ivtv tuning problem workaround

Since my last post about problems testing if the ivtv drivers really work by finding a signal I have been thinking how to solve the problem. As the wiki states that you should avoid installing anything like mythtv since that might cause problems instead there should really be a way to scan for signals. I finally gave up and rebooted into my Windows XP installation and used "TuningAssistant.exe", which is part of GBPVR. It asks for your country and whether you receive your channels via air or cable of some sort and then scans the whole frequency band. Luckily it also displays the frequencies where signals are found so I wrote down the information and rebooted back to Linux and could then use

ivtv-tune -f196.250
cat /dev/video0 > test.mpg
ctrl-C

and then watch the clip in xine. Yay, I can see!


Now, on to Mythtv!

Media home developments

I have started to play with getting Mythtv to work. I have the intention of setting up my computer (never to be shut off!) running Slackware 11 as a Mythtv backend, and with VMWare to feed my wife's Windows addiction and for testing, possibly I'll have an older Windows installation for games although I aim to use WINE (in some form) at a later date. The latest version of Mythtv supports UPnP streaming so I finally see a potential for a very nice and integrated solution with my current setup.

But first I need to satisfy the Mythtv requirements, for instance getting the ivtv driver to work. But that's not easy!!! Things seem to work, but I only get static and the way to test seems not very conducive to quickly scanning through the frequencies and finding signals... I just don't see what to do, especially since the wiki discourages installing mythtv or other apps to avoid problems and as far as I can see there's no scanning utility in the ivtv package.

I am on a local cable network so the national channels listed by Teracom are probably not quite corresponding to the channels I receive. So how do people do this?!? I tried installing xawtv because you can change channels using the arrow keys, but no signal (and some say xawtv and ivtv don't mix). On Windows I use GBPVR, which includes a scan tool and there's no difficulty at all. I don't even know what I need to know to use the tools to find the channels - and I can't find the info in the wiki. There's a certain step missing and I guess that I need to continue looking, but I do not know what I'm looking for...

Should I go ahead and install Mythtv? Another tool? Can I otherwise check that the ivtv drivers work? I mean, static is not terribly interesting...

GAAAH!

Are people listening

Title leads to an interesting blog entry on Linuxtoday by John Terpstra from October 3rd, claiming that people make the wrong decisions because they don't listen.

Hmm, I think I know what he means, but is the problem really in listening? To be honest, if an expert (or a salesman for that matter) starts talking about all the details in a good solution, also not shying away from things that might go wrong I'd say most people will not have a problem listening, but a problem understanding. What's good about a Linux or any Open Source solution probably goes way over the head of most people because due to lack of understanding, the concepts discussed and their technical advantages and disadvantages compared to some proprietary system are way too fuzzy and intangible.

One big problem for Open Source Software is still that it requires you to acquire quite a lot of knowledge in one way or another to make the correct decisions. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good thing (tm), but it's not what people are used to. In the example cited about a SOX audit:

"He asks the local network manager to configure a particular data file for change tracking so that it will log all file access, all file changes, and to report same with a matching user network logon record. The network manager says he needs time to figure out how to do that."

This was not the answer the auditor was looking for and I believe the network manager should have understood that. He should have said "OK" and solved the problem (now I realize that the auditor might have wanted to have it done while he was standing there, but let's assume he didn't).

You always have to adapt the message to the receiver and the FLOSS community is not quite there yet.