[mythtv-users] LiveTV is not playing

[Ajay Sharma]

Felix wrote:
> I had MythTV working until about a month or so ago. Then I upgraded the 
> kernel, and didn't have corresponding video drivers, and was lazy to 
> compile myself, etc... So, I wasn't using much of video for awhile.
> 
> Anyway, I recently upgraded everything to the latest that FC4 has to 
> offer. So, I have MythTV 0.19, kernel 2.6.15-1.1831_FC4, latest ivtv, 
> nvidia, etc. I can watch TV through "gmplayer -vo xv /dev/video0" with 
> no problems. However, when I try to use MythTV to watch LiveTV I am 
> getting the following erros in the log:
> 
> 22:59:33.351 TV: Attempting to change from None to WatchingLiveTV
> 22:59:33.356 Using protocol version 26
> 22:59:33.417 GetEntryAt(-1) failed.
> 22:59:33.418 EntryToProgram(0 at Wed Dec 31 16:00:00 1969) failed to get pginfo
> 22:59:33.418 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started
> 22:59:33.418 TV Error: LiveTV not successfully started
> 22:59:33.432 TV: Deleting TV Chain in destructor
> 22:59:33.433 Disable DPMS
> 22:59:33.433 Enable DPMS

[snip ivtv info]

> any ideas what can be causing this problem?

I had the same 'failed to get pginfo' problem.  Did you go through
myth-setup to reconfigure the cards?  When I did that I was getting some
message about myth not being able to probe the cards.

The difference (for me) is that myth is running as a 'mythtv' user
instead of root.  So my /dev/v4l/* directory was owned by user 'root'
and group 'video'.  I added the mythtv user to the video group, from my
/etc/group file:

video:x:27:root,mythtv

And I rebooted just to make sure that the changes would take (very
un-linux like, I know) and myth-setup was able to see the cards after
that.  I reconfigured them, and was then able to get video.

I was also getting some other permission problems like not being able to
access /dev/ttyS0 to change the channel on my Dish receiver.  So I added
the mythtv user to the tty group as well and that solved that.

the mythbackend.log file is your friend.  :)

--Ajay