[mythtv-users] First Generation Air2PC Card Requires Extended Initialization

[Steve Malenfant]

For the Air2PC card, it seems like it's normal...   Even if it shows
that it can't get alock for a few minutes, it is getting it anyway. 
Your backend will start normally and start recording just fine after a
few minutes.  I don't really like that, but that's the way it is.

I got 3 cards, and there might be one of them that gives a good status
when I boot up my machine.  I don't know if it has to do with 2 cards
being in the system instead of just one.

Steve

On 1/28/06, William Powers <wepprop at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I recently purchased first generation Air2PC cards off eBay.  I knew
> there might be issues, but it seemed like a low-cost way to experiment
> with digital / HD TV and that has proven to be true.  In fact, the first
> card worked extremely well, no issues whatsoever, so I bought a second
> one.  The second card, however, takes much longer to initialize and lock
> up on its startup channel - usually several minutes as compared to less
> than 30 seconds for the first card I bought.  Once initialized, both
> cards work fine.  However, mythbackend gives up after 30 seconds so
> getting them both initialized is a problem.
>
> I found I could fix that problem by editing 'dvbchannel.h' in libmythtv,
> the line that reads:
>
> "bool TuneTransport(dvb_channel_t& channel, bool all=false, int
> timeout=300000);"
>
> Adding an extra zero to the 'timeout' parameter allows the backend to
> wait long enough for my slow card to achieve a lock.  However, I'm
> curious if there is an easier way.  For example, is there some way to
> condition the card(s) prior to starting the backend that would allow
> them to successfully lock up within the default 30 seconds?
>
> Also, change of subject, is there some trick to getting XvMC to actually
> work?  When I first tried to use it on two machines, both with 0.18.1,
> FX5200's and the NVIDIA driver, only the Hardware MPEG checkbox was
> present on the Playback settings page.  On both machines, when that
> checkbox was checked, playback and live TV would both fail with a
> message saying that the frontend was unable to initialize the display.
> After fooling around with the stuff mentioned above, including a
> recompile of 0.18.1, a checkbox to enable OpenGL vsync suddently
> appeared on the same settings page as the XvMC checkbox and now XvMC
> works on that machine.  But I don't know why it started working and I
> haven't been able to duplicate the feat on my other Myth box.
>
> Bill
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