Hello!

I am a newbie needing some help with getting vdr to work.

The machine is an athlon 1.4 GHz with a technotrend budget dvb-c card. Its running gentoo with 2.6.12 and the dvb-drivers from that kernel compiled as modules. The PC has no monitor attached, I just want to record tv-shows and stream them with the streamdev-plugin. The problem is the same with both vdr 1.3.22 and 1.3.24.

vdr (1.3.22) - The Video Disk Recorder hello (0.1.0) - A friendly greeting osddemo (0.1.1) - Demo of arbitrary OSD setup skincurses (0.0.3) - A text only skin femon (0.8.1) - DVB Signal Information Monitor (OSD) sky (0.3.3) - Sky Digibox interface status (0.1.0) - Status monitor test

lsmod shows this: Module Size Used by budget 8320 0 l64781 7044 1 budget ves1820 5444 1 budget budget_core 7236 1 budget saa7146 14792 2 budget,budget_core ttpci_eeprom 2240 1 budget_core stv0299 10632 1 budget tda8083 5700 1 budget ves1x93 6340 1 budget dvb_core 76520 2 budget,budget_core

And this is what happens when vdr tries to record something:

Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] VDR version 1.3.22 started Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading plugin: /usr/lib/vdr/libvdr-femon.so.1.3.22 Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/setup.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/sources.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/diseqc.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/channels.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/timers.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/commands.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/svdrphosts.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/ca.conf Jul 1 00:15:34 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/keymacros.conf Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] found 1 video device Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] initializing plugin: femon (0.8.1): DVB Signal Information Monitor (OSD) Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] setting primary device to 1 Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] device 1 has no MPEG decoder Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] SVDRP listening on port 2001 Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/themes/sttng-default.theme Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] starting plugin: femon Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] loading /etc/vdr/themes/sttng-default.theme Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] ERROR: /dev/lircd: No such file or directory Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] ERROR: remote control LIRC not ready! Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] switching to channel 1 Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] ERROR: no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD! Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] connect from 127.0.0.1, port 33018 - accepted Jul 1 00:15:35 [vdr] closing SVDRP connection Jul 1 00:16:02 [vdr] connect from 127.0.0.1, port 33019 - accepted Jul 1 00:16:04 [vdr] closing SVDRP connection Jul 1 00:17:40 [vdr] connect from 127.0.0.1, port 34881 - accepted Jul 1 00:17:40 [vdr] timer 1 added Jul 1 00:17:40 [vdr] closing SVDRP connection Jul 1 00:17:55 [vdr] connect from 127.0.0.1, port 34882 - accepted Jul 1 00:18:19 [vdr] closing SVDRP connection Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] connect from 127.0.0.1, port 34884 - accepted Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] timer 2 added Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] timer 2 (112 2350-0040 'Nachrichten') start Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] record /data/incoming/filme/Fernsehen/Nachrichten/2005-06-30.23:50.99.99.rec Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] closing SVDRP connection Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] ERROR: Channel locked (recording)! Jul 1 00:18:31 [vdr] ERROR: no OSD provider available - using dummy OSD! Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] ERROR: video data stream broken Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] initiating emergency exit Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] emergency exit requested - shutting down Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] stopping plugin: femon Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] timer 2 (112 2350-0040 'Nachrichten') stop Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] saved setup to /etc/vdr/setup.conf Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] deleting plugin: femon Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] exiting Jul 1 00:19:02 [vdr] emergency exit!

I installed the femon-plugin to check the signl strength, but it seems the plugin works only with the OSD, and I have no monitor on that machine. But "czap -r Eurosport" prints lines like the following and I can then capture a working mpeg cat'ing /dev/dvb0.dvr0, so I assume the reception is very good:

using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0' reading channels from file '/root/.czap/channels.conf' 10 Eurosport:394000000:INVERSION_AUTO:6875000:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:410:420:28009 10 Eurosport: f 394000000, s 6875000, i 2, fec 0, qam 3, v 0x19a, a 0x1a4 status 00 | signal 8383 | snr b5b5 | ber 00035304 | unc ffffffff | status 1f | signal ffff | snr dfdf | ber 00035304 | unc ffffffff | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal ffff | snr dcdc | ber 00035304 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal ffff | snr dfdf | ber 000b20d4 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal ffff | snr dfdf | ber 000b20d4 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal ffff | snr dcdc | ber 0004281a | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal ffff | snr dddd | ber 0004281a | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK

Very rarely, recording a show with vdr works, but I do not see any rules as to when it works and when it doesn't.

My questions are:

- What does "ERROR: Channel locked (recording)!" mean? There are no other instances of vdr, czap or others running at that time. What can I do?

- Does "ERROR: video data stream broken" mean the signal is too weak, or could it have different reasons? czap's snr makes me believe reception is NOT the problem.

- If I understood correctly, the streamdev-server just streams the whole mpeg stream over the lan. Are there solutions for sending the stream over the internet with a much smaller datarate?

Thanks a lot! Benjamin Adler