[mythtv-users] mythtv/pvr350/australia

Brian May bam at snoopy.apana.org.au
Sat Mar 20 05:14:42 EST 2004


>>>>> "Brian" == Brian May <bam at snoopy.apana.org.au> writes:

Ok, I posted this to the mailing list, I think it is only fair to post
an update, and explain what issues I have fixed or worked-around.

    Brian> * When watching TV for approx 30 minutes or more, I often
    Brian> get hard system lock-ups, and the computer has to be
    Brian> rebooted. This only seems to occur when receiving TV (it
    Brian> also occured without TV-out, when displaying on a computer
    Brian> monitor). It is not reproducible on demand.

    Brian> (possibly the above problems are related to suspicious
    Brian> messages I occasionaly get in kern.log like: Mar 12
    Brian> 12:06:17 localhost kernel: ivtv: DMA read
    Brian> error. Result=0x00000002)

I think this was because the partition with /var/cache/mythtv/ was full,
and run out of disk space.

Doesn't quite explain why the kernel crashed, but it is satisfactory
for me.

    Brian> * Sometimes the TV card "crashes", and while the computer
    Brian> is still OK, I can't update the TV display without a
    Brian> reboot. Restarting X doesn't help. This seems to be
    Brian> connected when displaying the TV program guide.  When I
    Brian> just tried displaying the (semi-transparent) program guide,
    Brian> 1st try, TV picture freezes and wont restart. 2nd try
    Brian> same. 3rd try no response. Nothing logged in
    Brian> /var/log/debug, /var/log/kern.log or
    Brian> /var/log/mythbackend.log.  Seems to be reproducable on
    Brian> demand.

Still got this issue. It is the most serious problem I still face with
the PVR350. It also crashes when constantly rewinding or fast
forwarding by one frame increments (recorded output).

I have tried a different version of ivtv, but didn't get anywhere.

The menu problem only occurs when using the PVR350 as input, if I use
the PVR350 as output only and a DVB card as input, I can get the
program guide (not extensively tested).

Also, when rewinding or fast forwarding with the PVR350, it first
seems to go backwards to the previous I-frame, and plays at normal
speed until it gets to the requested frame. This gets a bit
disconcerting...

I haven't tried the CVS code yet. Apparently this might fix the
issues.

    Brian> * Occassionally on rare occasions, the computer enters
    Brian> suspend mode for no good reason.  I suspect this is related
    Brian> to the video card (nv). the harddisk spins down, and I have
    Brian> to plug a keyboard in and push any key to resume. It was
    Brian> worse when using the non-free nv drivers, now I have
    Brian> removed all references to nv in my XFree86-4 file, to see
    Brian> if this helps.  Not reproducible on demand.

I haven't had this problem since removing all references to the nv drivers.
Weird.

    Brian> * The on screen display is too big. I found adjustments to
    Brian> change the size of the menus, etc, but the OSD is still too
    Brian> big when watching TV shows. Is there any reason why? How do
    Brian> I fix this?

Still an issue.

    Brian> * Most of the time, I get sound perfectly. However, on some
    Brian> reboots I don't get sound, and must manually run
    Brian> "/usr/local/bin/test_ioctl -v input=7,output=1" after
    Brian> changing channels. Why is this so unpredictable?

I think this was fixed by adding "standard=0x03" to the msp3400 module
command line.

    Brian> * TV Guide (Australia/Melbourne) seems to have some gross
    Brian> errors in it, this confused me because looking up the guide
    Brian> on au.tv.yahoo.com (the source for tv_grab_au), it looked
    Brian> correct. eg. Last Friday I tried recording James Bond which
    Brian> ended at 11:30pm (approx) but mythtv thought it was Ricki
    Brian> Lake which ended at 10:30pm. I suspect this means it would
    Brian> have stopped recording at 10:30pm (actually it crashed due
    Brian> to the first (or second?) problem at 10:20pm). Other times
    Brian> I see one hour shows last all night (as far as Mythtv is
    Brian> concerned).

Some of these "gross errors" may have been because the time zone on my
computer wasn't configured, I am not sure why it made any sense...  I
guess it was using UTC time for everything.  Ooops! The local time
zone is UTC+11 hours. I haven't noticed any major problems sense
fixing the time zone.

    Brian> * Even then, I don't know how the program will work in
    Brian> practise, because times given in TV guides are never
    Brian> accurate, with programs constantly starting late and ending
    Brian> late. Is it possible to manually start recording *now" and
    Brian> manually stop recording *now* like on a VCR?

People have said this is possible.

    Brian> * TV-in picture constantly shakes slightly up and down by 1
    Brian> or 2 pixels, consistantly. Otherwise, the picture would be
    Brian> perfect.

No solution yet.

    Brian> * I tried to configure channel 37 (for my VCR). ptune-ui.pl
    Brian> will switch to 37 fine, without any problem. mythtv wont
    Brian> let me select 37, even when I have the details in the
    Brian> database. Channel 35 works fine, but not 37. I am not sure
    Brian> what the problem is here.

No solution yet.

    Brian> * It seems to be easy to crash mythbackend; One very
    Brian> reproducible way to crash it is to enter mythtv without any
    Brian> channels defined...  I have crashed it other times, but not
    Brian> yet found any obvious reasons.

CVS probably fixes these issues.

    Brian> * mythvideo doesn't work, mplayer complains the fb XServer
    Brian> doesn't have xv extensions. What are xv extensions?

    Brian> * Volume control doesn't work. I don't particularly care.

    Brian> * 2 second delay when changing channels; I suspect this is
    Brian> the time it takes to for the MPEG encoder/decoder to catch
    Brian> up.

No solution for any of these.

-- 
Brian May <bam at snoopy.apana.org.au>


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