[mythtv-users] Sometimes sound sometimes not on second monitor

[David Kramer]

I'm sorry I understand this problem so little I'm not sure I am telling
you everything you need, but I'll do my best.

Fedora 8 with MythTV-frontend 0.21-187 on KDE
Dell Latitude D820 Core 2 Duo,
Nvidia's closed driver nvidia-x11-drv-173.08-1.beta.fc9 (dkms)

On occasion, I would have problems where other applications would output
sound on my laptop, but MythTV wouldn't.  Usually, exiting my X session 
and starting X again would fix it.  Then I started getting a little more 
savvy, and tried using 'lsof | grep /dev/snd' to find apps that held 
control of sound, and sometimes a Firefox video plugin of some sort 
would be guilty.  Killing it would allow MythTV to play sound.  I have 
tried using the internal volume controls and not.  Not using the 
internal volume controls seems to work better.

Now I have a new challenge.  I've been frustrated that I couldn't use my 
laptop for anything else while running mythfrontend (I am an constant 
multitasker).  I finally replaced my TV with a Sony Bravia 32" LCD with 
a PC DB15 port.  The idea is I can run mythfrontend on the TV from the 
external monitor port of my laptop, and do web/email/program on the 
built-in screen.

This is the first time I've had dual screens on one computer, and I 
admit I don't really understand X's implementation of it.  It appears I 
have four virtual desktops per monitor, but the KDE menus are slightly 
different.  I can move my mouse up above the top of the laptop's screen 
to get up to the TV display.  So I'm not using TwinView or Xinerama, 
which would combine the two monitors into one contiguous displays.  This 
works OK, except if I start X without the TV hooked up, I have to kill 
and restart X to get it to go to both monitors.  Under Windows, I just 
have to Fn-F8.  That sucks, but it's bearable.

Here's the freaky part.  I hooked everything up today, fired up MythTV 
on the TV screen, and video would play but there was no sound.  If I 
press the backspace key on the terminal to get the bell to ring, I hear 
it.  But then I exit out and run MythTV on the laptop screen, and I have 
sound!!!!.  I tried exiting X and restarting it, and got the same results.

How can there be sound from MythTV when I run it on one screen, but not 
the other?  Is the second screen running a separate instance of X?  That 
would explain why the menus are different, but are the sound servers 
fighting each other or something?

And why does it work sometimes, and sometimes not?

How can I further debug this?

Thanks.