# FAQ

Note: The "Common problems" page of &tvtime; is also a valuable information source.

&kdetv; is unable to tune a station, or does not find any device, or cannot select norm and other fatal errors.

Try starting another TV program before reporting a bug to the &kdetv; bugtracker or mailinglist. Many problems are the result of TV card driver or X server installations problems and are not &kdetv;'s fault. Other TV programs worth trying are: &xawtv;, &zapping; and &tvtime;. You should also read the "&kdetv; crashes when opening settings dialog" FAQ entry.

Teletext does not work (I have nxtvepg or other programs capturing &vbi; data running in the background).

Only one application can open the `/dev/vbiX` device that supplies &vbi; data (&epg;, Teletext and others). The application that tries first wins. There is no workaround to this problem at moment except for stopping the other application before running &kdetv;.

I configured the &video4linux; plugin to use &opengl; as display mode and now it always crashes at startup.

&opengl; unfortunately is unstable, sorry for that. To fix the above issue, delete your `~/.kde/share/config/kdetv-plugin-v4l` file or change the `GD Method` entry in it to `GD Method=4`.

&kdetv; seems to freeze on shutown (window closes but &kdetv; is still in task list).

This happens on my machine when &kdetv; uses the VBI proxy daemon of libzvbi and the station that was currently tuned in at shutdown does not provide VBI data. Unfortunately, I found no way to work around this libzvbi internal issue.

&kdetv; shows black screen when another video application is running / other video applications show black screen or slow performance when &kdetv; is running.

Most graphics drivers can only provide XVideo-Acceleration (most often used to convert and scale video) to one window at a time. This is a driver limitation (not a driver bug!). In other words, it is also not a bug of &kdetv; or the other applications involved.

&kdetv; freezes with my &cx88xx;-based card.

The &cx88xx; driver does not implement a syscall the &kdetv; v4l1 plugin needs. You can either update your driver (there is a fix in it since the middle of October 2004) or use the &v4l2; plugin in &kdetv; > 0.8.4.

The Select Source dialog does not show any devices to choose from.

This is an installation problem. Most likely you installed &kdetv; in `/usr` once and another version in `/usr/local`. &kde; picks up files in `/usr` first so &kdetv; might get confused and as a consequence it confuses you. Make sure you installed &kdetv; in your current $`KDEDIR`. Also, what might help is setting an environment variable named $`KDEDIRS` (notice the S!) to something like: `KDEDIRS=/usr:/usr/local`. Also check the Mailing list Archives for previous mails on this issue and the following three items on this page.

First requirement to run &kdetv;: Enable a video plugin.

Since &kdetv; is based on plugins you have the ability to choose a video plugin, right now &video4linux; or &xvideo;. At least one of those plugins has to be enabled (see the &kdetv; Configuration Dialog, section Video). At least some people experience problems with the &video4linux; plugin right now, so using the &xvideo; plugin is recommended (see 3rd requirement below).

Second requirement to run &kdetv;: access to `/dev/video*`.

Make sure the &bttv; module is loaded so you can access the `/dev/video*` devices: do a `modprobe bttv` (as root) and check that the module is correctly loaded (`# lsmod | grep bttv`). Also check the permissions on the device files `/dev/video*`.

Optional requirement to run &kdetv; (&xvideo; plugin): &xvideo;/&v4l; module loaded in &xfree86;.

Check the Module section of your &xfree86; configuration (`/etc/X11/XF86Config`). You should have a load statement for the &v4l; module in there. Something like this:

    Section "Module"
      Load  "v4l"
      [...]
    EndSection

Once you started your X server with this module enabled you can use `xvinfo` to make sure your hardware is correctly initialized, and the &xvideo; source is usable. The `xvinfo` output should mention the &video4linux; adaptor.

I do not get any TV sound although everything looks good.

The reason for this problem is most likely that you are using one of those modern sound cards/chipsets that allow you to use the line-in connector also as line-out for surround sound output. Therefore, check your sound system configuration (&alsa;) if that line-in connector is configured as line-out (surround sound output) and change that setting using &kmix;, &kamix;, or similar tools depending on your &linux; installation. Also see the mailing list for details.

I have problems with TV volume control (using `/dev/mixer`).

Some users of &oss;/&bt848;/&bt878; cards reported problems controlling the volume settings of their TV cards because &kdetv; only lists `/dev/mixer` as an audio control device. To work around this issue you should enable the kernel module TV card (bt848) mixer support, `CONFIG_SOUND_TVMIXER`) which allows you to activate support for the audio mixer facilities on the &bt848; TV frame-grabber cards.

In case you are using &linux; Kernel 2.6.X:

There seems to be a problem related to the loading of the &bttv; module since Kernel 2.6.0-test10 in combination with &xfree86; 4.3.0.x: the modules are not loaded automatically anymore so you may run into the empty Select Source dialog problem above. As a work-around for this problem do the following: stop your X server, do a `modprobe bttv` (as root), and start your X server again. Now you should also see the &video4linux; adaptor again when you do a `xvinfo` and &kdetv; should work without problems.

&kdetv; crashes when opening settings dialog.

This is a setup problem, you likely have another directory around somewhere where &kdetv; (and &kde; itself) searches for shared libraries (&kdetv;'s plugins). If you have installed in `/opt/kde3/` look for &eg; `/usr/lib/kde3` and vice versa. Look at &kdetv;'s commandline output to find out where it searches for plugins (implemented in versions that are more recent than 0.8.3). If you use a NVidia graphics card, you should also read this post to the &kdetv; mailing list.

Channel numbering is broken! It always starts at 2!

This is because &kdetv; development started as a US program. To change the default behaviour, open the settings dialog, page General and set Channel numbering starts at: to "1". And you may want to read this thread on the &kdetv; mailing list.

I compiled &kdetv; from source but there is no Teletext or &alsa; support.

Teletext: you need to have &libzvbi; and &libzvbi-devel; packages installed. &alsa;: you need to have &alsa-devel; packages installed. Don't forget to rerun `./configure` after you installed them.

I compiled &kdetv; from the sources on a different architecture than x86 and I have problems, or there are plugins missing.

Many video filter plugins depend on the x86 architecture since they are written in assembly language. If you have compile or runtime problems on other architectures, I'll happily accept a fix for them. Unfortunately, I only have access to a i686 and x86-64 system.

`configure` has problems finding &Qt; libs on x86-64.

Try this commandline: `./configure --with-qt-dir=/usr/lib64/qt3 --with-qt-includes=/usr/lib64/qt3/include --with-qt-libraries=/usr/lib64/qt3/lib64 --enable-libsuffix=64`

Does &kdetv; support &dvb;?

No. Will it ever support it? Depends - if someone sponsors me a &dvb;-c card, I'll have a look at it ;-)

Does &kdetv; support deinterlacing?

Yes. Configure it in the Filters page in the Configure kdetv dialog.

Does &kdetv; support recording?

No. Will it ever? Likely not. &kdetv;'s goal is not to write another VDR (or MythTV, or whatever) system, but a small and usable TV viewer. Once recording is implemented, people start wanting time shifting and other goodies, which is beyond the scope (and architecture!) of this program. There are other applications that do this quite well, so use them instead.