HOWTO - Using MythTV with the HDTV AirStar HD-5000

[digita1b0y]

Look below. could not access my account earlier.

[digitalb0y]

Using Clear QAM Cable with the AirStar HD-5000 on Mythtv *also works with HD-3000 & HD-2000

I just recently have successfully got my AirStar HD-5000 to work with Clear QAM
Channels with My Cable Setup. I'd like to share what I have found out.
Many people don't know that most Cable providers Adelphia, Comcast, Time Warner, etc. have HD available on their standard cable connection. Check here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 or test for yourself below.

Now letts get started.

First make sure your cable is connected to the tv Tuner card.
Then start up your knoppmyth system.
Next we will scan all standard Frequencies for HDTV Channels.

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atscscan -A 2 /usr/local/share/dvb/scan/atsc/us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256 > ~/channels.conf

Now Open channels.conf using your favorite ediior you will see somthing like this (but a alot more entries)

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0001:564000000:QAM_256:62:63:2
WETA:597000000:QAM_256:64:65:3
WETA:597000000:QAM_256:66:67:
WETA:597000000:QAM_256:72:73
WETA:597000000:QAM_256:68:69
FOXHD:543000000:QAM_256:64:65:1
HDNET:543000000:QAM_256:68:69:2
HDMVS:543000000:QAM_256:66:67:3
ABCHD:549000000:QAM_256:64:65
NBCHD:549000000:QAM_256:68:69
CBSHD:549000000:QAM_256:72:73
0333:681000000:QAM_256:0:0

remove all with no name on the far left. Those are usually useless. {edit} unless you use comcast who does not include the station name, thanks xsecrets {/edit}

To understand how to read the above file. Heres a quick rundown on the format

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Name : Transport Freq   Type         Video : Audio Pid. Service #
FOXHD    543000000     QAM_256      64       65             1

Next we need to stop mythtvbackend

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sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop

Once Stopped. We will test the Channels.conf and the HDTV Tuner card.

We will now run azap using the name of one of the Channels Found in Channels.conf.

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azap -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -c channels.conf FOXHD -r 

While running run the following command in a separte terminal.

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cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > output.mpeg

Run it for about 30 secs then hit Ctrl-z
now letts watch it

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mplayer output.mpeg

if you see and hear video, great it works, if you don't repeat the earlier steps then do some troubleshooting.

Goto zap2it create a new listing use "broadcast" select only the HiDef channels found above.

Now Start Mythttv-backend

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sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

Then goto mythtv-setup change tv source to cable and do a scan for channels (we do this go get the mplexid field added to the mythdatabase that is needed to display HD Content.

Yet again we need to stop mythtv-backend.

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sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

Now log into the mythtv mysql database

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mysql -u root -p mythconverg 

First we are going to get the Zap2it xmlid number for the channels

type:

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select chanid,channum,callsign,name,xmltvid,mplexid,freqid,serviceid from channel order by (channum+0); 

You Should see something like this
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+
| chanid | channum | callsign | name | xmltvid | mplexid | freqid | serviceid |
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-----------+
| 1011 | 4_1 | WRCDT | WRCDT (WRC-DT) | 19578 | NULL | 4_1 | NULL |
| 1013 | 5_1 | WTTGDT | WTTGDT (WTTG-DT) | 20367 | NULL | 5_1 | NULL |
| 1012 | 7_1 | WJLADT | WJLADT (WJLA-DT) | 19579 | NULL | 7_1 | NULL |
| 1014 | 9_2 | WUSADT2 | WUSADT2 (WUSA-DT2) | 47155 | NULL | 9_2 | NULL |
| 1026 | 26_1 | WETADT | WETADT (WETA-DT) | 19581 | NULL |26_1 | NULL |
| 1027 | 26_2 | WETADT2 | WETADT2 (WETA-DT) | 21526 | NULL |26_2 | NULL |
| 1028 | 26_3 | WETADT3 | WETADT3 (WETA-DT3) | 32050 | NULL |26_3 | NULL |
| 1029 | 26_4 | WETADT4 | WETADT4 (WETA-DT4) | 32052 | NULL |26_4 | NULL |
| 1008 | 695 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 2 |
| 1010 | 696 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 3 |
| 1009 | 697 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 4 |
| 1004 | 710 | NBCHD | NBCHD | NULL | 2 |597000000 | 2 |
| 1000 | 711 | FOXHD | FOXHD | NULL | 1 |543000000 | 1 |
| 1003 | 713 | ABCHD | ABCHD | NULL | 2 |546000000 | 1 |
| 1005 | 715 | CBSHD | CBSHD | NULL | 2 |546000000 | 3 |
| 1007 | 716 | WETA | WETA | NULL | 3 |597000000 | 1 |
| 1001 | 524 | HDNET | HDNET | NULL | 1 | 543000000 | 2 |
| 1002 | 525 | HDMVS | HDMVS | NULL | 1 | 543000000 | 3 |
+--------+---------+----------+--------------------+---------+---------+-----------------------+

Write down the mplexid, feqid & serviceid values from the bottom. We will need these soon.

now where going to add mplexid to the top type:

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update channel set mplexid="2" where chanid=1011; 

*do the same with all of the top channels

next onto it's rather simular for freqid, type

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update channel set freqid="2" where chanid=1011;

and last serviceid:

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update channel set serviceid="2" where chanid=1011;

lets take a look and make sure everything looks good. so again type:

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select chanid,channum,callsign,name,xmltvid,mplexid,freqid,serviceid from channel order by (channum+0); 

Now to remove the duplicate channels that don't have the xmltvid's
type:

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delete from channel where chanid = 1015;

use the command '

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select chanid,channum,callsign,name,xmltvid,mplexid,freqid,serviceid from channel order by (channum+0); ' from earlier if you need the chanid numbers

if everythings in order.
then type

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quit

to exit

*Tip (if you have mythweb open the web site click on the configure option and click on channels. Then put a check in the box to remove)

ReStart mythbackend

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 sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start 

Start up the frontend and test.

