[mythtv-users] MythTV in Debian with Avermedia

[Ray Olszewski]

At 08:44 PM 9/24/2003 +0200, Alberto Rodriguez Galdo wrote:
>Hi,
>
>    I've spent weeks trying to get MythTV up and running, without luck.
>My system is a Debian Woody upgraded to Sarge so i use the dijkstra .deb
>packages. I have a via 82cxxx sound card (those integrated in the mother
>board) and an Avermedia Tv capture card, with a bt878 chip and I am in
>Spain. I followed the howto to get it configured but i wasn't able to
>get it running. I start mythbackend and then mythfrontend, when i try to
>see live tv i am able to hear the sound, as it comes from the line-in,
>but the screen is blank. I've executed this in all sorts of
>configurations, kde, gnome, windowmaker, with spanish tv, us, etc... I
>know my sound card works fine because i can hear mp3 in freeamp or xmms
>wich uses /dev/dsp and i am able to see the tv using xawtv... I must say
>i'm not using alsa drivers, i use the proper via driver from the kernel
>itself.
>
>    So, the question is, ¿Does anybody in spain has mythtv running in
>Debian Sarge? or even ¿Did anyone in spain got it running?

I can't answer your actual question ... I've used Sid, not Sarge, and I'm 
not in Spain. But the problem you describe sounds like an X problem, 
specifically the lack of proper support for xVideo in your X driver. So ...

         what video card?
         what X driver do you use for it (some cards have several choices)?
         what card output are you using (VGA? TV out?)
         what does your "blank" screen look like (black? blue? snow?)
         can you watch mpeg or DivX (or whatever) video on this hardware 
using xine, invoked as "xine -V xv filename" (replacing filename with a 
video file that xine can play)? Because xawtv used non-standard tricks for 
video, xine is a better test of video and X than xawtv.
         Is there anything unusual about your setup that you did not think 
to mention?

In the past, I've had problem with via chipsets and OSS. Alsa worked better 
for me. But if you're hearing sound in "live" TV mode, you are not having 
the sound problems I encountered.