[SOLVED] Kworld DVB-T USB 323UR - no sound

Hi to all.
I need some help in order to make the above TV usb stick fully functional.

This is the whole story:
In the begining I could not get the card to work. Even if it was seen by lsusb, the TV applications (tvtime, xawtv etc) could not see it.
The driver was em28xx which was already installed.
I ran dmesg and found the following line: error: firmware xc3028-v27.fw not found.

So I searched through the internet, found this firmware, downloaded it and copied it to /lib/firmware file.

Restarted the laptop and managed to get the tv card actually working. I installed Tvtime, scanned and found all the available channels.

The problem is that I cannot get the sound to work. I have tried too many options and more specifically:

I have gone through the /etc/tvtime/tvtime.xml file and started to mess around with the <option name="MixerDevice" value="default/Line"/> line.

As I understand the "default" goes for pulse audio and the "Line" goes for the bar that you use to increase/decrease the volume.

At first the volume bar at TVtime was not moving at all (it was stuck at 0). After changing the "default/Line" to "default/Master" I got the volume bar in TVtime to move (together with the volume of my laptop) but I got no sound.

I also installed gnome alsa mixer and changed the tvtime.xml line to "hw:0/Line" or "hw:0/PCM" or "hw:0/CD". (hw:0 activates the alsa application). In all cases the volume bar of TVtime was moving and I could set it to maximum, but I don't get any sound...

I have installed also pulse audio volume control, played around with the options, and still no sound...

Needless to say that I was unmuting all options and setting all bars to maximum.

I tried also XawTv, but apart from the fact that I don't like it, I don't get any sound either.
I tried Kaffeine, but even if the channels are scanned, they are not saved so I don't have a list of channels.

I like TVtime (even if I can only get analog channels while my card is for digital channels as well) but I cannot figure out how to get the sound working...

At this point I am open to suggestions and I would like to thank you in advance for your kind assistance.

Hi MV,

I would suggest you use either "kaffeine" or "me-tv" for your TV viewing. Make sure you have dvb-apps and gnome-dvb-client and daemon installed also. (Don't use version 2 of me-tv, it doesn't work correctly because it has no scan function!!.Install version 1.3 from here:)

http://linuxappfinder.com/package/me-tv

Make sure to lock the version in Synaptic so it doesn't update to a later version!.

I would also install the package "libsox-fmt-all" as an extra bonus.

In the Ubuntu repo you will also find "linux-firmware-nonfree" available (most dvb firmware is bundled in it) assuming you have activated the medibuntu repo.

Read this post about dvd playback and medibuntu repo:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=178&p=2191&hilit=medibuntu#p2191

Regards Wolfman

Thanx wolfman. I will give it a try again in the afternoon.

I was thinking of installing medibuntu and the linux-firmware-nonfree (the firmware of my card is actually included in there) but is there any point since I have found and I have placed the correct firmware in /lib/firmware and the card works now (apart from the sound problem)?

Unfortunatelly no luck.
The peculiar thing is that while on TVtime the dvbt usb stick lights up with blue light right away (sign that it is activated), on all other programs like metv or kaffeine, it does not. And it is like metv and kaffeine do not recognise it.

What is it that makes tvtime recognize the card so well?

I experimented even more.

I read somewhere in here that pulse audio is not so good, while alsa is better.
So through gstreamer I changed all the audio settings to alsa (and more specifically to Conexant)..

Still no luck.

I even tried through wine to install the Kworld's TV program, but the card is not recognised/working.

I am one step before complete success and "sound" keeps me from conquering it! LOL !

Hi MV,

I forgot to point out one very critical thing about USB DVB-T sticks, don't boot with the stick inserted, only insert the stick once the PC has fully booted.

"me-tv" will still remain active even if you close the prog, it will remain in your taskbar and stop any other app from using it!!.

You can overwrite the firmware files if you want to using the "medibuntu" supplied package "linux-firmware-nonfree", it won't hurt the system whatsoever!.

Do you also have "libxine1-ffmpeg" installed??.

Regards Wolfman

Hi MV,
I forgot to point out one very critical thing about USB DVB-T sticks, don't boot with the stick inserted, only insert the stick once the PC has fully booted.

Why is that...?

As regards MeTV, I also shut it off from the task bar -> left click-quit.
I could not scan any channels with MeTV, so I found for my country the channels.conf file from LinuxTV. I load it in MeTV, but again, even if the channels were listed, the signal was reported as zero... As I said, it is like MeTV does not recognize my card. While TVtime recognizes the card instantly whatever I do with the stick i.e. even if I plug it in before or after booting. I have also tried to scan channels through dvb-apps. Even if my card is recognised (it is regognized as Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T) after the scan I get no channels. Does it have to do with the fact that MeTV recognizes digital channels while TVtime recognizes only analog channels? Ofcourse my card is hybrid i.e. for both types of channels.

One thing that I have seen is that if I unplug the DVBT USB stick before shutting down the laptop, the system freezes and I have to reboot.
I will check about libxine1.

Just to give more info about the Kworld VS-DVB-T 323UR

The lsusb result is:

Code:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID eb1a:e323 eMPIA Technology, Inc.

The driver is:

Code:

em28xx

The firmware needed for the card is:

Code:

xc3028-v27.fw

An the card is recognized by the TV programs as:

Code:

Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T

Does this help at all?

Do you also have "libxine1-ffmpeg" installed??.

Regards Wolfman

Yes, it is installed.

I did it !!!!! YEEEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH !!!!!

I did it with Kaffeine !!!!! Which is better because it receives digital channels!!!

I had to change the scan options to:

tuner timeout ms: 5000
source: autoscan with 167khz offsets

All the proper channels were found, and they work GREAT. Picture is great, sound is great!!!!

I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! I finally did it !!!!!

I am getting the hang of Linux pretty good!

Please mark this topic as solved !

Hi MV,

glad to hear you got it working, great news!

In answer to your question about why you shouldn't insert the DVB-T stick before the PC has fully booted, the answer is quite simply that it won't be recognised by the OS, I cannot tell you exact details but that has happened to me in the past a few times!!.

Me-tv is an okay prog and it is digital, if you installed version 2, it doesn't have a scan function hence the link above to version 1. It has a great EPG which is why I prefer it over kaffeine, that said, kaffeine has better scan qualities than me-tv!!.

Regards Wolfman

Thank you for all your help guys!
It seemed that dvb-apps and libxine1-ffmpeg packages were very essential.