[mythtv-users] Myth 0.14 - Version 1.0??

[malcolm-mythtv]

On Sunday 08 February 2004 10:10 am, Brent Borghese wrote:
> I have been using Myth now for over a year and I have to say Myth 0.14
> is the best yet!!!!!!
>
> Does any body else feel that its time to call it Version 1.0 or maybe
> 2.0?

No.  Don't know about the rest of you guys but MythTV seems very unstable.  I 
have to reboot at least once a day sometimes several times a day.  If I hit 
"M" when viewing live TV and navigate the menu it almost guarentees a crash.

When watching TV for a while and you hit "right arrow key" instead of skipping 
forward it skips back.  Subsequent presses of right arrow key will then start 
to skip forward.  Sometimes however it just craps out and the OSD displays 
that you are about 5 seconds behind real time but Disk Usage is 101.xx %.  At 
this point it will not allow you to Pause TV, skip forward or backwards.

I've found the other skip features also crap out while watching Live TV.  
Pressing Q or Z sometimes freaks things out and then you can't use the arrow 
keys to skip forward or backwards or pause live TV or do anything.

I've also found playing around with "I" and Pause TV, "fast forward" and so 
forth to much causes my TV output to just freeze solid.  Like the mythbox 
just locked up or something.  Only it didn't lockup.  CPU is idle too, I'm 
not sure what it's waiting on but all of a sudden 20 seconds later or so the 
TV starts working again.  Usually at this point it's pretty unstable.  
Skipping forward or trying a commercial skip after a so called "freeze" 
usually results in the box locking for real.

I can't play back a DVD to the TV without it been super slow and jumpy.  I 
know this is not MythTV's fault but rather something to do with Xine / ivtv 
driver and using the PVR-350 out.  Anyhow my point is I can't watch DVDs yet.

If you leave a web browser open for a long time from another PC browsing 
Mythweb eventually after along time something happens where clicking on 
"system status" just makes httpd2 peg the CPU 100% for 30 seconds and then 
you get an error page.  Closing that browser and opening up the exact same 
browser does not fix the problem.  You have to ssh over to the Mythbox and 
delete your session file from /var/www/html/mythtv/php_sessions/

I can't power up my myth box without a keyboard and mouse plugged in.  If I do 
Myth has no stations.  You hit "I" (from the remote) and channels are blank.  
You are stuck on that one channel.  Usually 3 on my box.

You can't edit out commercials like you're supposed to.  From reading the 
mailing lists it looks like some people have it working.  Others I've seen 
have the same issues as me.  It's buggy and doesn't deal with mark points 
quite right and you can't transcode mpeg2 to mpeg2 yet so even if I do manage 
to get a movie all marked out I can't transcode the recordings made by my PVR 
cards to save disk space.

Picture in Picture does not work right.  If I hit V I get nothing.  If I play 
around and hit combinations of V, B, N eventually I see something but it's 
real slow and I can see lags in picture and sound as it's trying to display.  
Once it's up hitting "B" to change focus doesn't show you which has focus?  
The big picture or the little one.  Only way to tell is to try and change 
channels.  Unfortunatly that's real slow and if the wrong one had focus you 
have to wait for it to change, then change it back, and then change focus 
again and try changing channels again.

It's 6:00pm and you're watching a movie on channel 6 on capture card 1 about 
30 minutes behind real time.  You have a recording scheduled at 6:30pm on  
channel 8.  At 6:30pm it automatically just changes the channel on capture 
card 1 to channel 8 and starts recording it.  It should have grabbed your 
idle capture card 2 sitting there doing nothing.  You hit Esc and exit to the 
main menu, select TV and it now grabs capture card 2.  You go to channel 6 
only to see your movie is over.  The ringbuffer is gone and you just lost the 
last 30 minutes of your movie.

I've also found if you are watching a recoding that's in progress from the 
"Watch Recordings" menu and then you hit Esc because you decide you no longer 
want to watch that show right now it will also stop recoding at that point 
(sometimes).

Anyhow I don't want to seem like I'm bashing Myth but just point out no I 
don't think it's ready to be called Version 1 or 2.

I think Myth has some great potential and I'll continue to upgrade as things 
become available.  Maybe one day it will be stable enough to put on my main 
TV.

I may not be able to code and fix myth but I sure can test it and let you guys 
know what's going on.

My setup:
2.4 Ghz Celeron, with 512 Megs DDR
Gigabyte board
PVR-250
PVR-350
SB Live

I have 3 hard drives I've been switching between.  Gentoo, KnoppMyth, and 
Mandrake.  The main one I've had the most success with is my Mandrake drive 
and compiling everything I need from source so here's it's details.
Mandrake 9.2
kernel.org kernel 2.4.24 patched with v4l2
mythtv-0.14 compiled with native LIRC support
ivtv 0.1.9

Thanks
Malcolm