[mythtv] Some bugs, suggestions

[James Knight]

Hi, I just got a mythtv setup working and thought I'd mention some 
problems I've had during the installation of version 0.8. If they are 
fixed in the latest CVS, great! Otherwise, maybe this will be helpful. 
Now that I've got it working, I find it really great, and hope there's 
more good stuff to come. :)

1) mythbackend segfaults way too easily. At first I couldn't get it to 
run at all, because all it did was segfault when I tried to start 
watching live TV. It turned out there were two problems, both of which 
caused it to crash horribly with no indication of what is wrong. 1) the 
directory I told it to write video to had the wrong permissions and was 
therefore not writable. 2) The vbi device was set to use /dev/vbi but 
that device didn't exist (it was actually called /dev/vbi0). This last 
one bring me to another bug...

2) In the setup program, in the device setup screen, it lets you type 
in the textfields (so for example the audio device field might say 
"/dev/dsp" and you can type "1" and it becomes "/dev/dsp1") BUT it 
completely ignores changes made in that way when you press enter to 
commit the changes. This problem stumped me for a while and is why I 
didn't notice the /dev/vbi problem...I *HAD* changed it to /dev/vbi0!

3) I initially selected the wrong channel lineup in the setup program. 
When I went to correct it, however, the setup program appeared to have 
frozen after selecting the correct channel lineup. Upon further 
inspection (killing the setup program) I noticed that tv_grab_na was 
waiting for my input on the terminal about whether it was okay to lose 
some channels! Oops. After reassuring it that it was really okay, 
everything worked again. Note that this happened even when selecting 
the "clear provider selections" option at the start of the setup 
program. (Oops - I see now that this is already in the documentation!)

4) Even after running mythfilldatabase to refresh the listings, it 
didn't delete the no-longer-available channels. I had to do that 
manually by connecting to mysql.

5) (This one I haven't solved) If I press fastforward (right-arrow) and 
it's already at the head of the recording, the frontend appears to just 
freeze for some amount of time. Is it setting the request stream 
position and just waiting until that comes up? It's a somewhat 
irritating bug, in any case.

Okay, now onto things that aren't bugs but rather small enhancement 
requests:

1) There doesn't seem to be any way to change channels and stay in the 
EPG. Maybe I'm missing a key? (this relates somewhat to #4 as well)

2) Volume control doesn't work in the EPG screen

3) I can't find a definitive list of keys/functions for each mode.

4) It doesn't seem as if the key controls are really oriented towards 
remote control usage. For example, the arrows are 
fastforward/rewind/chanup/chandown AND do the menu movement. I'm 
planning to buy a TiVo remote control (unless anyone has a suggestion 
for a better one!) on ebay and use that with my system so it would be 
really nice if the keys were one-function enough to work with a real 
remote. It makes sense to have multi-use keys on a keyboard, not so 
much on a remote control where the buttons have specific labeled uses. 
(so, i'd want the chanup/down keys to always function as 
chanup/chandown, not menu movement in epg). Perhaps a configurable 
keyboard binding system would help.. of course, I'd prefer if it just 
had good bindings by default. :)

5) While watching TV, typing "045" doesn't immediately go to channel 
45, even though there's only 3 digits of channels. Real TVs usually do 
this and it's convenient to not have to press enter.

6) The menu icons seem extraordinarily slow to draw... my computer is 
an Athlon 1600+, which is plenty fast enough to do live TV even 
underclocked at 1Ghz, yet the menu interface takes about 2 seconds to 
draw the options. Can something be done about that?

Anyhow, I really love MythTV and just ordered a shuttle PC for a 
dedicated mythtv box, so, good going guys, this software is great, and 
I'm looking forward to future enhancements!

James