[mythtv-users] Does MythTV need a Beginner's FAQ Collection?

[Isaac Richards]

On Wednesday 25 June 2003 06:10 pm, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> Yup, I sure am. Not all that bad an assumption, really, since they have to 
> read this list to get any help at all (you don't have an 800 number of make 
> house calls, after all). What I assume is that people don't have problems 
> *reading" explanations.

I really think that's assuming way too much for some users =)

> They do have problems *finding* the explanations,  
> when they are scattered over 4 poorly-organized sources (an unsearchable 
> HowTo; a mishmash FAQ; a mailing list with a crummy search engine; and a 
> few bit sprinkled in with the source download).

The howto's searchable if you grab the source tarball -- it's available as a 
text doc in there.  The FAQ's going away, but every single one of those 
questions was asked frequently 'bout a year ago, it wasn't ever really 
updated with more recent problems in preference to using the howto for all 
that.  I haven't had any problems with the searching the mailing list 
archives, either.


Anyway, comments below.

> 3.1 CPU. Celeron 1 GHz is the bare minimum, and it will in most cases not
> be satisfactory for watching buffered "live" TV. Systems that run more than
> 1 video-capture card require proportionally more speed, unless the system
> uses capture cards that do hardware encoding (see question 4).

I'd really disagree with this minimum.  I'd go with saying something like a 
500 MHz p3/celeron would be the rough minimum for low quality live tv 
(frontend + backend on same system), and note that a 1GHz p3 or so is the 
recommended minimum for decent quality software encoded live tv, with a note 
that hardware encoding obviously drops the requirements.

> ATI All-In-Wonder 7500. Video capture does NOT work under Linux (We know
> there are reports around saying it does work; we have seen them too. We
> cannot confirm any of these reports. Please send us a correction for this
> entry ONLY if you personally have this card working with MythTV and will
> take the time to tell us how you did it.)
>
> ATI All-In-Wonder 8500.  Video capture does NOT work under Linux. (We know
> there are reports around saying it does work; we have seen them too. We
> cannot confirm any of these reports. Please send us a correction for this
> entry ONLY if you personally have this card working with MythTV and will
> take the time to tell us how you did it.)

I'd combine those two, or just call it the AIW section and leave off the model 
numbers entirely.  None of em will work.

> Hauppauge Win PVR 250. Video capture  works using the IVTV kernel driver.
> Audio is part of the combined MPEG-2 stream provided through the IVTV
> driver, so no separate audio driver or connection is needed.
>
> Hauppauge Win PVR 350. Video capture works using the IVTV kernel
> driver.  Audio is part of the combined MPEG-2 stream provided through the
> IVTV driver, so no separate audio driver or connection is needed. .

And, combine these two as well, with a note that the tv-out/decoder on the 
-350 doesn't work yet, but should be supported eventually.

> Hauppauge WinTV-Nexus-s. This card does not yet work with MythTV, but Isaac
> reports (on June 25): "Almost.  It's being worked on.  Help coding/testing
> would be appreciated". Audio: no information.

This is all DVB cards, not just that particular one.

> Matrox G200 TV. Video capture probably works with this card, though reports
> on the lista re not completely clear. Audio: no information.

Along with the g400 tv, mjpeg capture should work just fine.  Analog capture 
works at lower resolutions due to hardware limitations.  Other mjpeg only 
cards should work, though I've not heard of any reports either way.  

The whole tv card section should be a separate page, I'd think, due to the 
length of it.

> 5.1 Cards with TV out
>
> This list includes all the modern cards we know of that have TV-out ports.

Is this _really_ necessary?  Seems really long and overly verbose.  A list of 
cards that are known not to work would be a lot shorter and much more useful, 
really..

> 6. How do I get and install MythTV?

Really think a link to the appropriate section in the howto would be better, 
here.

> 8.2 The MythTV FAQ is available at the FAQ link at the MythTV Website. It
> is an haphazard collection of specific questions and answers.

The faq's going away as soon as I bother to remove it, as all that information 
is in the howto now.

> To watch MythTV-captured television on a Windows computer (or through a
> standard Linux app such aas xine or mplayer), you need to convert the files
> from the idiosyncratic MythTV capture format to a standard format. This
> process is called "transcoding" and can be done with <add details>.

idiosyncratic?

Isaac