[mythtv-users] Mythtv crashes in live TV and only a few channels work

[Ivan A. Beveridge]

On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 12:32:55AM -0400, ed wrote:
> I am a major noob to mythtv, although I have been watching forums and 
> reading up on everything for a while. I also have little experience with 
> linux in general and therefore am spending a lot of time trying to move 
> around. 

Does "reading up on everything" include reading and checking your setup
against the HOWTO? It's actually a pretty in-depth howto doc (although
it doesn't catch everything)!

> I set up KnoppMyth on my AMD Athlon 900 system running a PVR-250, Geforce2 
> MX 440 card, Soundblaster Audigy sound card, and a 60 gig hard drive. 
> 
> After I set everything up as simply as possible, only a few channels 
> actually receive anything, the others are all garbled. When I try to watch 
> a channel for a little while, the channel crashes. These are my major 
> problems. I also don't have the sound working and the remote control, but I 
> haven't really attempted anything. 

I don't know how knoppmyth is setup (how much of it is setup and
running). I would suggest picking one channel and getting that working.
Then try adding/using more.

Are you able to record a TV programme? Pick a short one to start with
(eg news, etc) and then try to play it back. With an analogue card you
are encoding to MPEG2, and then decoding from MPEG2 back to screen [1].
Doing this in one go (as happens with liveTV) is pretty harsh for a 
machine.

"watching liveTV" uses a buffer (to enable you to pause, rewind, etc).
The size of this buffer is configured using the mythtv setup programme
(possibly called mythtv-setup). Check to see how much disk space you
have available in the directory where this buffer writes to (the unix
"df" command tells you how much disk space used/free per partition /
mount-point). If the size of the buffer is larger than your available
disk space, it could be that you are running out of disk space (this is
why the viewing crashes).

I'm also a little stuck WRT watching/recording analogue TV (I use DVB).
If you are using the PVR250 to decode the signal (to allow you to watch
it) then I believe the audio comes out from the PVR250 card - try
plugging the speakers in there. If so (and if this is not what you were
expecting) you can either stop using the PVR as a decoder (although your
CPU may not then cope) or you can take the signal out from the PVR and
into line-in of your sound card (you'll obviously need a cable for this). 
You may then need to juggle your audio setup a little to play the audio 
from line-in.

The remote is likely to use LIRC software to communicate with mythtv. I
would certainly imagine there is a config file to match that remote (as
the PVR-250 is pretty popular). It may be on your hard disk already
(under something like /usr/share/doc/lirc*) or possibly with the lirc
source (use google to find it, or read the mythtv howto).

I'm not sure how helpful this is, as your setup bears no resemblence to
mine :)

Cheers


Ivan
[1] The PVR250 is doing some or all of the encoding and decoding, saving
     your CPU.
-- 
Ivan Beveridge	<ivan at dreamtime.org>