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

[Chris Martin]

On Apr 11, 2005 2:32 PM, Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Let me know how it goes with the new ATI driver, I see the people at
rage3d.com are currently struggling to get it working correctly with
the pundit-R.  The frustrating thing was that with the hacked ATI
driver and bob deint, the quality was actually very good. I was so
impressed with Myth that I actually used it for a couple of weeks
before I got tired of pausing/unpausing every 5 minutes.