[mythtv-users] so close... yet so far

[Bo Najdrovsky]

Well after a long hiatus, I decided to pick up my hidef HTPC project 
again, and give MythTV another try, but this time I decided to go with 
the Knoppmyth distribution R4V5.

I have had a lot more success than on my previous attempts, but there 
are still several issues that are nagging, which I haven't been able to 
resolve, so I thought I'd try my luck on the list.  Before I proceed, 
here is my hardware:

7nif2 microATX motherboard with nForce2 MCP/IGP chipset.
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core)
512MB DDR
120 GB HD
pcHDTV2000 tuner card
I'm using the integrated motherboard video with the latest nVidia 6111 
drivers,
and onboard sound with SPDIF in/out connectors using ALSA 1.0.6 driver.

Now, here are the issues:
1) AC3 passthough does not work, but PCM does.  I have the Myth box 
connected to my Sony STR-DB930 surround sound receiver via an optical 
cable, no analog connection at all.  When I uncheck the AC3 pass through 
in the frontend setup, I can hear the audio perfectly (but it's not 
5.1), however if I check it, then the following happens:  The Sony 
receiver recognizes the bitstream as AC3 and switches to the appropriate 
decoding mode, I hear a split second of audio, and then silence. The 
receiver still apears to recognize the data coming in on the SPDIF as an 
Dolby Digital stream, but it's silent.

2) The overlay displays freeze the video playback almost immediately 
when using XvMC acceleration. For example, when I try to watch live TV 
and then try to change the channel, the gray scale overlay appears on 
the screen with the program information, but the video playback stops 
and never recovers.  I then have to kill the mythfrontend and restart it 
to get back into the Myth menus, becase hitting the ESC key doesn't work.

3) This third one is not a problem, but rather lack of docutionation.  I 
haven't been able to get a clear description what is the correct way to 
set up the high definition channels in the mythbackend, so that they 
would corespond with the XMLTV channel lineup.   For example, here in 
Dallas, our ABC affiliate broadcasts analog on channel 8 and hidef on 
channel 9, where it has two subchannels (8-1 and 8-2).  From various 
places on the Internet, I was able to figure out that the freqid for 
these channels should be entered as 9-1 and 9-2, but I still don't know 
what it's supposed to say in the channel ID.

Any and all info on these subjects would be greatly appreciated... I 
have over to $600 invested in this project at this point, and still 
don't have a smoothly working setup.  Please, please, please help!