[mythtvnz] HVR3000

Mon Jun 1 23:25:20 BST 2009

This is what I do each time I update the kernel. I would skip the firmware step as the latest firmware for the card kills it.

Introduction

The Hauppauge HVR-4000 and WinTV-NOVA-HD (aka HVR-4000 lite) cards are the best cards to buy when you want to view DVB-S *and* DVB-S2 under Linux and in combination with VDR.

These cards don't seem to have problems with locking of several DVB-S2 transponders and they switch quite fast. And I didn't encounter any problems where I had to change the frequency a couple of Mhz up or down. While the Technotrend S2-3200 (aka Skystar HD, KNC1 DVB-S2(+) TV Station and Satelco DVB-S2 Easywatch/TV Station) or Skystar HD2 (aka Azurewave AD SP400 CI and TerraTec Cinergy S2 PCI HD CI) seems cheaper and are better available, they seem to have various problems and strange behaviour.

If you want to use VDR and view DVB-S2, be sure to get these cards! I've used several DVB-S2 cards with VDR, and the Hauppauge are the beste and most stable by far!

DISCLAIMER: First I want to make one thing very clear. While this HOWTO allows you to get the DVB card running, I won't go into detail how you can install the compilation suite or other programs on your Linux system. I personally think that Linux knowledge is important before you continue to use Linux as your OS or as your primary DVB frontend.

Now, let's begin to get this card working :) I use Xubuntu 8.04 myself. So it can be that some locations are for Ubuntu. Be sure to check your own distribution for the correct locations. Furthermore, I use the location /usr/local/src as the default directory. You can offcourse use an other location.

1. Firmware

Before you can use the card, you need to extract the firmware to use it for receiving DVB-S or DVB-S2 channels. To do this, we make use of the Win32 based driver and extract the firmware from it. This extraction is for regular x86 or x86-64 based installations and you don't need the 64-bit driver to get it running on x86-64 based systems!

Code:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://www.wintvcd.co.uk/drivers/88x_2_122_26109_WHQL.zip
unzip -jo 88x_2_122_26109_WHQL.zip Driver88/hcw88bda.sys
dd if=hcw88bda.sys of=dvb-fe-cx24116.fw skip=75504 bs=1 count=32501
cp dvb-fe-cx24116.fw /lib/firmware/

That's it, the firmware is in place. Now we can proceed to the drivers.

2. Drivers

For viewing DVB-S2 channels, you require the use of multiproto. It's the new DVB-api from Linuxtv.org but it's because of it's state (unstable and it changes standards quite frequently) not implemnted in the default kernel.

To skip the procedures of constant patching (and breaking with newer revisions) I use Igor M. Liplianin's repo. This person has a repo to make our life easier so that we don't have to constant patch our multiproto pulls :)

Code:

cd /usr/local/src
hg clone http://mercurial.intuxication.org/hg/liplianindvb/
cd liplianindvb
cd linux/include/linux
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`/include/linux/compiler.h ./
cd ../../../
make
make install
depmod -a

After this, you can just reboot. The card should be detected during boot (use dmesg for output):

Code:

[   41.018787] cx88[0]: subsystem: 0070:6906, board: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR4000(Lite) DVB-S/S2 [card=69,autodetected]
[   41.737016] tveeprom 0-0050: TV standards ATSC/DVB Digital (eeprom 0x80)
[   41.930130] cx88[0]/2: subsystem: 0070:6906, board: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR4000(Lite) DVB-S/S2 [card=69]
[   41.930133] cx88[0]/2: cx2388x based DVB/ATSC card
[   42.171881] DVB: registering new adapter (cx88[0])
[   42.171889] DVB: registering frontend 0 (Conexant CX24116/CX24118)...

A simple check, is the dmesg output and to see if the dvb directory exists in the /dev part of the Linux operating system. If they are there, then your card works!

After this, you can use your favorite DVB application. While most applications only allow DVB-S, some like VDR and MythTV allow the viewing of DVB-S2 with the correct patches. But this will be an other tutorial.

________________________________

From: mythtvnz-bounces at lists.linuxnut.co.nz on behalf of Barry Clearwater
Sent: Mon 1/06/2009 12:05 p.m.
To: MythTV in NZ
Subject: [mythtvnz] HVR3000

I have pulled out an old Hauppauge HVR3000 to get it working, followed a number of howtos on the web and have some functionality. Cannot however seem to find the HD terrestrial tuner, or may be missing something.  Has anyone got this successfully working on  NZ frequencies?
Also, which Terrestrial Digital card would you buy if adding Hi Def to an existing mythbox with reasonable performance in a dual core machine.
Cheers
Barry

-- 

Barry Clearwater 
Email: barryc at bcsystems.co.nz

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