[mythtv-users] Close to functional, few problems

[Torsten Schenkel]

On Thu, 2003-12-11 at 16:01, James Pifer wrote:
> I've been struggling for quite a while to try and get my MythTV box the
> way I want it. I'm very close now, can see light at the end of the
> tunnel. I do have a few issues. My setup is a PIII 1Ghz, 512RAM, 160
> GHD, and a PVR-350 using TVOut. 

OK, so you have the pvr350's tv-out connected to your TV and see the
myth-gui, correct?

> 1) If I start mythbackend as a service the frontend is unable to
> connect. When it starts as a service all the rights for ringbuf1.nuv are
> for root. If I start it manually as the mythtv user, then the rights are
> mythtv's. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

What exactly are the rights set to? I run mythbackend from /etc/init.d
and have:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         127M Dec 11 19:18 ringbuf1.nuv

So readable by anyone which probably is what frontend needs.
That's debian, I don't know what's the default umask for redhat, you can
change it in /etc/fstab for every partition you mount, assuming you
mount your mythtv dir on a separate partition.

/dev/hda2       /hda2           ext3    defaults        0       1

is my line in /etc/fstab. If redhats default umask is different you
might want to change 'default' to umask=066

(see 'man mount' and 'man fstab') 

> 2) This might be more of a ivtv issue, but I'm also seeing this error on
> starting the frontend, and the playback is choppy, as it says, skipping
> frames. Where to I correct the resolution at? XF86Config?
> ***
> * Couldn't find Xv support, falling back to non-Xv mode.
> * MythTV performance will be much slower since color
> * conversion and scaling will be done in software.
> * Consider upgrading your video card or X server if
> * you would like better performance.
> 2003-12-11 08:52:44 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
> ***
> * Your system is not capable of displaying the
> * full framerate at 720x480 resolution.  Frames
> * will be skipped in order to keep the audio and
> * video in sync.

You aren't running the video through the pvr's decoder, instead myth
tries to display it on the framebuffer, which is WAY to slow.

Go to Settings/TV-Settings and tick the "Use PVR350 hardware decoder"
checkbox. (Don't know the exact naming ATM, but you shouldn't have
problems finding it, make sure the output device is set to your
decoder's device, usually /dev/video16) 

> I do have a couple other minor issues, but these are really holding up
> progress. 

HTH,
Torsten
-- 
Config files for PVR350 TV-Out:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/ivtv-pvr-350-conf.tgz
Walkthrough: MythTV on Epia with PVR350 using Debian:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/myth/mythtv_debian_epia_pvr350_walkthrough