[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

Sam Varshavchik mrsam at courier-mta.com
Sun Apr 16 14:45:28 UTC 2006


Jeff Simpson writes:

>> That's wrong.  My PVR-350 works splendidly here, with Myth TV 0.19, and I
>> see no reason why the PVR-350 would stop working in the future, since the
>> only difference between this model, and the others, is the TV-Out plug.
> 
> Try fast forwarding. Try mythmusic GL visualizations. Try MythGame,
> MythVideo, MythDVD.
> 
> The PVR-350 will still *work* in the future, but the MPEG decoding
> won't be supported in Myth. SO sure, the card will still work, but
> without the entire reason for picking a 350 over a 150.

No, Mpeg decoding is not the entire reason for picking a 350 over the 150.  
There's also TV-Out, which seems to work fine from my limited testing -- 
and that includes fastforwarding.

> change the speed/location of the currently playing mpeg. It's just a
> decoder, not a player). framebuffer borks on anything that isn't plain
> old 2D and slow-motion. Oh, and it takes out your console when it
> goes, too.

No it doesn't. :-)

The trick is to boot with the VESA framebuffer.  Then, ivtv-fb ends up 
grabbing /dev/fb1, and your system framebuffer continues to chug along at 
/dev/fb0.  ivtv-fb takes out the console only if it grabs /dev/fb0.

I'll be hacking at this in the coming weeks, but so far I see nothing that 
might prevent me from running my normal X desktop on the system video card, 
and a second instance of X running off PVR-350's framebuffer, that uses the 
IR receiver as input, and runs _ONLY_ myth.

My goal is to get X kicked off on the framebuffer early during boot, running 
myth as the client, with the rest of the boot continuing normally into gdm, 
and my normal desktop.

The tricky thing here is squaring away the X inputs.  Even if I do not set 
up any InputDevice, Xorg grabs the mouse using its default built-in 
configuration.  I don't want it to do that.  The mouse, and the keyboard, is 
for my main X desktop.

The apparent misconception here is that the PVR-350 is an all-or-nothing 
deal.  That's not true.  Certainly the PVR-350's framebuffer is not a 
substitute for a regular X desktop.  Nobody said that it was.  The only 
thing you need the PVR-350's framebuffer for is to run myth off it, and so 
far you don't need 3D accel for that.


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