[mythtv-users] Re: MythTV : Little Sleep, Lots Of Reading... I Failed.

[Jarod C. Wilson]

On Monday, Jun 9, Bruce Markey wrote:

> Rob Case wrote:
>> Ok so I started out this weekend with the goal of setting up a MythTV 
>> box before the weekend was over.. sleep was not an option :)
>> I started out where I left off last week.. RH9/PVR-250/SB Live!
>> Jarod Wilson sent me his HOWTO and was readily available this weekend 
>> for fielding questions. I made it through numerous (20+) reinstalls 
>> with all of them ending the same way. (I don't blame the 
>> instructions, but rather my setup)
>
> I assure you, with no reservations, that Jarod Wilson's
> notes are not the authoritative information needed to install
> MythTV.

And I assure you that my notes are far better for someone attempting to 
install MythTV under Red Hat Linux 9 with a WinTV PVR-250 than the 
documentation on the MythTV web site, even if they aren't 
"authoritative."

> There is no mention in your message of following the
> documentation that is provided with MythTV. Therefore, I'm not
> surprised that you had problems.

Have you actually read all of both my docs and all of the official 
docs? In the official docs, there is no mention of RHL9 whatsoever, and 
only a little bit on installing ivtv. It includes very little about how 
to configure the card after you install the drivers (nothing about 
setting resolution, specifying input, fixing ghosted images, or 
anything about the remote). There is nothing about getting lirc from 
CVS to support the grey remote. And so on. By the way, much of my 
initial information actually did come from the official site, and was 
then enhanced/customized for RHL9 and a PVR-250.

> I setup a PVR-250 for the first time earlier this week and
> followed the MythTV HOWTO. I expected to give feedback but
> I had it working in less than an hour without a hitch.

Are you claiming that starting from scratch, you installed everything 
and had it all working in under an hour? I'm highly dubious as to the 
validity of that claim... I'd understand if you were just adding a 
PVR-250 to an already Mythtified box...

> If you do follow the documentation and find that the information
> is incomplete, confusing, or wrong, please send your suggestions
> so the the documentation needed for all MythTV users can be
> improved.

Guess what? I've already sent an email to Robert, requesting that at 
least part of my info be incorporated, because I feel the official docs 
are VERY lacking in several areas, particularly with respect to RHL9 
and the PVR-250.

>> mythbackend, mythfrontend both loaded. Was able to setup scheduling 
>> and tweak all the settings via the frontend.  Selecting "Watch TV" 
>> would lock the front end up.
>
> Had you tested and verified that the ivtv driver is installed
> correctly and functioning properly?
>
> http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-19.html#ss19.10
>
> The common test is to "cat /dev/video > test.mpg" then play
> the file with an MPEG player. You should see and hear the
> test recording correctly before going on to setup MythTV.

Yeah, that's mentioned in my docs also.

> When you do run "setup" for MythTV, one common problem is
> that in part 2 of setup, you need to make sure you choose
> Card type: "Hardware MPEG Encoder card".

Now I did forget to explicitly mention that. I'm adding that to my 
docs. :) There's a good chance that may have been one of Rob's problems 
(sorry, Rob!).

>> The sound worked prior to adding ALSA. Once ALSA was added I could 
>> not play any sounds but the test sound in KDE played while producing 
>> errors. (SB Live!)
>
> http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-18.html#ss18.11

Didn't know until looking at that again that you (Bruce) are an 
"official" documenter.

>> So tiring of the 3 Disk reinstalls and 1 hour+ idle time

NFS installs rock. No disc swapping, and actually faster on a 100Mb 
network... But that assumes you also have an NFS server floating about. 
:)

>> I have read with the PVR250 you do not need a sound card.. is this 
>> true? Will on board sound hurt my performance?
>
> A PVR-250 digitizes the audio and multiplexes the audio in
> the stream read from /dev/video. Therefore, your mythbackend
> does not need to be able to write to /dev/dsp to record audio.
> However, your mythfrontend does need to read from /dev/dsp to
> hear the sound on playback. If you have the Master and PCM
> unmuted and the volume up and can hear a test file with, say:
>
> 	aplay /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav
>
> then you should be all set.

You can actually do without even bothering with ALSA if you like. It 
isn't really absolutely necessary in many cases. I actually had my 
system working fine just using OSS before I installed ALSA. Some people 
have had problems with audio sync using OSS though, if I recall 
correctly, but it worked fine for me (definitely easier to set up, 
since it is the sound system Red Hat ships with). I do prefer ALSA 
though, and it works peachy on my system.

We'll see if we can't make some of my doc official, because I assure 
you that at least in some areas, it is far superior to what is 
currently called official. For those who missed it, or haven't read it 
at all yet (Bruce?), here it is:

http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250

It's not "official", but I assure you the content is good. ;)

Yours in sleep deprivation,
-jcw