MythTV: StartRecorder() -- timed out waiting for recorder to start

This problem occured after installation of MythTV under OpenSuse 10.2 using the PCTV analog USB video grabber. Here I write how I solved this issue.


This problem turned out to result from a driver problem for the analogeus USB TV grabber which comes with OpenSuse 10.2. This dirver is outdated. I guess the MythTV can't communicate with the driver. The v4l2 driver for the PCTV USB 150e/55e PAL/SECAM for Linux is the em28xx. The current version fixes this problem.

To install the current driver you need to install the kernel source and kernel headings and the mercurial package which will download the drvier source for you.
In addition its a good idea to a clean reinstall of the media library. I used the following commands which probably can do the trick for you too however don't do the "rm" stuff unless you know that the vf4l driver source compiles without problems:

# rm -rf  /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/media
# hg clone http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-kernel
# cd v4l-dvb-kernel
# make
# make ./install

In fact I use the experimentel tree of the driver which also woks fine for me.(http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-experimental)

The experimental driver works for me with MythTV, Freevo, TVtime, mplayer, and kdetv so it can't get much better, I guess.
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