[mythtv-users] VIA M787 Motherboard and mythfrontend

Thomas Kaiser mythtv at kaiser-linux.li
Tue Dec 4 23:05:25 UTC 2007


Gert van der Knokke wrote:
> Thomas Kaiser wrote:
>> Hello members of the list
>>
>> I have a VIA M787 Motherboard something like this one 
>> http://www.ciao.co.uk/PCCHIPS_M787CL__5411051 and I would like to use this as a 
>> Mythtvfrontend.
>>
>> I have 512MB RAM installed.
>>
>> I use KnoppMyth Live CD to test if this MB is able to run as a Mythfrontend. It 
>> looks not so bad, KnoppMyth is starting and plays a stream from my Myth Backend 
>> box, but the picture holds all second or so for may be 200ms. Thus, not usable 
>> for watching TV.
>>
>> Has anybody on this list any experience with this MB?
>>
>>   
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> Try selecting the Via-XVMC decoder in the TV Playback settings, that 
> should get playback up to speed. I have used a similar board in one of 
> my frontends and it plays Live-TV, recorded videos and avi's without 
> major problems.
> 
> Be careful not to put anything into the PCI slots (like TV, network or 
> ATA cards or such) since this chipset is bugged by DMA problems. As a 
> standalone frontend it is OK though.
> 
> Gert
>

Hi Gert

After a while I was thinking I was the only crazy people who tries to run a 
Mythtv-frontend on this MB. But now I know I am not the only one.

I didn't see the "Via-XVMC decoder" setting, but I will look again, thanks.
For what does "Via-XVMC" stands for?

Actually the idea was to boot of a CF card as a HD but it seems that the CF card 
is much slower than a real HD :-(.

I installed a basic Ubuntu and added only the packages as I needed (and a little 
more for xorg, I think). Anyway, It boots and runs, but I have still the same 
jitter problem. When I look at the kernel messages I see that DMA gets disabled. 
Maybe this is the problem. The CF card has no DMA :-(
In the mythtv log I see some "prebuffer underrun" or somthing like this, I don't 
have access to the log right now, sorry.

Now, I will try to get something together which just loads form the CF card and 
runs in ram. I did a lot of reading about "initramfs", I think this the way to 
go, or not?

I will work on this for some time or buy some other hardware :-(

Thomas

-- 
http://www.kaiser-linux.li


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