[mythtv-users] Woo Hoo - Mythtv lives... have a few questions though...

[michael brown]

From: "Malcolm"


> First off two thumbs up for the developers.  Excellent product that
far
> exceeded the level of professionalism I was expecting.  Very Nice.
>
> I will also point out that I spent 90% of my weekend trying to figure
out
> how to make the PVR-250 work in Linux.  Getting mythtv itself to work
was a
> piece of cake.  BTW for anyone reading the archives the answer is ivtv
> module for the pvr.  Google it from there.
>
> PIII 500 with 256 Megs ram
> PVR-250
> No TV out yet.  Just running the frontend on the same box to the
monitor.
> PVR-350 (on the way, don't have it yet)
>
> Fresh install of Mandrake 9.2.  Compiled my own custom 2.4.24 kernel.
> Compiled ivtv 0.17 and insmod ivtv (along with the other modules).
>
> 1) TV quality seems pretty poor?  I'm sure it's a driver more than
myth but
> I wanted to check.  The best I can describe it is that there are
vertical
> and horizontal lines.  I tried my signal source (cable) directly into
a TV
> and confirmed it's a good signal.  I also tried using my VCR as a
direct
> source and it still looked like crap.  Where do I start looking on
this?

If rebooting the machine seems to clear the picture up some, then what
you need is some new(er) firmware from Hauppauge.  Just download the
exe, run the perl script on it and be happy.  ;-)  Make sure you have a
very current version of the ivtv driver too.  I find that the 0.1.8
version of ivtv and the pvr250_17_21288.exe firmware works fairly well,
though I have had one hard lock and.

> 2) Channel changing is kinda slow.  There's a pause delay when
changing
> channels.  Now I will point out the box was doing software decoding to
the
> monitor at full screen (not sure if a window is possable) and a
seperate ssh
> session from another box showed the CPU was pegged at a constant 100%.
Is
> that probably all that's causing the slow channel changes?  Does myth
> "normally" flip channels quickly?

There is a delay because Myth is recording the show and playing it back
simultaneously.  This is something that you will just have to learn to
live with, unless the developers figure out someway to shrink the gap.
The delay here is approx. 1 or 2 seconds.  Before I installed a newer
ivtv and firmware, the delay was approximately 4 or 5 seconds.  For the
most part now, I just watch TV the old fashioned way unless it's
something important enough that I would want to be able to pause it.
This way, Myth can record anything it wishes (unless I'm using the
pvr-250 to watch "live TV") and I can watch what I wish and channel surf
without delays.  HTH

michael brown