Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[a baffian]

Hello all,

Can anyone help to solve the problems of linux driver of "Pinnacle
PCTV Hybrid pro stick" ?
It is an em28xx based hybride (digital and analog TV) USB adapter.

i wrote the complete story of my experiences with it, and its problems
in http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html

Good Luck

Re: Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[a baffian]

Hello all
Is there anyone could find the source of problems described below?
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:08 PM, a baffian <mjnhbg1@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Can anyone help to solve the problems of linux driver of "Pinnacle
> PCTV Hybrid pro stick" ?
> It is an em28xx based hybride (digital and analog TV) USB adapter.
>
> i wrote the complete story of my experiences with it, and its problems
> in http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html
>
> Good Luck
>

Re: Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em 12-05-2011 11:12, a baffian escreveu:
> Hello all
> Is there anyone could find the source of problems described below?
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html

Most of the comments and logs there provide not much help. As I told
you before, you're mixing clearly userspace issues or limitations with
kernel-related ones. For example, there's nothing we can do at driver
level to make kaffeine to perform better when decoding an MPEG-2 stream
at full screen mode. This is probably either a performance issue with
your GPU card or it is just that you're using a software decoder for it,
on a slow CPU. Some applications allow, with a few GPU types, to run the
MPEG-2 decoder inside the GPU.

Yet, there's one relevant information there:

3- And even with kaffeine, the only way that i could watch some TV, was in this manner: Before this DVB-stick i inserted another DVB-USB stick in another linux computer and scan the channels with kaffeine and after finding the channels, quit the kaffeine and copy its database files ( $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kaffeine/* ) into the testing computer for pinnacle DVB-USB hybrid stick. After that copying, i could run kaffeine on the pinnacle DVB and without scanning, thus i had a table of channels and in its main window and when i clicked on a channel, that channel was shown.

You mentioned that you did another dvb stick worked, but on another computer.
Why such dvb stick didn't work at the computer you tested your Pinnacle
device?

Also, does the working stick is capable of getting the dvb channels using the
scan tool provided at http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps? If so, please provide us
the dmesg produced with the working card and the scan results (with -v, in order
to put dvb scan into verbose mode), and the same info with the broken card.

Thanks,
Mauro

> 
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:08 PM, a baffian <mjnhbg1@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> Can anyone help to solve the problems of linux driver of "Pinnacle
>> PCTV Hybrid pro stick" ?
>> It is an em28xx based hybride (digital and analog TV) USB adapter.
>>
>> i wrote the complete story of my experiences with it, and its problems
>> in http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html
>>
>> Good Luck
>>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-media" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[a baffian]

Hello Mauro and thanks for your sentences
But:

1- For such experienced programmer as you, it is obvious from
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem2 , that when no
any software could scan the channels, thus at least one important
problem is in the kernel side, isn't it?
If the problems are only in the userspace, at least one of many good
softwares such as mentioned here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem1 could find the
channels during scanning, aren't they?

2- you mentioned "most of the comments and logs there provide not much
help", i can provide any other help and comment and logs and tests of
new changes in driver sources that you want, as i did about 12 days
ago for "Devin Heitmueller" during a chat session in #linux-tv of
irc.freenode.net.

3- you mentioned some about my performance complaints, but if you read
this part of my writings:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#c1 you can find the power
of my testing hardware is reasonably very very higher than needed by
tv showing applications, and the Nvidia-G9500-GT graphic card is more
famous than we can relate the problems to its miss functioning, isn't
it?

4- i inserted the scan result of another DVB-stick that i had, here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/channels.conf for you , but i had not
that DVB-stick now for testing again. it had the afatech-9015 chip set
and could find my all 25 digital channel in any linux box by any here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem1 mentioned
software. The only problem with that afatech based DVB was 2 : it
could not play the sounds of digital channels except one of digital-TV
channels i explained about it here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-h and here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-d and here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-e and here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-g , any second problem:
it was not the analog TV capable.

