MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

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Multiplexer
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MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by Multiplexer »

Hello everyone,
I'm having a problem setting up MythTV, I can't tune any of the channels found in the channel scan, and MythTV will throw an error after a while. When I open "Live TV" in Mythfrontend, the only thing the screen shows is a noisy screen, and if I try to change of channel, it'll show an "irrecoverable encoder error".

My setup is the following:
TV Tuner: Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3
Distro: Xubuntu 22.04.1 LTS x86_64 (5.15.0-58-generic)
backend and frontend on the same machine.

What I've tried:
First of all, I tried tvtime and OBS just for testing and they work out of the box, the image appears and I can change channels without problems in tvtime, (I also tried this in a fresh install). It's weird that while MythTV will show a noisy screen, tvtime and OBS will show the tuned channel (With that, I guess we can discard any driver problem at least).
In the backend, I used the options "Analog Capture Card" option and "V4L Encoder" option for the tuner card, I can't even scan for channels with the V4l Encoder option, it just throws an error that I can't remember (And I'm currently reinstalling my OS, so after that I will be able to give more details.). But those two options recognized the video input as /dev/video0 without touching anything.
Changing the frequency tables in the video source to us-cable or default won't fix anything, MythTV won't be able to tune any channel in those two options failing as said above.
Apart from that, I tried the MythTV Mythexternrecorder v4l2 vlc tutorial with no luck, not sure if it was something about cvlc or what, but it just showed a black screen (cvlc showed no output when I tried to run it in terminal, but I can try again this and give details about what I've tried).

And, as bonus info, I'm using analog TV because in the place where I live, I has no access to digital TV sadly.
Apart from that, I'm trying to set up MythTV instead of just using tvtime because the idea is to use it with a Kodi client.

Surely I'm missing a lot of things, but I would give any information needed to troubleshoot this problem, I just wasn't secure about which information would be helpful. I'm attaching to this post the output of "dmesg | grep saa7134" for info about the loading of the saa7134 module, apart from the logs I rescued from the system.

Thanks for the help in advance.
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kmdewaal
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by kmdewaal »

You could try the "Analog to MPEG-2 encoder card" option in mythtv-setup and then try scanning for channels.
Multiplexer
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by Multiplexer »

Hi kmdewaal, thanks for the quick response and sorry for my late response.
Ok, I created a new config with "Analog to MPEG-2 encoder card", without touching anything more.
Then, I created a new video source with "default" in the frequency table and everything else default.
MythTV scanned for channels, found 36 channels with us-bcast (The default frequency table, I guess) and when I go to mythfrontend, it throws "Error opening jump program file buffer", after loading like 8-10 seconds. Logs attached for this first try.

Apart from that, as tvtime man page says it uses "us-cable" as default frequency table, I tried the same with "us-cable" in the video source (deleting and creating a new one) but with the same result. Logs attached for this try, too.

My user is in groups "video" and "mythtv" on a fresh install of kubuntu.

Thanks for the help.
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kmdewaal
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by kmdewaal »

I have not found much information about your Encore card on the Internet. It could be that it is a card that does only the capturing of the analog TV signal and that it does not do any encoding. In that case, it is not an encoder card and then I think that the "Analog capture card" is the option to use. Here also the channel scan should work. If with this setting also 36 channels are found then that is good enough to start with.
It could be that you have not yet configured the Storage Groups. It is necessary to define a directory where the recordings are stored. Note that in MythTV there is also a recording made forliIve TV and that recording is then played.
For analog capture cards the encoding is done in software and it is then possible to select how this is done with the Recording Profile, but the default values should be good enough to get it running.
Multiplexer
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by Multiplexer »

Hi,
I have a recording directory, I made mythtv owner and group of that folder, and gave rwx permissions to user, groups and others (just for testing purposes). I did that before all the tests.
Ok, I tried with the card as "Analog capture card" and audio device set to none (Don't know which device to use here, this board uses the line in for the audio of the channel). The same as the last time, deleted video source, created a new one with everything default, scanned channels, found 36 channels again with "default" frequency table. No luck, the screen freeze with "please wait". I had to kill the process, mythfrontend won't respond to keyboard input in this case. Logs attached for this try.
I tried the same (deleting board and video source config and creating everything again) but with "us-cable" as frequency table (Here I have +100 channels). Mythfrontend showed a noisy screen with some audio device errors (check logs) (At this point, we can assume that the storage group is configured and MythTV can store and play the file for LiveTV, right?). Tried to tune another channel, and after a few seconds, it took me to the main menu and showed the message "Irrecoverable recorder error". Logs attached for this try, too. (Also added and screenshot of the error message).

About if the card can encode or not, I don't know, but I can examine the card searching for a decoder or something like that. I can also share a screen of the card if needed. Later I'll check if the card has an encoding chip and update about this.

Repetitive lines are cropped, you'll notice which ones where the croppeds because I added a line with a lot of middle dashes where the lines repeated a lot.

I hope we can get it to work, it's a useful board as it has a built in IR receiver and S-Video input, I surely won't be the last person trying to set it up, since it's cheap and easy to get here.
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kmdewaal
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by kmdewaal »

About attachments. That does not work very well in the forum; it is better to create an issue (on https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/issues) and add the attachments there. Also possible is that you post links to a place where it can be downloaded from (e.g. wetransfer.com or gmail).

About your card. I do not have a non-encoding analog TV card anymore so it is difficult to figure out if you are having a configuration issue or if support for this type of cards is currently broken in MythTV. The support has not been intentionally removed but it also has not been tested for a long time.
It would be great if anybody who still uses a non-encoding analog TV card can comment on this!
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paulh
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by paulh »

Regarding attachments I think you have to have a certain number of posts before you are allowed to add attachments. Don't know what that limit is though.

Like kmdewaal I tried to find some info about the card and failed to find much about it. I see something that suggests it may be a dual tuner card that supports both DVB-t and old analog terrestrial but no idea if the analog part has an encoder or not :?
Multiplexer
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by Multiplexer »

Hi paulh,
Yeah, if it's a matter of time, I don't has the ability to add attachments yet, since my account is less than 1 week old. I'm so sorry that I didn't realize about that before. I'll create an issue on GitHub right now. Just not wanted to create and issue without knowing it is an issue or just my fault in first place haha.
Issue link: https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/issues/705
About if the board has or not encoding, it uses the "SAA7130HL" chip as I saw in the board, if you look into the datasheet it has a diagram of connections, and looks like the analog signal isn't encoded, while the digital one will be encoded.

If you want, we can continue the discussion in GitHub.
blm-ubunet
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Re: MythTV won't tune channels with Encore ENLTV-FM 5.3

Post by blm-ubunet »

LinuxTV V4L
https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Saa713x_devices
https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ ... stallation
but a lot content of this may not be current or relevant

SAA7134 cards list:
148 Encore ENLTV-FM v5.3 1a7f:2008
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