[mythtv-users] How do you compile with support for TV Out on PVR 350?

[James Pifer]

On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 16:25, Torsten Schenkel wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 15:21, James Pifer wrote:
> > Thanks Ward. If that's true that sucks. Some people have said that the
> > TV Out on the 350 provides much better quality...maybe they were talking
> > theory. If what you say is correct, that may mean back to Winblows until
> > support gets better. 
> 
> AFAIK, Windows doesn't support the TV-out of the PVR350 at all. All it
> does is stream mpeg2 streams to it, so TV will be on the PVR's TV-out
> and the menus will be on VGA. I definitely wouldn't like to have a PC
> monitor next to my TV set :-)
> 
> > I want to hook this thing up to my home theater without
> > keyboard/mouse/monitor. Leave the front end up all the time and control
> > playing LiveTV and recordings through the remote, and recording through
> > remote and mythweb. Maybe what I'm thinking won't work. Will I be able
> > to see MythTV's menus when I'm using TV Out?
> 
> You'll be able to do so, the driver is "alpha" though and under heavy
> development currently. It's amazing how much the driver improved over
> the last week, with 1-3 "releases" every day. Open Source development at
> it's best. Kudos to Kevin and Jens :-)
> 
> Right now it works quite well on my setup (Epia ME6000, VIA Eden
> 600MHz), I mapped some killall and restart skripts to the On/Off button
> of my remote to restart everything when a hang occurs -- once or twice a
> day ATM -- but it's usable if you are willing to put some effort in it.
> If not, give it time till christmas.

I'm willing to put some effort, but my Linux skills are not always up to
the challenge. 

> > Right now I have it hooked up to my Infocus X1 using the VGA cable.
> > Video quality is probably acceptable, accept I really want the 350 doing
> > the decoding/encoding work. Bad part the sound quality, headphone jack
> > to composite RCA, really sucks. Plus, I can't forward the video to the
> > rest of my TV's this way. (using Leapfrog)
> 
> I don't think I quite understood what you wanted to say in the last
> paragraph. If you want to use a projector, why TV-out? For Projektor I'd
> use VGA and SPDIF. As to the sound of the audio out on: I have a high
> quality cable to my Dolby Digital amplifier and don't have any negative
> to say about it. Full ProLogic and higher bass levels than from the
> audio out of my TV. Not DD, but SPDIF also is only stereo here (for
> analogue TV).  
> 

With my home theater all the Audio/Video runs through my Receiver. Doing
it this way I can send the signal out to my Leapfrog units as well as my
Infocus X1. The Leapfrog system allows me to send audio video to other
TV's in the house over telephone or ethernet cables. If I hook my MythTV
box directly to the Infocus then I miss out on being able to do that. 

> > On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 06:41, Ward Vandewege wrote:
> > > James Pifer wrote:
> > > > I've read you need to compile MythTV for support for the PVR 350's TV
> > > > Out. What do you need to change in the src to enable support for TV Out
> > > > on a PVR 350? Is there a document somewhere that explains this?
> 
> Don't know if you have to recompile it. I compile it anyways, so never
> looked at the binary distributions. But I don't think so, there is no
> option to the compilation that en- or disables TV-out of the PVR. You
> enable it in the TV setup menus.
> 
> > > Err - if there is I haven't found it. I didn't recompile my Myth to use 
> > > the PVR 350's TV output, but I'm currently stuck with far less than 
> > > desirable results.
> 
> see above :-)
> 
> > > You need the ivtv-fb kernel module (and framebuffer support in your 
> > > kernel, as well as support for '32bpp packed pixels' under 'advanced low 
> > > level drivers' under 'support for framebuffer devices'. The module seems 
> > > a bit buggy. It's impossible to unload, for one (has a use count of 63 
> > > as soon as it is loaded). Also, there are issues with screen size - 
> > > somehow my tv's screen size is slightly smaller than what X thinks it is 
> > > (the video mode of the ivtv-fb is fixed, apparently, once you choose 
> > > PAL/NTSC). At least I can't convince X to use a different mode.
> 
> This is exactly what's it meant to do, that's the secret behind it's
> superior TV picture quality. If you would be able to tamper with the
> scanning timings the lines would match with your TV and the picture
> would blur (that's what happens with TV-out on a VGA card).
> 
> > > This makes it very difficult to configure Myth - the menus are partly 
> > > off-screen. I've tried setting manual sizes for Myth which works, 
> > > provided I also introduce an X and Y offset.
> 
> See Isaacs mail, set GUI size to something smaller than your resolution
> and center it using the offset. For the OSD you'll have to increase the
> overscan value in the TV setup menus (for the PVR's TV-out this setting
> works the other way round, so a positive value will reduce the OSD size)
> 
> > > Also, once I have gone to 'Watch TV', the bottom 20% of the screen 
> > > becomes a duplicate of the top 20%, making Myth even less useable...
> 
> Hmm, that's one of the bugs that's still there, I couldn't lay hands on
> why this happens (it's once I activated the OSD in LiveTV mode, so maybe
> it's mythtv that causes it, but it's some bug in ivtv-fb I guess)  
> 
> But the workaround is quite simple: Reduce the size of the GUI to
> something smaller than 480 vertically, you'll still see the to 96 lines
> pasted to the bottom, but with the visor theme I only get top and bottom
> "headings". This way you can see the whole GUI. Your X setup must not be
> changed! 
> 
> > > Anyone have more success with the PVR-350 TV-out?
> 
> Yes, me :-)

If it's not asking too much....Don't suppose you'd be willing to take a
look at my system when you have a couple minutes? I think I'm close to
having it working. I can get you access into remotely if you're willing.
Either way, I'm going to keep cracking at it. 
 
> 
> Torsten
> 
> 
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Thanks,
James