[mythtv-users] Can't "watch" radio channels in LiveTV

[Lawrence Rust]

On Tue, 2012-01-31 at 22:18 +0000, Gavin Whitehead wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Should I be able to 'watch' (well listen) to radio stations in MythTV 
> via LiveTV?
> 
> I'm installing MythTV 0.24.2 (combined BE/FE) on Ubuntu 11.10 in the 
> UK.  I've tried this with both DVB-T ans DVB-S2 tuners with the same 
> result, that is it fails.

Unfortunately 0.24 has problems in dealing with low bit rate (<256kbps)
streams i.e, radio.  Mark Kendall has addressed some of these in the
current git master but there still are a few remaining niggles.

I often listen to DVB-S radio so I reported this as a bug back in June
last year http://code.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/9824 together with some
patches.  Unfortunately the ticket is still outstanding.

If you want to build your own patched Myth then you can get my patches
from here:
http://www.softsystem.co.uk/download/mythtv/mythbuild-CURRENT.zip
I try to keep the patches up to date with the the current git repo.

The relevant patches for 0.24.2 are:
mythpatches-0.24/mythtv-0.24/0039-MythPlayer-Improvements-to-DVB-S-radio-playback.patch
mythpatches-0.24/mythtv-0.24/0041-RingBuffer-CalcReadAheadThresh-mods-for-low-bit-rate.patch

And for current git master are:
mythpatches-0.24/mythtv-master/0020-MythPlayer-Improvements-to-DVB-S-radio-playback.patch
mythpatches-0.24/mythtv-master/0021-ringbuffer-Adapt-readahead-for-low-bit-rate-64kbps-r.patch

> I perform a scan (DBV-S in thie case) and can then watch TV stations 
> from the FE.  However if I switch to a radio station, for example Radio 
> 4, the OSD remains on the screen for 30 to 60 seconds, during which time 
> I can hear the radio station.  Then the FE exits LiveTV with the error 
> "Video frame buffering failed too many times." on the screen.
> If I go and look in the FE log I see lines and lines of
> 
>      Player(1): Waited 100ms for video buffers 
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAU
> 
> with a few lines like this mixed in
> 
>      RingBuf(/home2/mythSGs/livetv/7754_20120131220454.mpg): Waited 0.2 
> seconds for data
>          to become available... 18672 < 32768
> 
> Then I get
> 
>      Player(1), Error: Waited too long for decoder to fill video 
> buffers. Exiting..
>      TV: Attempting to change from WatchingLiveTV to None
>      BrowseEnd()
>      RingBuf(/home/mythSGs/livetv/1700_20120129221157.mpg): Waited 0.2 
> seconds for data
>          to become available... 7112 < 32768
>      RingBuf(/home/mythSGs/livetv/1700_20120129221157.mpg): Waited 0.2 
> seconds for data
>          to become available... 6460 < 32768
>      Player(1), Error: Failed to stop decoder loop.
>      MythPainter: 40 images not yet de-allocated.
>       [mp2 @ 0x7f17dbc91700]incomplete frame
>       Error: Unknown audio decoding error
>      TV: Changing from WatchingLiveTV to Non
> 
> This seems to be the same whichever radio station I choose.
> 
> Oh, and another issue.  Whenever I go back to LiveTV it is now stuck on 
> Radio 4 (channel 1004 on my system).  How do I get out of this?  That 
> is, how do I get LiveTV to go back to starting on BBC 1 (or anything 
> other than the radio station it can't deal with).

You need to run mythtv-setup, select "4. Input Connections" then your
configured card and finally change the starting channel.

> 
> Gav
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-- 
Lawrence