[mythtvnz] Pixellation Every ~ 20 minutes

[Curtis Walker]

> After fixing some reception issues with a home-made folded dipole, I noticed
> a similar problem with pixellation approximately every 20 minutes.
>
> I believe this Pixellation problem may have been due to missing
> firmware. Specifically, my system was not loading the firmware for the
> tda10048
> devices. It was successfully loading the saa7164, and tda18271 firmware,
> however
> the tda10048 firmware file was missing.
>
> I downloaded HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip, and extract.sh from:
>
> http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/
>
> Then extracted the file dvb-fe-tda10048-1.0.fw using extract.sh, and copied
> the
> firnmware file to lib/firmware.
>
> Since then I have made four recordings with no pixellation issues
> whatsoever.
>
> The Linuxtv.org wiki describes the tda10048 as a DVB-T demodulator.
>
> I am not completely convinced that the pixellation issue was caused by this
> missing firmware file. However results so far are encouraging.
>
> What I don't understand is if this was the cause of the pixellation issue,
> how then did the card manage to work while an apparently important component
> - the tda10048 - was not actually functioning?
>
> The tda10048 firmware loading failure was in the last block of dmesg output,
> so this
> should be easy to spot on your system.
>
>
> Cheers,
> John.
>
>
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Sonofa....

This might just be it! When I moved to an SSD a few months back I now
recall that I didn't re-install the extra firmwares you mention above.
I didn't think they were needed - and in my case, my logs didn't
indicate that any further firmware was missing:

[    3.956888] saa7164 driver loaded
[    3.957546] CORE saa7164[0]: subsystem: 0070:8953, board: Hauppauge
WinTV-HVR2200 [card=10,autodetected]
[    3.957550] saa7164[0]/0: found at 0000:0a:00.0, rev: 129, irq: 19,
latency: 0, mmio: 0xf7c00000
[    4.089158] saa7164_downloadfirmware() no first image
[    4.090290] saa7164_downloadfirmware() Waiting for firmware upload
(NXP7164-2010-03-10.1.fw)
[    4.107311] saa7164_downloadfirmware() firmware read 4019072 bytes.
[    4.107316] saa7164_downloadfirmware() firmware loaded.
[    4.107328] saa7164_downloadfirmware() SecBootLoader.FileSize = 4019072
[    4.107335] saa7164_downloadfirmware() FirmwareSize = 0x1fd6
[    4.107337] saa7164_downloadfirmware() BSLSize = 0x0
[    4.107339] saa7164_downloadfirmware() Reserved = 0x0
[    4.107341] saa7164_downloadfirmware() Version = 0x1661c00
[   10.901448] saa7164_downloadimage() Image downloaded, booting...
[   11.004510] saa7164_downloadimage() Image booted successfully.
[   12.880528] saa7164_downloadimage() Image downloaded, booting...
[   14.942830] saa7164_downloadimage() Image booted successfully.
[   14.989769] saa7164[0]: Warning: Unknown Hauppauge model #89009
[   14.991079] saa7164[0]: Hauppauge eeprom: model=89009
[   15.294023] DVB: registering new adapter (saa7164)
[   15.294031] saa7164 0000:0a:00.0: DVB: registering adapter 0
frontend 0 (NXP TDA10048HN DVB-T)...
[   17.844624] DVB: registering new adapter (saa7164)
[   17.844632] saa7164 0000:0a:00.0: DVB: registering adapter 1
frontend 0 (NXP TDA10048HN DVB-T)...

So - I downloaded and extracted the firmwares, installed to
/usr/lib/firmware/ and although - as the above log shows - it doesn't
appear to load - no pixellation after 55 minutes! I suspect the
no-load messages are because the HVR-2210 variant (0070:8953) is not
properly recognised by the kernel (unknown model #89009). The lack of
this error made diagnosis more difficult than it otherwise would have
been.

I'm also not sure what the "demodulator" does - but whatever it is, it
seems decidedly important.

Early days - but this would explain the approximate time over which
I've been having the problem. If this holds up, I've got a forum
how-to that needs updating over at the Arch forum!