Thats it.. I hope this information helps out. Most of this imformation is from the Mythtv_users Mailling list, IRC #linuxtv and my own experinces.

[amigabill]

/usr/local/share/dvb/scan/atsc/us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256

OK, I've been searching for a while to figure out how to do QAM, but some info seems extremely hard to find. Where does one get this file? All I've got is:

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mythtv bill # ls /usr/share/dvb/atsc/
us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB  us-MA-Boston   us-NTSC-center-frequencies-8VSB
us-CA-SF-Bay-Area                us-MI-Lansing  us-PA-Philadelphia

I live in Howard County, MD, USA and have Comcast cable. I have 2 pcHDTV 3000 cards, kernel 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 with drivers as modules that all seem to get loaded:

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mythtv ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx      3520  0
snd_ac97_bus            2432  0
snd_page_alloc          8520  0
snd_ak4xxx_adda         5696  1 snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd                    37940  1 snd_ak4xxx_adda
soundcore               7648  1 snd
bttv                  151760  0
v4l2_common             5248  1 bttv
cx88_dvb                7620  0
cx8802                  9028  1 cx88_dvb
cx88xx                 54368  2 cx88_dvb,cx8802
i2c_algo_bit            8456  2 bttv,cx88xx
ir_common               8388  1 cx88xx
btcx_risc               4232  3 bttv,cx8802,cx88xx
tveeprom               13392  2 bttv,cx88xx
videodev                7552  2 bttv,cx88xx
mt352                   5956  1 cx88_dvb
or51132                 9540  1 cx88_dvb
video_buf_dvb           4996  1 cx88_dvb
video_buf              16388  5 bttv,cx88_dvb,cx8802,cx88xx,video_buf_dvb
nxt200x                12292  1 cx88_dvb
lgdt330x                7324  1 cx88_dvb
cx22702                 5636  1 cx88_dvb
i2c_core               16512  10 bttv,cx88_dvb,cx88xx,i2c_algo_bit,tveeprom,mt352,or51132,nxt200x,lgdt330x,cx22702
nvidia               4086512  12
nvidia_agp              6172  1
dm_mod                 46936  2


from dmesg:

or51132: Waiting for firmware upload(dvb-fe-or51132-qam.fw)...
or51132: Version: 10001334-17430000 (133-4-174-3)
or51132: Firmware upload complete.

and /dev/dvb stuff looks lkek its in place:
mythtv ~ # ls /dev/dvb/*
/dev/dvb/adapter0:
demux0        dvr0  frontend0  net0
/dev/dvb/adapter1:
demux0        dvr0  frontend0  net0

MythTV channel scan comes back with nothing. I'm using MythTV 0.19_p9163. It times out on QAM channels and never locks on anything at all. I tried importing a generic channels.conf file with contents posted at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=530806 with no luck, I tried scanning the analog channels list from Zap2it, and I tried scanning withh the digital channels list from zap2it. No go... The channels.conf stuff at the link stops at channel 133, but other things seem to indicate there may be things above that.


dtvscan didn't return anything last run through. Once it seemed to pick up on something for one or two channels per scan, different ones different scans, such a 5 and 69 then 38 and 146, spewing out a bunch of errors:

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demux_ts: demux error! invalid payload size -55

with the occasional

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PAT found ckets

mixed in amongst the lots of demux_ts lines.

Output file from one of these weird dtvscan runs doesn't contain much:

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      :      :38.1 :38: 2:1
      :      :146.1 :146: 2:1

Some dtvscan runs fail to find anything whatsoever.


dtvsignal utility gives this output, but I haven't found any information on what any of it means, and looks the same as an undetected channel (such as the last 2.1 here):

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mythtv ~ # dtvsignal -q -dvb 0 38.1
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
setting frontend to QAM cable
tuning to 309000000 Hz
video pid 0x0021, audio pid 0x0024
dtvsignal ver 1.0 - by Jack Kelliher (c) 2002
channel = 38  freq = 309000000Hz table 309
channel = 38 freq = 309000000Hz
 30db       0%         25%         50%         75%        100%
Signal:     |     .     :     .     |     ._____:_____._____|
Signal: 000 .
mythtv ~ # dtvsignal -q -dvb 0 146.1
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
setting frontend to QAM cable
tuning to 927000000 Hz
video pid 0x0021, audio pid 0x0024
dtvsignal ver 1.0 - by Jack Kelliher (c) 2002
channel = 146  freq = 927000000Hz table 927
channel = 146 freq = 927000000Hz
 30db       0%         25%         50%         75%        100%
Signal:     |     .     :     .     |     ._____:_____._____|
Signal: 000 .


mythtv ~ # dtvsignal -q -dvb 0 2.1
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
setting frontend to QAM cable
tuning to 57000000 Hz
video pid 0x0021, audio pid 0x0024
dtvsignal ver 1.0 - by Jack Kelliher (c) 2002
channel = 2  freq = 57000000Hz table 57
channel = 2 freq = 57000000Hz
 30db       0%         25%         50%         75%        100%
Signal:     |     .     :     .     |     ._____:_____._____|
Signal: 000 .

Is there a howto for dummies that don't already have all the files and channel information required to use QAM?

[amigabill]

/usr/local/share/dvb/scan/atsc/us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256

Bump.... Where did you get this file? I don't have it, but I do have OTA center frequencies and various local channel sets from a few countries. But the US center frquencies for QAM fie is absent...