Re: AverTV Volar HD PRO

[Andrej Podzimek <andrej@podzimek.org>]

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>> Hello,
>>
>> this USB stick (07ca:a835) used to work fine with the 3.0 and 3.1 kernel
>> series, using one of the howtos in this thread:
>> http://forum.ubuntu-it.org/index.php/topic,384436.msg3370690.html
>>
>> However, there were some build errors with my current kernel 3.2.4, so I
>> tried to update the entire media tree instead, as described here:
>> http://git.linuxtv.org/media_build.git
>>
>> Unfortunately, the device doesn't work. These are the dmesg messages
>> that appear after plugging the receiver in:
>>
>>
>> Surprisingly, the tda18218 module doesn't load automatically (I guess it
>> should) and loading it manually doesn't help. So the device doesn't get
>> initialized at all and there are no messages about firmware loading.
>> (The firmware file is in /lib/firmware, of course.)
>>
>> Is it possible to make the device work somehow? The receiver worked fine
>> with older kernels (using the howto from ubuntu-it.org linked above) and
>> the remote controller was usable as well.
>>
>
> Hi Andrej,
> here you can find an updated version of the af9035 patch:
>
> http://openpli.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=openpli/openembedded;a=blob_plain;f=recipes/linux/linux-etxx00/dvb-usb-af9035.patch;hb=HEAD
>
> There are several improvements, including support for newer kernels (3.2
> and 3.3) as well as the current media_build tree.
> I also added the missing "select" directives for the tda18218 and
> mxl5007T tuners, so the modules auto-loads correctly now.
>
> In this version there is no remote support.
>
> Please let me know if it works fine for you.
>
> Regards,
> Gianluca

Hi Gianluca,

the tuner seems to work now. I applied the patch directly to the 3.2.5 kernel, without using the media_build tree. (Is this the correct approach?) Unlike the previous versions of the driver, this one does not keep the tuner hot when inactive. (There must have been a power management issue that is already resolved.)

This is what I see in dmesg:

	usb 3-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 9 using ehci_hcd
	dvb-usb: found a 'Avermedia AverTV Volar HD & HD PRO (A835)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
	dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9035-01.fw'
	dvb-usb: found a 'Avermedia AverTV Volar HD & HD PRO (A835)' in warm state.
	dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
	DVB: registering new adapter (Avermedia AverTV Volar HD & HD PRO (A835))
	af9033: firmware version: LINK:11.15.10.0 OFDM:5.48.10.0
	DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9033 DVB-T)...
	tda18218: NXP TDA18218HN successfully identified.
	dvb-usb: Avermedia AverTV Volar HD & HD PRO (A835) successfully initialized and connected.
	usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_af9035

However, there are still some glitches. Sometimes the initialization fails:

	usb 3-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
	dvb-usb: found a 'Avermedia AverTV Volar HD & HD PRO (A835)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
	dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9035-01.fw'
	af9035: bulk message failed:-71 (6/0)
	af9035: firmware download failed:-71
	dvb_usb_af9035: probe of 3-1.2:1.0 failed with error -71

Unloading the dvb-t modules manually and re-plugging the tuner resolves this. Furthermore, I had two kernel panics today. :-( They seem to occur when the DVB-T signal is poor for a long time. Unfortunately, I didn't have netconsole set up.

An attempt to scan channels in Kaffeine always fails before the progress bar reaches 20% and lots of messages like this appear in dmesg:

	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0047
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0047
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0045
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0048
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0047
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:002c
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0047
	af9035: recv bulk message failed:-110
	af9033: I2C read failed reg:0048

Fortunately, I have another DVB-T tuner (dvb_usb_af9015, MSI DigiVox Mini II V3) that scans channels just fine, so I used that one to obtain the list of channels. Once you have a list of channels, watching TV with the AverTV Volar HD PRO (dvb_usb_af9035) seems to work fine.

Andrej


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