[mythtv-users] trying to watch TV via mythtvfrontend produces blank screen

[Akos Maroy]

Ray Olszewski wrote:
> So would I, now, with the additional information you provided. My 
> initial response was based on the sketchiness of your report, especially 
> your reliance on xawtv as the criterion for whether everything else 
> (besides Myth) was working properly.

I wasn't giving it as a criterion, I was telling this detail since I 
though it might be of some use.

> Of course, your report was equally sketchy about your Myth setup, as 
> well as on your hardware. For example, aside from knowing that your 
> tuner card is 3.5 years old, I still know nothing about it.

Sorry about the missing details. I'm trying to do my best in reporting 
relevant information. I guess this very correspondance is the process I 
find out what information to report, and in response, I do report it.

So in particular, my tuner card is an AverMedia TVPhone 98 card, which 
has a bttv 878 chipset on it. This card has been supported by the bttv 
drivers for quite a while now. It also includes an IR remote control, 
which is supported by lirc.

> You might find it worthwhile to post another followup that includes the 
> rest of the details about your hardware (round up the usual spspects: 
> CPU type and speed, RAM, hard disk size, what capture card), mentions 

AMD AthlonXP 1800+
512MB RAM
60GB HDD (very little free space left though, about 800MB)
see the tv tuner card above

> what version of MythTV you are running (at least if it is a distro 
> pre-package, the main tarball, or CVS), and what procedure you followed 
> to set it up.

0.10, source tarball, I followed the documentation to set it up. I 
managed to get it working up until the point I called mythtvfrontend, 
where the menues came up, but I got stuck with watching TV as I reported 
originally.

> In particular, what /dev/* devices are you telling Myth to use when 
> capturing video and audio? Are they the correct devices (i.e., the same 
> ones you have xawtv using)?

I'm using xawtv with the default settings, which means:

/dev/video0
/dev/dsp
/dev/vbi

and I'm using the same devices. for Input connections, I'm using 
/dev/video0 (Television), as this is how I recieve TV programming 
(through a coax cable, not S-Video or composite).

One problem was that I the video source, I could not set up tv_grab_hu 
as the listings grabber, as it was missing as an option. So I set it to 
Germany.

> Does the problem occur only when watching "live" TV, or does it occur 
> when playing back recorded video in Myth?

when trying to watch recordings ("watch recordings" option), I get a 
problem connecting to the backend server.:


$ mythbackend
Starting up as the master server.
Probed: /dev/video0 - Television
Probed: /dev/video0 - Composite1
Probed: /dev/video0 - S-Video
2003-07-20 12:29:07 unknown socket


$ mythfrontend
connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543
Segmentation fault


BTW, ports 6543 is being listened on by mythbackend, I can telnet into it.


when trying to watch TV live, I get:

$ mythbackend
Starting up as the master server.
Probed: /dev/video0 - Television
Probed: /dev/video0 - Composite1
Probed: /dev/video0 - S-Video
2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 1
2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 0
2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a player 0
2003-07-20 12:31:23 adding: destroy as a remote ringbuffer
Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
strange error flushing buffer ...
Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
Segmentation fault


$ mythfrontend
connecting to backend server: 127.0.0.1:6543
Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV


> Also ... not being a Red Hat user, I'm not certain of this ... but I 
> think that RH 9.0 is less than 1.5 years old, and I do know that XFree86 
> 4.3.x is not anywhere close to 1.5 years old ... so you might want to be 
> a bit more exact about what "this very system" is known to do properly.

I was refering to the same hardware setup, and the same set of software, 
previous versions though. what I wanted to point out is that the system 
/ hardware I have is not very new, thus has quite mature driver support.


Akos