[mythtv-users] Video card update fail

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Wed Oct 10 02:43:06 UTC 2018


On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 14:02:43 -0700, you wrote:

>On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 4:47 PM Greg Oliver <oliver.greg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 7, 2018 at 6:18 PM Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> My system is using a Nvidia 6200.  DVI out to the TV and analog to a
>>> monitor. I am running Mythbuntu 16 on an old AMD 5400.  Sound is analog to
>>> the TV and SPDIF to a surround system we use for a few shows.
>>>
>>> After many hours I kind of got the new Nvidia 750ti card working.  I
>>> could not get the onboard audio to work no matter what my son and I tried
>>> and he is a Google software engineer so it stumped us both.  I had to cut
>>> down a HDMI connector to get the cable to fit but with that and several
>>> hours I got sound to the TV.  Not a permanent solution as no digital sound
>>> to the surround system.
>>>
>>
>> You should have immediately returned the card if HDMI did not fit.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The final straw was that when I turned off the TV and turned it back on,
>>> Myth was on the monitor and not on the TV.  I tried both checkboxes on the
>>> find new devices and both acted the same.  The driver at that point was
>>> 340.  The other choice was 361 which I used at first but switched at some
>>> point to get a picture to display.  Lots of trouble with the video card
>>> reading the TV EDIT wrong and sending out incorrect settings which would
>>> not display at all. Not sure if the driver was the issue but long story
>>> short, I ended up with the 340 driver.
>>>
>>> Finally I took out the 750ti and reinstalled my 6200 and sound works,
>>> myth doesn't switch when the TV is off.  Only issue is I got a little
>>> better picture quality with the 750 on VDPAU slim. Any higher level setting
>>> just crashed myth.
>>>
>>> I am 7 hours into getting nothing done.  Two of us working most of that
>>> time.  If anyone knows how to solve my problem I will put a few more hours
>>> into it.
>>>
>>> By the way, on the sound, we tried at least three audio managers, Alsa,
>>> Pulse, and one command line one to try and get audio out of the
>>> motherboard. Nothing worked.
>>>
>>
>> What does the speaker test produce in alsa and/or gnome/kde, etc..  I
>> believe long ago, Jean Yvess (sp?) killed pulse when mythfrontend started
>> playback, but I do not know if that is still the case.  You definitely do
>> not want anything except alsa for digital audio.
>>
>> Also, when selecting the different modes from the TV GUI, I always had to
>> restart mythfrontend (that was long ago though - YMMV).
>>
>
>
>I have made significant progress but I am not done yet. It only took an
>additional 4 hours :-)
>
>The goal is DVI and analog audio to TV and SPDIF to amplifier but using the
>750ti video card and VDPAU video processing.  The audio worked with the old
>6200 video card but the video was crap after the upgrade to Mythbuntu 14
>from 8.
>
>1) I left Pulse Audio installed. It was installed by my son accidently (he
>did not realize the control panel brought in drivers) but the sound works
>fine with the 6200 so I left it.
>2) I install the 750ti and updated the driver to 390 I used this method
>   1) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
>   2) sudo apt update
>   3) Then launch Software & Updates -> Additional Driver utility, choose
>the new driver from the list and apply changes.
>3) Check the driver using lsmod | grep nvidia
>4) Check the version using cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version.  It reports
>390.87 which is correct.
>5) Check pavucontrol (Digital Output - S/PDIF) and aslamixer (Front, Main,
>and SPDIF) as before.
>6) Ran nvidia-settings and saved xorg.conf.  The file looked incorrect and
>the TV still lost video when power cycled.
>7) Disable xfsettingsd in the GUI Settings under "Session and Startup":
>That fixed the TV power cycle problem.
>8) Using Myth Setup search for an audio setting that plays both TV and
>amplifier. The existing setting that worked with the 6200 card was
>ALSA:pulghw:CARD=SB,DEV=0 Stereo.  I tried all settings.
>
>Results
>Audio) I was unable to find a setting that played both.  I could play
>digital or analog.  I tired both DVI and HDMI connections to the TV and
>multiple settings of pavucontrol.  There are a lot of settings but unlike
>before I put in the new video card, none would play both analog and digital
>off the motherboard. I could also not get digital from HDMI and SPDIF at
>the same time. Just one or the other.
>
>Video) Using VDPAU Slim the picture looks much improved.  VDPAU Normal
>crashes the frontend.  That was very disappointing.
>
>Wife) Wife is happy with this setup so at least I have stable hardware
>until I can get some help to solve the remaining problems.
>
>Goals:
>1) I would like to get a higher version of VDPAU as I have been led to
>believe that should work.

You are right that a 750ti should be able to do all VDPAU modes, but
we will have to debug that problem.  Now that you are running the 390
drivers, I have no idea why it would crash.  There should be
information in the logs that will help.  What setting are you using
for Setup > Appearance > Theme / Screen Settings > Paint engine?  Some
of those settings are incompatible with VDPAU.

>2) I need to get digital and analog sound working at the same time.

The digital sound is going out the HDMI port on the video card's sound
device and the analogue sound is going out the analogue port on the
motherboard's sound device - two completely separate devices.  So
there is no setting in MythTV that will ever be able to send the sound
to both devices at once.  In order to do that, you will need to write
some specific ALSA configuration that will send the sound to both
devices.  That config goes in a file /etc/asound, which you will need
to create.  I have never done this, but others on this list have, so
they may be able to provide more specific help.  ALSA config is not
easy to understand and even less easy to write.  But there are lots of
examples on the web.

You can get SPDIF and analogue output from the motherboard sound
device at the same time just by enabling both outputs on that device
in alsamixer.


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