[mythtv-users] problem after Ubuntu 7.10 -> 8.04 upgrade

[Josh White]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Josh White <jaw1959 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > >> First question: are you using MythTV from the Ubuntu repositories or
> > >> compiling from source? If you're using the Ubuntu version then
> > upgrading
> > >> from Gutsy to Hardy will have upgraded your Myth installation from
> > >> 0.20 to
> > >> 0.21.
> > >>
> > >> Have you tried playing with the Playback settings? Try setting it the
> > >> profile to Normal or Slim and see if that helps with the display.
> > >
> > >    You can also start completely from scratch by creating an entirely
> > > new profile and playing around with that. I found this to be useful.
> > > There were also some other non-profile settings that seemed to impact
> > > smoothness of playback (like using video for time base). You might
> > > need to do a little tinkering.
> > >
> > >
> > I am not an expert but I think I read that you have to upgrade your
> > backend as well.  It sounds from your post that you just  upgraded  your
> > frontend.
> >
> > Allen
> >
>
> Thanks for all the input.  I do not have the time to describe every detail
> of my setup, so I'm sorry if my first attempt has misled people on the
> list.  I'll take another stab at it here:
>
>
>
>  I have a myth system consisting of a main backend and several frontends.
> My setup worked well, and I should have known better than to mess with it,
> but I have a general compulsion to update and upgrade software to the
> "latest and greatest" whenever possible (I'm probably not alone in that
> compulsion).  On all of my machines, regardless of the distro installed, I
> run binaries from the package manager, from the appropriate repositories for
> each disro.  On my Ubuntu 7.10 systems, I enabled the "Gutsy-Backports"
> repository, which incluldes mythtv version .21.
>
> So anyway, I had a .21 backend and 3 .21 frontends all working quite
> harmoniously.  The backend, and one frontend were running Ubuntu 7.10, one
> is running Ubuntu 8.04, and one is running Debian etch.  Since my one
> machine was running well on 8.04, and since the official release had come, I
> figured it was safe to update my 7.10 backend and 7.10 frontend.  Without
> changing a single myth-specific setting, I went into the update manager, and
> clicked on "upgrade distribution to 8.04" or whatever it says.  Half an hour
> later, I had my frontend upgraded to 8.04, and an hour after that, I had my
> backend upgraded (I did the upgrade on the frontend first to make sure the
> upgrade process was still stable...I had previously upgraded my other
> frontend from 7.10 to 8.04 without incident when the beta 5 release came
> out)  When all was finished, my backend seemed to work fine, and I had no
> trouble accessing it as I always had from two of my three frontends.
>
> My "main" frontend" the one that I had just upgraded from 7.10, did not
> work so well.  This machine would connect to the backend, and appear to be
> ready to work, and could display video (using the Internal player) but could
> not display recordings or live tv.  I strongly believe that my problem has
> nothing to do with the specific playback settings.  It is not an issue of
> changing my deinterlacer, or anything of that nature.  It seems to be a
> problem related to the connection via the network, or loading streams, or
> something else.  Watching the lights on the switch that connects my main
> frontend to the backend, I can see the lights blink like it's trying to load
> the video stream, while I see a black screen on my TV.  Then, about 20
> seconds (It normally takes 3-5 seconds for live TV to appear on my TV after
> I click the button) the blinking on my switch stops, and I'm left with a
> blank screen.  I hit escape to go back to the menu, and nothing happens.  At
> this point, my choices are hit "CTRL+ALT+Backspace" to restart x (and
> mythfrontend.real) or to hit "CTRL+ALT+F1" to go in and kill it manually.
> Otherwise, it sits there for displaying a black screen with no other
> noticable activity.  I messed with everything I could think of, and
> ultimately decided there must have been a problem with the upgrade, so I
> reinstalled the packages through synaptic.  Once I was finished with this,
> nothing changed.  So I figured there must have been a problem with somethign
> else, and decided it would be quickest to just download a fresh copy of
> mythbuntu 8.04, and do a fresh install on the frontend.  So I go through all
> these steps, and when I was finished, the performance was exactly the same.
> I could watch video, but nothing that originated from my tuners.  So, I
> decided I needed a quick fix, so I poped in my mythbuntu 7.10 disc,
> re-reinstalled, and updated (to get back to the configurarion I had before I
> started with any of this) and it worked fine.
>
> Others seem to have similar problmes, so please feel free to offer
> suggestions for that reason, but my spefic problem has been solved (or at
> least worked around).
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Josh
>
Now that I think about it some more, I wish I had checked to see what the
upgrade had done to my xvmc settings. I had xvmc setup and working under
7.10 (on my FX5200 card), but I'm not sure if that changed after the
upgrade.  The reason I mention this, is my videos were mpeg-4 files, but
both the recordings (made on my PVR-500's and my PVR 250) are mpeg-2 files.
Perhaps I'll try the upgrade again and check this next time around.
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