[mythtv-users] Moving from MCE to MythTV

[Sam Varshavchik]

Ron Rademaker writes:

> About hardware, I got a ASUS 9550 (ATI chipset) with 128M so I guess I 
> could use the fglrx driver for best performance. Does MythTV mind what 
> drivers are used (at all)? Furthermore, I got my tv attached at the 
> tvout (s-video) and a CRT monitor at the VGA output. Will this be a 
> problem? (eg. MythTV keeps appearing on the wrong display, MythTV only 
> showing video on the wrong display (had that with Mediaportal)).

There's a slim chance that it'll work, but likely it won't.  Although I'm 
not familiar with your specific hardware, the chances of the stock x.org 
supporting the TV-out function of video chance are approximately 1%.  In 99% 
of the cases, TV-out functionality requires vendor's non-free[1] binary 
video driver, and although the video driver will work, it'll probably send 
the same video through the VGA and the TV-Out -- you'll have the same screen 
both on your VHA monitor, and on the TV-Out.  Depending on your vendor 
non-free binary video driver the TV-Out signal will either be downsampled to 
the NTSC/PAL resolution, or you will need to run your desktop at a reduced 
resolution - 640x480 or 1024x768, in order to get a matching video signal on 
TV-Out.

The notable exception is the TV-Out on a PVR350, which is supported by the 
free drivers on ivtv.org.  I was almost able to have a single instance of X 
running on both my VGA card and PVR350's frame buffer -- theoretically you 
should be able to do it simply by configuring multiple displays in 
xorg.conf, specifying the correct driver for each one.  However, I have some 
hardware conflict between the PVR350 and my video card -- when both are 
enabled, ivtv's kernel driver begins whining about being unable to do DMA, 
or something along those lines.

I ended up hacking up a short script to flip my xorg.conf between the VGA 
and the PVR-350 versions, and stuffing it into my Gnome menu.  To switch 
between VGA and the PVR-350's TV-Out, I just select the menu option, then 
log out.  GDM then restarts xorg with the other .conf file, and I'm good to 
go.

> I got two Hauppauge PVR150 cards for tuning, is this card well 
> supported? Are drivers in the 2.6-kernels?

It's well supported -- eventually those drivers will go into the kernel -- 
for now you'll need to build the driver off ivtv.org

A beginner like you should start off with a canned set of packages.  If 
you're running Fedora, you're better off using dl.atrpms.net, as indicated 
in Myth's HOWTO.

> I also have a bunch of movies recorded with MCE that I'll want be able 
> to view with MythTV, do I need to convert somehow or will MythTV play 
> stuff recorded with MCE?

It might be possible to hack something together with Myth, but you should be 
able to play those movies with mplayer, or xine.  If, in MCE you can 
transcode those files to some non-Microsoft format, such as MPEG-2 or 
MPEG-4, you won't need to screw around with getting mplayer to use binary 
win32 codecs.


[1] Free as in "speech", not just beer.

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