[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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