[mythtv] Hardware advice (Via Eden Board) / Video Card.

[Christoph Neumann]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Colin Panisset wrote:

> On Monday 25 November 2002 16:23, Christoph Neumann spake thus:
> >
> > I have setup my computer so that mythtv runs in it's own X session.
> > Basically, I do "xinit /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 -- :1 -screen TV" and then
> > run "mythfrontend" when the xsession comes up.  "TV" is a custom-defined
> > "screen" in my XF86Config:
> >
> > Section "Screen"
> >         Identifier "TV"
> >         Device "NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS (generic)"
> >         Monitor "ViewSonic PS"
> >         DefaultDepth 24
> >         Subsection "Display"
> >                 Depth 24
> >                 Modes "800x600"
> >         EndSubSection
> > EndSection
> >
> > I can then switch between my normal X session and my MythTV xsession with
> > the "Ctrl+Alt+F7" and "Ctrl+Alt+F8" sequences.  I'm working on mapping
> > hotkeys to run scripts to enable/disable TV out since the NVidia card I
> > have has problems when I switch X sessions with the TVout enabled.
> >
> > - Christoph
> 
> Since this could well be useful for various other people, I'm doing a 
> similar thing after reading and implementing the XF86Config part of 
> Christoph's setup. I'm using a small startup script, called mythstartup, 
> which looks like this:
> 
> ---- Begin script ----
> #!/bin/sh
> /usr/X11R6/bin/twm &
> /usr/local/bin/mythfrontend	# this never returns
> ---- End script ----
> 
> In combination with a $HOME/.twmrc which has the following salient features:
> 
> ---- Begin .twmrc fragment ----
> NoTitle
> UsePPosition "on"
> RandomPlacement
> NoGrabServer
> ClientBorderWidth
> FramePadding 0
> ---- End .twmrc fragment ----
> 
> Then I start it with:
> 
> xinit /home/mythtv/mythstartup -- :1 -screen TV
> 
> This gives me a dedicated MythTV session that's always running. The box is 
> only a 1GHz P3, and my wife uses it, so I have to be careful about the 
> encoding resolution and codec/options that I use, but it works fine for the 
> moment.
> 
> I did try starting mythfrontend on its own, without a window manager, but I 
> found that there were problems with keyboard focus getting lost, either 
> after changing the theme or watching live TV -- couldn't change channels, 
> pause, or even stop viewing. Thankfully Ctrl-Alt-Backspace works well :)

Yeah.  I tried to do this without the window manager and had trouble too.  
That's why I chose twm2 since it has low overhead.  The key bindings are
fine until you go into TV mode.  I think it's because the TV view is a
separate window that gets put in front of the interface window.  Since
there is no window manager to automatically focus the new window, all the
key bindings stop working.
 
> BTW, the machine it's running on has *no* hard drive. It has a root 
> filesystem on NFS, and automounts the /media/video filesystem as necessary. 
> Works just dandy over a switched 100Mbit network. This goes a long way to 
> making the machine silent. Case and CPU fans are all there is, and though 
> I'd love to get rid of them both, it's one of the little Shuttle PCs and so 
> there isn't space for large heatsinks or big, slow fans. Oh, 768MB RAM 
> doesn't hurt either ;)
> 
>   -- C.
> 
> 
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