[mythtv-users] MythTV - PVR-250 - some newbie questions

[emory]

Though you aren't using Fedora, check out http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
for a lot of handy debugging tips (i.e. why you aren't getting any
video, how to change the channel without mythtv, etc).

Your .NUV files from a PVR-250 should be around 2 GB an hour.  The raw
video files you are recording via command line look too small to be
real video files, and the files you are recording with myth are too
big to be MPEG2 encoded.   Have you tried running "mythtvsetup" to set
up your PVR-250 as an input?

Finally, don't try to stress yourself by saying stuff like, "I have to
get this working by XXX so I can record it."  MythTV takes time, a lot
of time when you first start out. It took me three months to get all
the kinks out. Most of us do it for fun in our spare time, but if it's
stressing you out, then what's the point?

One useful thing that takes the pressure off is to have a dual-boot
configuration with a small windows partition.  It's not too hard to
set up (install windows first, then linux). That way, if there's
something you really want to record when MythTV is not functional yet,
and you've already thrown away your VCR, you can always use the lame
WinTV PC software.  And, as hard as this is for me to say as a diehard
Mac and Linux user, having a PC partition is occassionally pretty
useful.

Final word of unrelated advice: for your partitions, partimage+knoppix
is your friend. Especially if you're using Gentoo and you have to
compile everything everytime you start from scratch.

e


On 4/23/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>    I'm in the process of setting up a PVR-250 to use MythTV. I've not
> used the application before today but I must say I'm very impressed so
> far. For the most part the info on the web to get things set up is
> pretty good. I've made it a long ways with a bit of help from
> Gentoo-Users. I have managed to record some video although so far I
> cannot view any of it. (Big problem, 'eh?) ;-) Anyway, this is my
> first post here and hopefully it will help me make some forward
> progress. Thanks in advance.
> 
>    The PVR is installed and I am able to record video from the command
> line using the following set of commands:
> 
> ivtvctl -u 0x3000
> ivtvctl -p 4
> ivtvctl -f width=720,height=480
> ivtvctl -v input=3,output=1
> cat /dev/video0 >test.mpg
> mplayer test.mpg
> 
> The video and audio quality looks good when I do that. I haven't
> figured out channel tuning though. File size is small and the output
> does appear to be mpeg. mplayer is happy with the data.
> 
>    I have attempted to read through the guide here: (very good BTW)
> 
> http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO.html#toc11
> 
> as well as use the Gentoo docs here:
> 
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV
> 
> but didn't find answers to the questions that follow:
> 
> TODAY's GOAL: Record Saturday Night Live tonight. (About 10 hours from now.) ;-)
> 
> 1) The system is using the PVR-250. I've set up a ZapIt account and I
> seem to be getting good cable guide info. Right programs, right
> channels, etc.
> 
> 2) I've managed to record some video. It's currently going into a
> private partition called /TVstorage. However when I try to watch this
> recorded program MythTV first goes to a black screen and then pretty
> immediately comes back to the main screen. I see no video.
> 
> 3) If I record for 10 minutes I see this in /TVstorage:
> 
> mark at dragonfly /TVstorage $ ls -aCs
> total 7435740
>       4 .   7435728 1009_20050423124000_20050423125000.nuv        0
> nfslockfile.lock
>       4 ..        4 log
> mark at dragonfly /TVstorage $
> 
> So 10 minutes of recording took up about 7.6GB. This seems to me that
> I'm getting raw video data and not the output of the PVR-250's mpeg
> encoder? Is this true?
> 
> 4) If I am getting raw data how do I get the output of the encoder
> instead? This amount of disk space will kill me and if it was an mpeg
> file I could try watching it with other apps also.
> 
> 5) Can this *.nuv file be converted to mpeg so that I can see if
> there's real video/audio there?
> 
> 6) I'm seeing some messages I don't like in the log file:
> 
> 2005-04-23 12:49:55.299 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
> 2005-04-23 12:49:56.801 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
> 2005-04-23 12:49:57.168 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
> 2005-04-23 12:49:58.303 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
> 2005-04-23 12:49:59.738 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
> 2005-04-23 12:50:00.126 Finished recording first test (Manual Record)
> on channel: 1009
> 2005-04-23 12:50:00.280 Changing from RecordingOnly to None
> 
> Two things concern me:
> 
> 1)  IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() - What's this
> message about. This is the only app I've seen do this so far. The
> machine is a fairly new 3GHz Intel ox, but CPU usage was low at 10%
> when recording. DMA on the hard drive is enabled and throughput is
> pretty fast according to hdparm:
> 
> dragonfly ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/hda
> 
> /dev/hda:
>  Timing cached reads:   2620 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1310.20 MB/sec
>  Timing buffered disk reads:  142 MB in  3.04 seconds =  46.75 MB/sec
> dragonfly ~ #
> 
> 2) Did MythTV actually record in the correct channel? I was trying to
> record channel 9 (KQED tv) in the Bay Area from Comcast Cable. Does
> this message look correct?
> 
> 2005-04-23 12:50:00.126 Finished recording first test (Manual Record)
> on channel: 1009
> 
>    I'll stop there for now.
> 
>    Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give a new guy.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
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