TV cards under Guinness (was: Re: Newbie alert!)

[Chris Barnes <chris w2s net>]

At 04:17 25/10/2000, Chris Kloiber wrote:
<snip>
> I have my Zoltrix TVMax card working here at home. It's also a bt848
> card. This is my 'buest guess/ at what you should put in your
> /etc/modules.conf
>
> alias char-major-81 bttv
> post-install bttv modprobe tuner
>
> According to my quick reading, your card type and tuner type will be
> detected automatically. You should read
> /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/* for more information.

Thanks. I've looked at the howtos for BTTV (HTML version available at 
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/BTTV-Mini-HOWTO-0.3.html), done a bit of 
playing with modules.conf and XF86Config-4, and now I have xawtv 
(http://www.strusel007.de/linux/xawtv/index.html) and Zapping 
(http://zapping.sourceforge.net) working quite well. They both work in 
fullscreen mode, although xawtv has a huge black border around it rather 
than filling the whole screen, at 1024x768. If anyone is interested, I can 
retrace my steps and explain how I did it.

The teletext program, aletv (http://user.exit.de/froese/) also works well. 
Actually, the TV and text programs work better than the manufacturer's 
supplied programs do in Windoze!

> One downside to tv tuners (at least mine) every time I start Xwindows,
> the TV sound (or static) will be pumped through the speakers until you
> either turn on and off a tv viewer program (kwintv or xawtv) or you
> 'rmmod -a' (as root, twice) to remove unneeded modules. I haven't
> figured it out yet.

According to the howtos for BTTV and xawtv, you should stick a -k after 
modprobe (i.e. modprobe -k tuner). This will make sure the tuner module 
only gets loaded when it's needed... more details available on modprobe's
manpage.

> Oh, the other ting I meant to mention. If you are in Red Hat 7, you are
> probably using XFree86-4.0.1 instead of 3.3.6 on that card. which means
> you need to edit the file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file to set your
> resolutions. I noticed that kwintv in particular doesn't seem to like
> resolutions over 640x480 in XFree86-4.0.x. I also can't save audio
> settings or it coredumps. Odd.

Well, I haven't got kwintv so I can't comment. Both my installed TV 
programs seem to work fine at 1024x768 (16-bit colour depth), and I am 
using 4.0.1 under RedHat 7.

It might help to install the latest (0.7) drivers for BTTV from 
http://www.strusel007.de/linux/bttv/, if you haven't already got them 
installed.

                     ----
           Chris Barnes, Rugby, UK
    Yahoo: ChrisWCUK     ICQ: 19836660
       SMS: mobile@justchris.co.uk
                     ----