL Ireland or something a little more unusual?

pickarooney

niallb wrote:

Hi P,
You might try modprobe snd-bt87x.
This could give you an extra mixer device you can then use.

I had one of those cards, and you'll have to either take a cable from
line out on the TV card to line in on your soundcard, or add a
module to get a mixer activated for the TV card.


modinfo bttv or modinfo snd-bt87xwill give you all the possible options. Make sure the card type is correctly selected.

TVtime is great when everything is working,
but it'll hide anything that isn't working fully.
I'd suggest the old xawtv while you get it there.


Good luck with it,
NiallB

PS, are you using it for PAL Ireland or something a little more unusual?

Cheers Niall

XAWTV doesn't like me at all. It says

This is xawtv-3.95, running on Linux/i686 (2.6.17-10-386)
xinerama 0: 1024x768+0+0
xinerama 1: 1024x768+0+0
X Error of failed request:  XF86DGANoDirectVideoMode
  Major opcode of failed request:  136 (XFree86-DGA)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  1 (XF86DGAGetVideoLL)
  Serial number of failed request:  67
  Current serial number in output stream:  67

when I try to run it, which is a little strange as I'm not using XFree but Xorg.

The TV signal is SECAM, France's unwelcome contribution to the world of TV.
I'll figure the sound-to-soundcard bit out as soon as I get some kind of audio signal directly from the line-out of the TV card to my headphones, the rest should be just a case of fiddling. As it is though, I've lost both video and audio reception.
I'll have a play with modinfo.

AFAIK, the card model is 10 and the tuner 2 (so dmesg tells me) but I can't remove the bttv module to reinsert it with different parameters:

 modprobe -r bttv
FATAL: Module bttv is in use.