[mythtv-users] trying to watch TV via mythtvfrontend produces blank screen

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Sun Jul 20 09:00:23 EDT 2003


 From the information you posted, I still cannot be certain what your 
problem is. OTOH, there are people here who are vastly more expert in the 
CVS version of mMyth than I am, and now perhaps one of them will be able to 
suggest something helpful. (Some of the error messages you are seeing are 
entirely unfamiliar to me, making me think they reflect changes to versions 
of Myth newer than what I've run.)

The one red flag I do see in what you last reported is this:

>60GB HDD (very little free space left though, about 800MB)

With that little space left, you are probably into the area reserved for 
root, making it difficult for any app that runs under a non-root userid to 
create files. Since Myth needs to create rather large files ... video is 
anywhere between 500 MB and 2 GB per hour, depending on which encoding you 
use ... Myth **may** simply be telling you (admittedly a bit inelegantly) 
that it is failing to create the buffer file needed to watch "live" TV.

Someone else more expert than I should really help you at this point, 
though, now that your trouble report is a bit more detailed than your 
original query.

At 12:33 PM 7/20/2003 +0200, Akos Maroy wrote:
>Ray Olszewski wrote:
>>So would I, now, with the additional information you provided. My initial 
>>response was based on the sketchiness of your report, especially your 
>>reliance on xawtv as the criterion for whether everything else (besides 
>>Myth) was working properly.
>
>I wasn't giving it as a criterion, I was telling this detail since I 
>though it might be of some use.
>
>>Of course, your report was equally sketchy about your Myth setup, as well 
>>as on your hardware. For example, aside from knowing that your tuner card 
>>is 3.5 years old, I still know nothing about it.
>
>Sorry about the missing details. I'm trying to do my best in reporting 
>relevant information. I guess this very correspondance is the process I 
>find out what information to report, and in response, I do report it.
>
>So in particular, my tuner card is an AverMedia TVPhone 98 card, which has 
>a bttv 878 chipset on it. This card has been supported by the bttv drivers 
>for quite a while now. It also includes an IR remote control, which is 
>supported by lirc.
>
>>You might find it worthwhile to post another followup that includes the 
>>rest of the details about your hardware (round up the usual spspects: CPU 
>>type and speed, RAM, hard disk size, what capture card), mentions
>
>AMD AthlonXP 1800+
>512MB RAM
>60GB HDD (very little free space left though, about 800MB)
>see the tv tuner card above
>
>>what version of MythTV you are running (at least if it is a distro 
>>pre-package, the main tarball, or CVS), and what procedure you followed 
>>to set it up.
>
>0.10, source tarball, I followed the documentation to set it up. I managed 
>to get it working up until the point I called mythtvfrontend, where the 
>menues came up, but I got stuck with watching TV as I reported originally.
>
>>In particular, what /dev/* devices are you telling Myth to use when 
>>capturing video and audio? Are they the correct devices (i.e., the same 
>>ones you have xawtv using)?
>
>I'm using xawtv with the default settings, which means:
>
>/dev/video0
>/dev/dsp
>/dev/vbi
>
>and I'm using the same devices. for Input connections, I'm using 
>/dev/video0 (Television), as this is how I recieve TV programming (through 
>a coax cable, not S-Video or composite).
>
>One problem was that I the video source, I could not set up tv_grab_hu as 
>the listings grabber, as it was missing as an option. So I set it to Germany.
>
>>Does the problem occur only when watching "live" TV, or does it occur 
>>when playing back recorded video in Myth?
>
>when trying to watch recordings ("watch recordings" option), I get a 
>problem connecting to the backend server.:
>
>
>$ mythbackend
>Starting up as the master server.
>Probed: /dev/video0 - Television
>Probed: /dev/video0 - Composite1
>Probed: /dev/video0 - S-Video
>2003-07-20 12:29:07 unknown socket
>
>
>$ mythfrontend
>connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543
>Segmentation fault
>
>
>BTW, ports 6543 is being listened on by mythbackend, I can telnet into it.
>
>
>when trying to watch TV live, I get:
>
>$ mythbackend
>Starting up as the master server.
>Probed: /dev/video0 - Television
>Probed: /dev/video0 - Composite1
>Probed: /dev/video0 - S-Video
>2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 1
>2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 0
>2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 0
>2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a remote ringbuffer
>Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
>strange error flushing buffer ...
>Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
>Segmentation fault
>
>
>$ mythfrontend
>connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543
>Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
>
>
>>Also ... not being a Red Hat user, I'm not certain of this ... but I 
>>think that RH 9.0 is less than 1.5 years old, and I do know that XFree86 
>>4.3.x is not anywhere close to 1.5 years old ... so you might want to be 
>>a bit more exact about what "this very system" is known to do properly.
>
>I was refering to the same hardware setup, and the same set of software, 
>previous versions though. what I wanted to point out is that the system / 
>hardware I have is not very new, thus has quite mature driver support.






More information about the mythtv-users mailing list