5- and again the above mentioned paragraph (4) prove that most of
problems is in the kernel space not userspace, because that afatech
based DVB-stick could find all 25 digital channels during scan and
play the by all of mentioned software, and only one of problems is the
same as Pinnacle's one: the problem of sounds of that 13 digital tv
channel.

At end i again tell that, i am in the #linux-tv chat room as dast53
for speaking to solving those problems.

Thanks all

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
<maurochehab@gmail.com> wrote:
> Em 12-05-2011 11:12, a baffian escreveu:
>> Hello all
>> Is there anyone could find the source of problems described below?
>> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html
>
> Most of the comments and logs there provide not much help. As I told
> you before, you're mixing clearly userspace issues or limitations with
> kernel-related ones. For example, there's nothing we can do at driver
> level to make kaffeine to perform better when decoding an MPEG-2 stream
> at full screen mode. This is probably either a performance issue with
> your GPU card or it is just that you're using a software decoder for it,
> on a slow CPU. Some applications allow, with a few GPU types, to run the
> MPEG-2 decoder inside the GPU.
>
> Yet, there's one relevant information there:
>
> 3- And even with kaffeine, the only way that i could watch some TV, was in this manner: Before this DVB-stick i inserted another DVB-USB stick in another linux computer and scan the channels with kaffeine and after finding the channels, quit the kaffeine and copy its database files ( $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kaffeine/* ) into the testing computer for pinnacle DVB-USB hybrid stick. After that copying, i could run kaffeine on the pinnacle DVB and without scanning, thus i had a table of channels and in its main window and when i clicked on a channel, that channel was shown.
>
> You mentioned that you did another dvb stick worked, but on another computer.
> Why such dvb stick didn't work at the computer you tested your Pinnacle
> device?
>
> Also, does the working stick is capable of getting the dvb channels using the
> scan tool provided at http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps? If so, please provide us
> the dmesg produced with the working card and the scan results (with -v, in order
> to put dvb scan into verbose mode), and the same info with the broken card.
>
> Thanks,
> Mauro
>
>>
>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:08 PM, a baffian <mjnhbg1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> Can anyone help to solve the problems of linux driver of "Pinnacle
>>> PCTV Hybrid pro stick" ?
>>> It is an em28xx based hybride (digital and analog TV) USB adapter.
>>>
>>> i wrote the complete story of my experiences with it, and its problems
>>> in http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html
>>>
>>> Good Luck
>>>
>> --
>> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-media" in
>> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
>

Re: Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em 14-05-2011 13:19, a baffian escreveu:
> Hello Mauro and thanks for your sentences
> But:
> 
> 1- For such experienced programmer as you, it is obvious from

First of all, if you need some help, please change your tone, as it
seems a little offensive. We all are volunteers, and, while we spend
some of our spare time to help people, we expect that the people
to be nice and answer with technical information that will allow us
to help,.

> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem2 , that when no
> any software could scan the channels, thus at least one important
> problem is in the kernel side, isn't it?

You told you tested it with two cards, having different results.
Without the debug logs from both cards, there's no way to identify
what's happening.

> If the problems are only in the userspace, at least one of many good
> softwares such as mentioned here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem1 could find the
> channels during scanning, aren't they?

No. The scan procedure happens partially on userspace and partially on
kernelspace. It is userspace task to decode the MPEG-TS and seek for
for the Program Identifiers.

> 2- you mentioned "most of the comments and logs there provide not much
> help", i can provide any other help and comment and logs and tests of
> new changes in driver sources that you want, as i did about 12 days
> ago for "Devin Heitmueller" during a chat session in #linux-tv of
> irc.freenode.net.

Ok. Then please provide the logs for the both cards, showing what happens
during the scan. We need "scan -v" log and the kernel logs (the command to
get it is: dmesg). Please enable frontend, em28xx and af9015 debug logs,
for us to know what the kernel is doing.

> 3- you mentioned some about my performance complaints, but if you read
> this part of my writings:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#c1 you can find the power
> of my testing hardware is reasonably very very higher than needed by
> tv showing applications, and the Nvidia-G9500-GT graphic card is more
> famous than we can relate the problems to its miss functioning, isn't
> it?

