[mythtv-users] Good TV Out (long -sorry)

[Nick]

On Apr 11, 2005 2:10 PM, Chris Martin <council.tax at gmail.com> wrote:
> I started playing with MythTv in January when I decided it would be a
> fun project with which to learn Linux.  Knowing I'd be less likely to
> give up on it if I had some money involved, I went out an bought the
> following equipment:
> 
> Asus Pundit-R
> Celeron 2.4GHz
> 512Mb DDR RAM
> 200GB Maxtor SATA
> PVR 350

Exactly the same as my setup, albeit minus my Nova-T card.

> 
> Having precisely zero Linux experience I went with FC3 and Jarod's
> excellent guide as it seemed like the easiest solution. My aim was
> (and still is) to create a combined frontend/backend that hooks up to
> a standard PAL TV and can a) be used as a PVR and b) play films stored
> as MPEG4.

Same reason here, along with finding a home for my ripped CDs and
digital photos. I first tried FC3, but due to the ATI problems and
some udev issues wihch I prob could have solved, I went with FC2 and
am still using it.

> 
> Thanks both to Jarod's guide and the help from this mailing list I had
> a usable system up with a couple of weeks and have been playing ever
> since.  While I've been incredibley impressed by the features and
> usability of MythTV, there's been one thing that I've never been able
> to get quite right; namely TV OUT.  This has come as quite a surprise
> to me, seeing as I have two options in this area with both the PVR 350
> and the onboard graphics of the Pundit-R.  Here is what I've found so
> far:
> 
> PVR 350.
> The quality of live tv on the PVR 350 is fantastic: I can't distingish
> it from 'regular tv', although admittedly neither my signal nor my
> television is particularly amazing. The problem, however, is the PVR
> 350's ability (or lack of it) to play MPEG 4.  I initially tried the
> framebuffer driver (mplayer -vo x11) but found this to be too slow and
> so investigated using the ivtv driver with the command:
> 
> mplayer -vo ivtv fileName
> 
> which causes the video to be played, but not to be visible as it is
> being displayed behind the X window currently in the PVR 350's
> framebuffer.  Following the advice of somebody on this list I then
> used the command:
> 
> ivtvfbctrl /dev/fb1 -alpha 0; mplayer -vo ivtv fileName ; ivtvfbctrl
> /dev/fb1 -alpha 255;
> 
> which makes the video video visible (and play perfectly smoothly I
> might add).  Unfortunately the sound is now well out of sync (I'd
> estimate around  5 seconds), and no amount of -framedrops or --delays
> will help the situation.   I've been at this stage for around a month
> now and have not found any solution, except for a post by Chris
> Kennedy on IVTV-devel which suggests that playing with ivtvfbctrl can
> cause the 350's a/v sync to mess up.  My hope therefore is that if I'm
> somehow able to configure my ststem so that I no longer need to change
> the alpha then the sync issue may sort itself.  Until then, the PVR
> 350 doesn't seem to be able to do what I want it to do.
> 
> Pundit-R Tv Out.
> To get the Pundit-R's TV out to work most people use the 3.12 ATI
> driver and then a hex edit trick in order to enable TV out.
> Unfortuatlely the 3.12 driver only works with XFree86 and therefore
> not with Fedora which uses XOrg. Taking advice from soemone else on
> the list I tried the hex edited file with the newer  8.8.25 driver
> which does work with XOrg.  Amazingly it worked fine.

Not read that before - good tip!

> 
> The live Tv quality on the Pundit-R is more than acceptable, providing
> bob deinterlacing is used. Unfortunately using bob deinterlacing
> casues the picture to get jittery and flickery with time, to the point
> that after about 5 minutes it is unwatchable. Quickly pausing and
> unpausing the picture resolves the problem but only for 5 minutes at
> which point the flickeryness returns.  I've been advised by somebody
> on the mailing list to use Open GL as this should provice VSync
> support which will resolve the problem.  At the time I thought I might
> not have open gl support, however the open gl picture transitions in
> myth gallery worked fine so maybe I do.
> 
> Anyway there are still some avenues to explore but before I go any
> further I thought I'd post this to the mailing list in the hope that
> someone has my hardware (either the pundit-r or the 350) and has it
> working as I envisaged it.

I have been in the same quandary since November. The PVR350's output
is beautiful - but the current X framebuffer driver is not fast enough
to play video that needs to be resized AIUI. ATI's supposed support
for the 9100IGP TV-out (they stated on their site that all new cards
having TV-out are supported) still seems to be non-existent. I filed a
support ticket with ATI about this, but got nowhere (shock horror).

This week I will get the Pundit-R's TV-out up and running (ATI have
just released another new driver 8.12.10) - using your new trick above
too - and see how I feel. Maybe the Xorg setup can go somewhere to
sort out the interlacing issues. I'd have thought that for LiveTV and
for recordings, output should be interlaced, as that's how the 350
records it. For non-interlaced DivX and XVid files, maybe use a
deinterlaced output.

I guess one way to try to have the best of both worlds would be to use
2 separate TV inputs - one for Live TV and recordings from the 350,
and run MythTV frontend and any other videos/programs using the TV on
the Pundit-R.

I am rather annoyed at myself for believing firstly Asus' claims that
the Pundit-R is silent (which it isn't) and ATI's claimed support for
their TVout features of their new cards (which they obviously don't
have.) The continuous postings on rage3d.com are a testament to the
pure frustration the hundreds or thousands of Pundit-R mythers not
being able to use their machines in a way that ATI claim is possible,

The fact that the binary hack to correct the PLL registers works must
surely show how trivial an error there is in the drivers released
since 3.09 or whenver it last worked. Come on, please fix this...

In the meantime, we can hope that Hauppauge continue to share their
knowledge with the ivtv hackers and allow an accelerated X driver with
xv support to be written which will hopefully allow all sorts of video
to be played back through the 350, in all its glorious quality.

More of a vent of frustration I know, if anyone has successfully got
their PAL-based Pundit-R's TV-out working normally, without having to
resort to hacking the 3.12 driver, please post your setup and Xorg
details.

Cheers,
Nick