PCTV analog USB2: "open /dev/vbi: Device or resource busy issue" solved

VBI means Vertical Blank interval of a TV signal in the US terminology. This is the interval between frames where no picture is displayed but information like teletext can be broadcasted. I guess the VBI device in linux is the interface to read out such data from the TV signal provided that you TV grabber can extract you the VBI data from the video signal. Here I write why many people report that the VBI device of the PCTV analog USB is always busy though no application is using it.

the 150e/55e has an em2820 on board which does not support teletext ( raw VBI capture, sliced VBI capture)!!!

Although the em28xx driver supports em2820 based tv grabbers quite well it initializes an vbi device although it probably shouldn't. This is likely to the reason for the erreor you get when starting scnatv:

#scantv

vbi: open failed [/dev/vbi]

open /dev/vbi: Device or resource busy

#dmesg

em28xx #0: this driver can be opened only once

This issue has been fixed in the new version of the em28xx driver. If you update the em28xx driver it wont initialize a vbi device any more. However, after update you are likely to get anoher error message after starting scantv:

open /dev/vbi: no such device or directory

obviously scantv refuses to work without a vbi device which is probably a bug?



But as a workaround you could now start kdetv or xaw tv and scan the channels. This will work and you can enter the addtitional imformation for the channels manually.











Technorati Tags: PCTV analog USB2, em28xx

Powered by ScribeFire.