[mythtv-users] Up and running, but have some questions/issues

[James Pifer]

JAC,

Thanks for the info. Just skipping by hitting Z (or eventually a button
on the remote) would work great for me. 

Okay, so I need to somehow get my TVOut working. Anyone have this card
and/or willing to give me a hand offline I would appreciate it. (email
is jep at obrien-pifer.com) I think I'm close, but it just isn't working. I
don't want to take any more list time than I have to. 

I'll check for that setting, but does leave the question about a
particular situation and how it would be handled. If I'm taping a show
at 8PM and another show at 9PM on a different channel, I assume it will
handle that?.?.? I'll look at Fix Conflicts.

Thanks,
James

On Fri, 2003-10-31 at 11:23, Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> On Friday 31 October 2003 09:32, James Pifer wrote:
> > I have MythTV 0.12 and MythWeb working, running on Redhat 9 on a Dell
> > Optiplex 150 (PIII 1Ghz) with 512 RAM. The Tuner is a PVR-350.
> >
> > I don't have TVOut working so I have it hooked up to my Infocus X1
> > using the VGA cable. Sound kind of sucks(headphone jack --->>
> > composite A/V), but the video isn't bad. Still working on LIRC too,
> > so I'm using the keyboard for control.
> >
> > Here it goes... Watching a LiveTV and recordings last night I noticed
> > a few things.
> >
> > The commercial skip seemed to be working ok at first, then it started
> > to skip too early. It would leave the show 10 or 15 sec early and
> > start again near the end of the commercial, with some of the
> > commercial still left. Strict Commercial Detection is checked. Maybe
> > it shouldn't be?
> 
> Well, this is really addressing the symptom more than the problem, but I 
> always run with 'Auto Detect Commercials' ON, and 'Auto Skip 
> Commercials' turned OFF.  This way the commercials get detected, but it 
> only skips when I hit the 'z' key, so I'm guaranteed that it won't skip 
> any of part of my show.  Just a suggestion.
> 
> 
> > Sound issues:
> > The sound and video were out of sync at times. This was mainly when
> > watching and recording a show at the same time. These are not checked
> > in the setups:
> > Aggressive Sound Card buffering
> > Experimental A/V Sync
> > Extra audio buffering
> > Would any of these help that?
> >
> > Sometimes when I try to start mythfrontend I get an error that
> > something using/dev/dsp. If I wait a few minutes or just keep trying,
> > it eventually starts. One confusing thing is that the
> > "Troubleshooting audio" section says that the instructions don't
> > apply to PVR-250/350 and they talk about troubleshooting /dev/dsp.
> > I'm using a 350, should I be having this problem?
> 
> If you're not using the PVR-350's output capabilities (just for 
> recording?), then you're probably still using your onboard sound/PCI 
> sound card for audio out, right?  Then you still need to make sure that 
> nothing else on your frontend (arts, esd, etc) is opening your sound 
> device.
> 
> > I think I did see a message about my sound card not supporting Full
> > Duplex. I'm running everything on one machine, but since I'm using a
> > 350 I still shouldn't have a problem according to the troubleshooting
> > doc. Do I have something mis-configured?
> >
> > According to dmesg I have DMA enabled as well and the hard drive has
> > it enabled. (according to "Fast CPU, choppy or jittery video) in the
> > troubleshooting.
> 
> Right; you don't need to worry about full-duplex if you're recording 
> with a PVR-x50.
> 
> Basically, all of the problems you described above will probably go away 
> if you get yourself set up to use the PVR-350's TV-out & sound out.  No 
> more sync problems, and I hear the quality of the TV-out is better than 
> anything else; plus, right now you're decoding full-screen MPEG-2 in 
> software; that's within the capabilities of a 1GHz P-III, but why push 
> your machine that hard when you have a hardware decoder just begging to 
> be used?
> 
> 
> 
> > Last one is the time. My MythTV box is using NTP for it's time.
> > Either my time isn't as accurate as I think, or my cable company
> > isn't very diligent on their time. I'm missing the first few seconds
> > of the shows I'm recording. Any suggestions on dealing with this?
> 
> Most likely your cable provider and/TV network feed likes to start 
> things a little early.  Look in Setup->TV Settings->General and enter a 
> value for "Time to record before start of show".  I use a value of 180 
> (3 minutes), which works pretty well for me.
> 
> -JAC
> 
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