Ubuntu

DVB-S no sound

Asked by swdr

I have a skystar2 satellite card. Kubuntu 6.10 has detected it and using kaffeine I can scan for channels succesfully, but there is no sound output. The vision is fine and the contents of /dev/dvb/adapter0 look fine too.

kaffeine is OK for playing movies etc so that's not the problem. Also this was not a problem under 6.6.

I installed xine-ui, but this also produced vision without sound.

I have run the linuxtv script for creating the dvb inodes and still no sound.

I have re-installed 6.10 also. I have just run the live disc on another machine and the result is the same. Overall sound is fine, but not with the dvb-s app.

Also have run a live disc for a different distro on this box and sound etc works.

Having the satellite working is pretty vital to me, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
   Simon

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Nicolas DERIVE
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swdr (simon-robert) said : 		#1

I have just tried kubuntu using a live disc of 6.6, (I guess it's 6.6 as I downloaded it in July). This also has problems with dvb-s.

It detected the card, created all the needed stuff under /dev/dvb/adapter0 and kaffeine showed dvb as being configurable.

So I did a channel scan for astra 28 and installed some channels. All fine. However back at the main kaffeine menu dvb was greyed out and so too were the stations when I opened the dvb option.

This I think is to do with kaffeine being installed with the gstreamer engine rather than the xine one. This is just a guess though. The live distro doesn't let me switch to a xine engine installation to check it out. The 6.10 installation is using xine, but it could be the problem stems from the original setup using gstreamer?#

I may install this disc and see if I can get it to work. Otherwise back to mandriver until a solution appears...

Yours
   Simon

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Nicolas DERIVE (kalon33) said : 		#2

Have you installed libxine-extracodecs (I suppose you have installed dvb-utils) ?

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swdr (simon-robert) said : 		#3

Thanks for the comment. No I hadn't installed extracodecs, which seems to be what mandriva calls libxine.x.x.x and kaffeine xine-lib.x.x.x. Well I did install it and found it made no difference. I also installed dvb-utils, no difference. Then I installed every codec I could find - no difference. Finally I built xine-extracodecs from source ( which is the package for libxine-extracodecs ). This made no difference.

With regrets I then turned to mandriva 2007, (I've been a happy mandriva user for a couple of years but this one don't look so great). Wadayaknow! The bar stewards have left kaffeine out of the default distro and replaced it with kdetv.

kdetv may be a fab piece of software, but it doesn't handle dvb-t, dvb-s or even dvb-et.

So install the kaffeine stuff from the disc rpms. The xine library/engine seems not to match the kaffeine front end/gui. "Kaffeine part failled to load, video drivers not initialised". This I've seen before, I've even fixed it. It means mucking around with libxine versions and is a complete pain. This time I can't seem to fix it and am stuck in a dependancy circularity.

Next install mandriva 2006. At least I know this one works. However although the dvb-s card has been detected and all the needed kernel modules installed, the "inodes" (is this technicaly correct term?) have not been created. So under /dev/dvb their is nothing and kaffeine does not bring up the dvb menus.

However this is not a problem as I spent a week back in september 95 figuring it out and just need to install the scripts I nicked/modified off the linuxtv project. These added into the boot routines create the device files needed.

And whoopee it all works, sort of! Kaffeine doing a channel scan on kubuntu 6.10 comes back with 400 odd tv stations and 88 radio channels - 390 of them complete bollocks, but no sound. Mandriva 2007 returns around the same number, but crashes when you try and play one. Mandriva 2006, although it does OK on the other pc (less stations, but none I care about not being there) on this PC returns 90 tv stations and 6 radio stations.

Yup linux is the way of the future. I know stuff, though I'm not an expert. If I can't get this to run then yer "average" user, who just wants functionality out of the box stands no chance.

well I'll try upgrading mandriva 2006 and hope that the kaffeine installation is not replaced by the latest one that doesn't work at all.

S

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swdr (simon-robert) said : 		#4

I solved this stuff and just in case anyone else ever has the same problem and comes accross this I'll outline what happend. It was down to xine-extracodecs.

Not being familiar with ubuntu repositories I was getting the package from the wrong places. I ucommented the universe and multiverse repositories in adept, neither had the package so I went searching on the net and obviously ended up with incompatable versions.

My install of kubuntu gave me gb.archive... edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse and gb.archive... edgy universe. It was only after I added us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy main restricted universe multiverse that xine-extracodecs appeared on the listing. Is this a difference between us and gb.archive or bewteen edgy and edgy-backports? Dunno, I'm a ubuntu/debian newbie.

Any this package installed without the dependancy probs I'd been getting and solved the problem.

I had installed mandriva 2006 and then "upgraded" to 2007. This was unstable in a number of ways so I gave kubuntu one last try.

Still I don't think someone switching from windows and expecting an easy transition would have got that far. Even a knowledgable windows user would have been baffled. I was and I was only switching between 2 linux distros.

Simon

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graemewalker (graemewalker) said : 		#5

Thanks for the write-up. I had the same problem after upgrading from dapper to edgy. By checking synaptic's "software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)" option I was offered an upgrade of libxine-extracodecs from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 which fixed the problem.

Graeme