It doesn't matter what Nvidia card you're using. The more expensive
process is the MPEG decoding. If that happens on userspace, it is your
CPU that will be used. HD streams require too much CPU. With the right
software and the right video board driver, this task could be send to
the Graphics card (GPU), by using an API (like vdpau), but not all 
software supports, and it requires a GPU-accelerated codec for the
video standard (typically, mpeg2). I'm not sure if Kaffeine currently 
offers GPU-accelerated mpeg2 codec, and if the nouveau or the Nvidia 
proprietary driver is compatible with Kaffeine's GPU's codecs.

> 4- i inserted the scan result of another DVB-stick that i had, here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/channels.conf for you , but i had not
> that DVB-stick now for testing again. it had the afatech-9015 chip set
> and could find my all 25 digital channel in any linux box by any here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem1 mentioned
> software.

It is interesting to see the logs for the af9015 device, and see
what is it doing different than the Pinnacle one.

> The only problem with that afatech based DVB was 2 : it
> could not play the sounds of digital channels except one of digital-TV
> channels i explained about it here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-h and here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-d and here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-e and here:
> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#p-g ,

>From your descriptions, it seems that the program identifiers sent by
the TV stations are wrong, or the userspace application is getting it wrong.
Basically, each MPEG-TS stream has several PID's. each of them can have
an audio or a video stream (there are also other types, but those two are
the rellevant ones). The video and audio stream should be associated, otherwise,
you won't be able to hear audio.

There is another alternative: eventually, your country is using an audio
codec that it is currently unsupported (or it requires you to install one
additional libarary and re-compile your application).

> any second problem:
> it was not the analog TV capable.
> 
> 5- and again the above mentioned paragraph (4) prove that most of
> problems is in the kernel space not userspace, because that afatech
> based DVB-stick could find all 25 digital channels during scan and
> play the by all of mentioned software, and only one of problems is the
> same as Pinnacle's one: the problem of sounds of that 13 digital tv
> channel.

Probably, but hard to know without having both logs to compare.

> At end i again tell that, i am in the #linux-tv chat room as dast53
> for speaking to solving those problems.

I'm traveling abroad this entire week, and next week I'll be handling 
the pending work. Also, as the merge window will probably be opened next
week, I'll be busy submitting the patches we have upstream. So,
unfortunately, it is unlikely that I'll have time soon to help debugging
a driver via irc.

Thanks,
Mauro.

Re: Problems of Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid pro stick in linux

[a baffian]

Hello and thanks

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 10:16 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
<maurochehab@gmail.com> wrote:
> Em 14-05-2011 13:19, a baffian escreveu:
>> Hello Mauro and thanks for your sentences
>> But:
>>
>> 1- For such experienced programmer as you, it is obvious from
>
> First of all, if you need some help, please change your tone, as it
> seems a little offensive. We all are volunteers, and, while we spend
> some of our spare time to help people, we expect that the people
> to be nice and answer with technical information that will allow us
> to help,.
>
>> http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/problem.html#problem2 , that when no
>> any software could scan the channels, thus at least one important
>> problem is in the kernel side, isn't it?
>
i excuse you for the first sentence, but i still don't know what was
bad during my above paragraph, and i excuse you again. ( i thought
that the experienced programmer is a good adjective. )

i provided some of logs you told: the log of dmesg during inserting
the Pinnacle's DVB-Stick and output of "scan -v" and some others here:
http://daftar.minidns.net/pctv/some-log1.zip . This file has a file
named readme-first.txt containing description of its contents.

i will try to provide again the afatech-9015 based DVB-stick to find
the logs you want about it.

>> At end i again tell that, i am in the #linux-tv chat room as dast53
>> for speaking to solving those problems.
>
> I'm traveling abroad this entire week, and next week I'll be handling
> the pending work. Also, as the merge window will probably be opened next
> week, I'll be busy submitting the patches we have upstream. So,
> unfortunately, it is unlikely that I'll have time soon to help debugging
> a driver via irc.
>
i can wait to you to return from your traveling.

thanks