[mythtv-users] Video card update fail

[Allen Edwards]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 4:47 PM Greg Oliver <oliver.greg at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 6:18 PM Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> My system is using a Nvidia 6200.  DVI out to the TV and analog to a
>> monitor. I am running Mythbuntu 16 on an old AMD 5400.  Sound is analog to
>> the TV and SPDIF to a surround system we use for a few shows.
>>
>> After many hours I kind of got the new Nvidia 750ti card working.  I
>> could not get the onboard audio to work no matter what my son and I tried
>> and he is a Google software engineer so it stumped us both.  I had to cut
>> down a HDMI connector to get the cable to fit but with that and several
>> hours I got sound to the TV.  Not a permanent solution as no digital sound
>> to the surround system.
>>
>
> You should have immediately returned the card if HDMI did not fit.
>
>
>
>> The final straw was that when I turned off the TV and turned it back on,
>> Myth was on the monitor and not on the TV.  I tried both checkboxes on the
>> find new devices and both acted the same.  The driver at that point was
>> 340.  The other choice was 361 which I used at first but switched at some
>> point to get a picture to display.  Lots of trouble with the video card
>> reading the TV EDIT wrong and sending out incorrect settings which would
>> not display at all. Not sure if the driver was the issue but long story
>> short, I ended up with the 340 driver.
>>
>> Finally I took out the 750ti and reinstalled my 6200 and sound works,
>> myth doesn't switch when the TV is off.  Only issue is I got a little
>> better picture quality with the 750 on VDPAU slim. Any higher level setting
>> just crashed myth.
>>
>> I am 7 hours into getting nothing done.  Two of us working most of that
>> time.  If anyone knows how to solve my problem I will put a few more hours
>> into it.
>>
>> By the way, on the sound, we tried at least three audio managers, Alsa,
>> Pulse, and one command line one to try and get audio out of the
>> motherboard. Nothing worked.
>>
>
> What does the speaker test produce in alsa and/or gnome/kde, etc..  I
> believe long ago, Jean Yvess (sp?) killed pulse when mythfrontend started
> playback, but I do not know if that is still the case.  You definitely do
> not want anything except alsa for digital audio.
>
> Also, when selecting the different modes from the TV GUI, I always had to
> restart mythfrontend (that was long ago though - YMMV).
>


I have made significant progress but I am not done yet. It only took an
additional 4 hours :-)

The goal is DVI and analog audio to TV and SPDIF to amplifier but using the
750ti video card and VDPAU video processing.  The audio worked with the old
6200 video card but the video was crap after the upgrade to Mythbuntu 14
from 8.

1) I left Pulse Audio installed. It was installed by my son accidently (he
did not realize the control panel brought in drivers) but the sound works
fine with the 6200 so I left it.
2) I install the 750ti and updated the driver to 390 I used this method
   1) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
   2) sudo apt update
   3) Then launch Software & Updates -> Additional Driver utility, choose
the new driver from the list and apply changes.
3) Check the driver using lsmod | grep nvidia
4) Check the version using cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version.  It reports
390.87 which is correct.
5) Check pavucontrol (Digital Output - S/PDIF) and aslamixer (Front, Main,
and SPDIF) as before.
6) Ran nvidia-settings and saved xorg.conf.  The file looked incorrect and
the TV still lost video when power cycled.
7) Disable xfsettingsd in the GUI Settings under "Session and Startup":
That fixed the TV power cycle problem.
8) Using Myth Setup search for an audio setting that plays both TV and
amplifier. The existing setting that worked with the 6200 card was
ALSA:pulghw:CARD=SB,DEV=0 Stereo.  I tried all settings.

Results
Audio) I was unable to find a setting that played both.  I could play
digital or analog.  I tired both DVI and HDMI connections to the TV and
multiple settings of pavucontrol.  There are a lot of settings but unlike
before I put in the new video card, none would play both analog and digital
off the motherboard. I could also not get digital from HDMI and SPDIF at
the same time. Just one or the other.

Video) Using VDPAU Slim the picture looks much improved.  VDPAU Normal
crashes the frontend.  That was very disappointing.

Wife) Wife is happy with this setup so at least I have stable hardware
until I can get some help to solve the remaining problems.

Goals:
1) I would like to get a higher version of VDPAU as I have been led to
believe that should work.
2) I need to get digital and analog sound working at the same time.

Allen




Allen
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