mplayer tv tuner DVB CONFIGURATION IS EMPTY in Jaunty

[bigkstyle]

Binary package hint: mplayer

System version: Ubuntu 9.04 (amd64)
mplayer version: 2:1.0-rc2-0ubuntu19

After Jaunty upgrade mplayer can no longer tune in to DVB device cx88-dvb. It was working great in Intrepid.
Example: mplayer dvb://discovery (this is in my channels.conf)
I can still use azap and other DVB utils and the device tunes correctly.
Have tried deleting .mplayer folder to re-create config file, which has no effect.
I can see the devices in /dev/dvb/adapter0
There is nothing out of the ordinary in dmesg log (see attached).

MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.3.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 11)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing dvb://discovery.
UNKNOWN TUNER TYPE
DVB CONFIGURATION IS EMPTY, exit
Failed to open dvb://discovery.

Exiting... (End of file)

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[John Simon (gaemon-deactivatedaccount)]

I'm using 9.04 i686 and having the same issue. it's not kernel issue since me-tv plays dtv just fine, albeit with 100% CPU usage. :-(

relevant `lspci -vv` entries below:

04:08.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
        Subsystem: DViCO Corporation Device d500
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 64 (4000ns min, 10000ns max)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
        Region 0: Memory at bfefe000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data <?>
        Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: bttv
        Kernel modules: bttv

04:08.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
        Subsystem: DViCO Corporation Device d500
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 64 (1000ns min, 63750ns max)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
        Region 0: Memory at bfeff000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data <?>
        Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: bt878
        Kernel modules: bt878

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

Having this problem with a KWorld ATSC 115 tuner (firmware: dvb-fe-nxt2004.fw), I'm running the 2.6.28-11-server kernel. However, VLC and totem can't tune either. Is this really mplayer's fault?

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

Doesn't work with the generic 2.6.30 kernel either. Used to work in Intrepid without problems.

My card is this one:
02:00.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7131/SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder (rev d1)

[John Simon (gaemon-deactivatedaccount)]

downgraded to intrepid version of mplayer, works fine on jaunty.

[Rohan Agrawal (agrawalr)]

I have this issue also on amd64 jaunty. It really does seem to be mplayer's fault since my setup works fine in vlc.

[Thus0 (thus0)]

I had a similar error until I had myself to the "video" group. Just check the permission of /dev/dvb/adapter0* to be sure.

[Jeff Fortin Tam (kiddo)]

Well in my case, there is no "video" group (judging from the system
users admin GUI), although, indeed, the files in /dev/dvb/adapter0 seem
to belong to the user "root" and the group "video". wtf?

[bigkstyle (keith-gaputis)]

In my case this does not seem to be a group/permission issue. I created a video group, added myself and root to it, and chown'd the whole /dev/dvb tree to root:video.

The workaround I have been using is downgrade to Interpid version of mplayer, which works fine.

[Ho Tuan (tuan-post)]

I wasn't able to get it to work, but I did discover a useful and effective workaround using azap (or tzap/szap/czap if you don't tune to ATSC channels).

Use {a,z,c,s}zap to tune to the desired channel listed in channels.conf. In my case, I was tuning to WDHD-HD (NBC in Boston, MA). The "-r" option is important, since it activates the dvr0 device on your tuner card.

# azap -r -c $path_to_your/channels.conf "WHDH-HD"

Wait for the tuner to lock on to the channel. You should see something like:

status 1f | signal 00fa | snr 00fa | ber 00000000 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

Once locked, you can direct mplayer to access the tuned dvr0 device you just activated.

# mplayer /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0

Assuming nothing went wrong, it should start playing the stream as desired. While this doesn't fix the original problem, it is probably better to use {a,z,c,s}zap anyway, since they are much more fully featured as DVB-tuning programs.

[snower13 (snower13)]

I'm having the same issue. Also, I'm having a problem where mythtv fails to tune. Are the issues related?

How do I downgrade to the intrepid version?
sudo apt-get install mplayer=2:1.0~rc2-0ubuntu17 doesn't work

[ybkosher (bobby-weinmann)]

SOLUTION:

I have the same symptom as the original poster. ATSC cards don't work in mplayer and mencoder because of this:

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-cvslog/2009-February/036544.html

if you define DVB_ATSC as 1 in dvbin.h and recompile....voila.

[StarShock (sshock3)]

As mentioned by ybkosher, the patch was applied upstream to mplayer about a month ago, so can we please get this patch into Jaunty?

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

seems like a gross hack to me, I'd like to hear a word from diego on that.

in any case, this needs to be applied to the lucid package first.

[StarShock (sshock3)]

I upgraded to Karmic, and it's working now, so I don't know if that patch is applied in Karmic or something else fixed it.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

bigkstyle, can you confirm starshock's comment? is this fixed in karmic or later for you?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for mplayer (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]