WinTV-PVR 150 on Arch Linux

Hi,

Yet again i had issues to get this working. Documenting it this time for myself in the future and perhaps other persons that might want to do the same.

To even get the 150 card working install ivtv-utils:
sudo pacman -S ivtx-utils

To scan your card for tv channles install xawtv:
sudo pacman -S xawtv

And to play it install mplayer:
sudo pacman -S maplyer

The last thing you need to change is the /dev/video0 permissions:
sudo chown root.users /dev/video0

Now to start watching tv you need to type:
mplayer /dev/video0 or gmplayer /dev/video0 for a gui

If you have an nvidia GPU (and working in linux) append “-va vdpau” (without the quotes). That should of load some stuff to your video card.

By now you probably want to switch channels? To do that we first need to scan the tv channels by typing:
scantv (fill in your options and it will scan)

Once that is done save that list to a file! The channels in that list are the numbers you need to use.
To change a channel type something like this:
ivtv-tune -teurope-west -c37 -d/dev/video0 (change your -teurope-west to the one you picked)

The last thing before the video is “nice” (as far as nice video can be nice on a computer monitor). You probably have seen some odd lines on the live tv. That’s called interlacing. To “fix” that you need to deinterlace the video. A nice resource that shows the options mplayer has is: http://guru.multimedia.cx/deinterlacing-filters/

The command that i use:
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,denoise3d

yadif is used for deinterlacing and denoise3d is used to filter out noise which is quite a lot on tv broadcasts and this filter makes it look nice!

All i still want to find out is ho to cut off the black bars since the broadcast is 4:3 now on my 16:10 display. The broadcast has bars at the top and bottom since it’s a widescreen broadcast but that is being broadcasted in 4:3 so the result is black bars on the left, right, top and bottom.. not nice ^_^

Hope this was helpful for others as well.

Update
After many hours of trial and error and very close to make a mplayer filter to filter out the letterboxing bars (black bars on the top and bottom of widescreen broadcasts). The solution? panscan! The command that i use now is:
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,denoise3d -panscan 1

Update 2
This command might give better image results (other denoiser):
mplayer -vo vdpau -ao oss /dev/video0 -vf yadif=1:1,hqdn3d -panscan 1

That only works when your in fullscreen. Then press W or E to zoom in or out.

Update 3
I found this command to be giving very nice results (for when you don’t have vdpau):
mplayer /dev/video0 -cache 2000 -panscan 1 -vo gl -vf yadif=1/3
Note the -cache 2000; that seems to be just fine to have a smooth deinterlaced  PVR stream. The yadif on this setting also produces nice results. You could append “,hqdn3d” to have a somewhat smoother image but it will start to look ugly when you play anything with a lot of action in it.

Good luck,
Mark