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

[Craig Longman]

Isaac Richards wrote:

>On Monday 09 June 2003 07:26 am, Jarod C. Wilson wrote:
>  
>
>>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."
>>    
>>
>You have a number of inaccuracies in your docs, btw.
>  
>
lets try and correct them, in addition to pointing them out.

>- ALSA is not required at all for things to run, there's no reason to make it 
>look like it is.  The only reason that it's recommended for most setups is 
>that the drivers generally work better than the kernel drivers.
>
alsa is better for non pvr-250 and non btaudio installations only, 
right?  in other words, when you need to use the sound card in full 
duplex mode, and perhaps in some special cases where the kernel audio 
has problems (like VIA M-10000)?

>- Using lirc on the pvr cards does not use the serial modules, so your stated 
>reason for forcing a recompile of the kernel is wrong.
>
lirc on the pvr uses the i2c interface, and that's the reason for 
possibly needing to recompile, right?  but if you had a recent kernel, 
then it might not be necessary.  the i2c and the v4l(2) stuff are whats 
important for the kernl, is this correct?

>- A better bitrate peak would be 4000, not 8000, for an average rate of 2500.  
>Having the peak bitrate too high can cause problems.
>
well, this is certainly not always the case.  if i drop the bitrate 
below an average of about 5Mbps, i get choppy audio and video.  now that 
i've patch mplayer, i should test to see if it is just myth, or the 
actual recording thats the problem.

>- If you don't want it to capture at 480x480, why don't you just go into the 
>recording options and change the resolution there?  Also, if you're going to 
>tell people to blindly change to NTSC and the 4th input on the card, you 
>should at least show how to get the correct numbers for those by using the 
>querying commands (-n to list the inputs, -s to list the video standards).
>
this is certainly the right way to do this.

>Also, I would very much prefer that you submit patches to the existing docs to 
>Robert, instead of writing your own.
>
normally, this is how this starts.  someome takes something and does a 
good job of it, then it can get submitted and hopefully included.  by 
and large, these howtos start out as 'this is what i had to do' and 
grows from there.  

cheers,

    CraigL->Thx();