[mythtv-users] Help setting up a Mythbuntu box

Per Baekgaard baekgaard at b4net.dk
Fri Jul 11 22:31:17 UTC 2008


I'm in the process of setting up a dedicated box for Myth. It is 
equipped with a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-SH2 motherboard, which has an 
embedded ATI HD 3200 controller (!), and uses as its tuner/grabber a 
card that identifies itself 1131:7133 with SSID:SVID 1a7f:2004 (revision 
d1). I don't know what card it is, and it has been somehow glued so that 
it cannot easily be removed for a full visual inspection (and checking 
so far has not revealed any marks). The card appears to be based on a 
Philips/NXP 713x chipset -- maybe some derivative of an Encore ENLTV-FM 
card.

(I asked Encore for further help, but they just said it sounded like it 
was "probably close to an ENLTV-FM card" and I could use that driver and 
look at sourceforge for more information ;-) Maybe it is some kind of 
OEM card?

I have spent quite some time setting up the box. To get the tuner 
working, I've added "options saa7134 card=107 tuner=54" for modprobe to 
use, which appears to make it work (sort of). It also apparently works 
with "card=3".

Running Myth on the open source ATI driver shows a very sluggish 
picture, so I upgraded to the latest Catalyst driver from ATI (8.6, 
released June 2008) and got that installed, enabling TexturedVideo 
support (the latest one doesn't support simple XV).

I am thus now able to sort of run Myth, but have a bunch of problems:


1) I cannot capture any sound from the tuner, no matter what I try.

AFAIK, 713x based cards use the 7134-alsa driver (which is correctly 
loaded according to lsmod) and should provide the output in (my case in) 
/dev/dsp1 (oss) or alsa hw:1,0. I've tried setting up myth to use 
/dev/dsp1 is sound input, but I get no sound.

I have also tried using mplayer and tvtime to show the video stream. 
Both works well (tvtime very smooth also in full screen mode) for 
showing video, but none of them captures any video (not even mplayer 
with the proper adevice and forceaudio settings)... even doing arecord 
off the input just gets me empty sound. The video stream is thus, as 
expected, empty. WIth mplayer, trying to capture video off the 
saa7134-alsa interface and limiting it to 32000Hz, it also looses sync, 
so something is not right with this setup.

2) The video output from myth is garbled. It takes up to 10s before it 
starts showing any video in LiveTV mode, and then it displays the video 
twice on screen. The entire picture is visible -- twice, in that it is 
compressed to half height and then repeated on the screen with one 
version on the top half and another on the bottom half.

This is likely a fglrx driver setting I got wrong... I'm using the 
TexturedVideo options currently, and have tested other combinations 
also, but cannot find one that both uses less than 100% CPU and also 
displays the image correctly.

3) Changing the channel from any of the programs (myth or tvtime) often 
fails, and the channel shows no input.

 From tvtime I can sometimes succesfully cycle inputs ("i") to get it 
alive after it looses the channel, but it appears quite unstable, and 
sometimes it just crashes myth that silently exits (nothing special in 
the logfiles).

This is likely due to an incorrect grabber setting -- I'm hoping someone 
can identify the card and point me in the right direction for the 
parameters!

4) The speakers are internally connected to the line2 (front panel 
audio). I am not able to find a way to route the sound to that output, 
for some strange reason -- it always goes to the back panel mini jack. 
I'm not sure what it is connected to either, but I fear I need to enable 
also a AC'97 codec or some HD audio settings on that output.


There are other problems too, but these are the worst ones at the moment.

I know the hardware is not optimal -- but it is not mine, and I would 
like to get it to run, if possible. There is plenty of CPU power in the 
box (it is an AMD X2 5400+ something).

So any hints/ideas will be much appreciated!



-- Per.


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