I could do with a TV in my computer room. I have my old Gentoo server and a Pinnacle TV card sitting idle. I thought I would try just booting a Knoppix CD and seeing what I got. It booted ok and looking through the multimedia applications I found Xawtv, a TV application. It had a good go at searching for TV channels but it didn't find any. I faffed about for a while, setting up different types of TV card and tuner chipsets, but no joy. It didn't tell me it was broken but it didn't work either, all I got was a black TV shaped window with some noisy coloured pixels at the top. It my well be because of the aerial connection (in fact driven from my Sky Plus box downstairs, via a booster/distributor box) but it's too much hastle to grab a portable TV and check that out.
Knoppix: Works nicely. Possibly a good replacement for Gentoo as long as it has good package support.
Update: spent the afternoon on this and here are the conclusions:
- The card is a Pinnacle PCTV Rave
- It uses the MT2050 tuner chip which is not supported by the bttv drivers on the version of Knoppix I am using (17-7-04).
- Patches exist but not sure they will work on a live CD. I'll try latest Knoppix before installing something properly.
Update:
The tuner works with Knoppix 3.6 (2004-8-16) running the 2.6 kernel (i.e. with the boot option 'knoppix26). The picture is very noisy, looks like a lot of processor noise. I'm thinking of installing properly, rather than just using a live cd. Choice of distribution? Knoppix, Debian, Ubuntu...
Peter's Moblog
