Re: [mythtv-users] Performance from a different perspective
On Tuesday 24 January 2006 12:14 pm, Raphael Pooser wrote: Well Cache is important. Another reason a Celeron will suck compared to a P4 is the bandwidth between the processor and RAM is crippled. The Celeron front side bus was always chopped in half compared to a pentium. The netburst architecture has always been bandwidth hungry, so you take a netburst chip, hack off 75% of it's cache and crack it's FSB to pieces, and yeah, it ain't gonna do much compared to a P4. I don't know much about HD, but from a gaming POV, a #GHz celeron is like a 1.8-2.0GHz P4. Basically the general rule avoid celerons like the plague for all tasks except email and word processing applies to HTPCs too I would think. In reality, encoding/decoding is computationally intensive, and at the same time you need bandwidth as these actions involve streaming. since Celeron is piss poor at floating point and has no bandwidth to access the RAM, it must suck for HD on HTPCs. However, if anyone is using one successfully I'd like to know. Disclaimer: this email written by someone extremely hostile to intel smellerons. Actually I have to completely disagree. For encoding and decoding applications caching is not very important. A cache only helps when you have spacial or temporal locality, video and audio encoding do not have temporal locality and the spacial locality is small, small enough for a small cache. In this sort of application you are streaming data in, performing some operations on it and streaming it back out never to be seen again (at the time scale a processor runs at). Also this is the sort of application that intel's highly pipelined architecture excels at, heavy on the math and very predictable branches. By contrast, AMD's architecture has a shorter pipeline and therefore does not suffer as much on branch mis-predicts, this means its much better at code like the Spec Int benchmarks (think gcc compilation, perl and Java JITs, game AI and that sort of thing). The only thing that might be hurting the Celeron D vs the P4 is the relatively lower FSB speed, however my gut feel is that video, even HD TV, does not really stress the FSB. It probably is a higher stress on the PCIx/AGP busses (I could work the math but I'm feeling lazy, anyone want to chime in?) Incidentally here is a set of benchmarks Anandtech did when the Celeron D came out a year or so ago that back up what I say: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2093 Paul pgp4ubmsRzQbn.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] AC3 and/or S/PDIF (again)
On Monday 23 January 2006 02:34 am, Michael T. Dean wrote: mike choy wrote: The simple way to do all this is to use an Infrared remote. Programme up the vol control on your remote to move the vol on your av amp only. There's no need to change inputs or devices on your remote. Leave the vol control on the computer side fixed. And, this is The Right Way (TM) to do it, too. What I find astounding is the number of people who use digital for better quality audio and then do things like softvol. One step forward, two steps back. ;) As a matter of fact, I don't expect to use digital connections for any of my audio. I can't live without timestretch, anymore (thanks, Mark)--on TV and for DVD's--and decoding and re-encoding an AC-3 (*lossy* compression algorithm) stream to allow timestretch seems like it negates the benefit of a digital audio connection. After all, the audio is running over short connections and has to be analog between the receiver and the speakers, anyway, so proper wiring of analog connections will probably give at least as good--if not better--quality as resampled AC-3. Do you know how to pull it off? There are probably some situations where the loss in quality is acceptable, or its a temporary solution until you get an IR repeater or some such. More options are not inherently a bad thing, we can judge if the result is usable or not. Paul pgplVbcC3Z65h.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] AC3 and/or S/PDIF (again)
On Sunday 22 January 2006 08:29 am, Ben Suffolk wrote: No, Ben, I don't. And, as I understand it, this is impossible. Since we're just passing through a digital signal to the receiver, it's all up to the receiver to deal with it. In order to change the volume, we would need to decode the audio, sample down the volume, reencode it, then pass it on to the receiver. Maybe it's possible, but it certainly is not very efficient. And, by the way, this is all just speculation. I don't really know how it works, but my explanation made sense to me. And your explanation is more or less correct. If you're passing raw digital audio, its completely raw, you can't controll its volume level. Might be best to let Myth do the audio decoding and pass PCM audio instead of raw digital audio. Could also try to rig up something with an irblaster if you're dead set on having the amp in a different room and passing raw audio. -- Jarod Wilson jarod[at]wilsonet.com I though this might be the case, I have to say I don't really know about digital audio, but I had hoped that maybe it would be quite easy to manipulate it in the digital realm, so not having to convert it, just simply dividing each digital value by the volume level. I guess not. I thought maybe I could use an irbalster to swap the inputs on my amp between regular 2 channel pcm for tv and music, then have it auto switch to 5.1 when you play a dvd, and then switch back again for TV. I guess this could be done quite easily with a shell script set as the player for the dvd video playback. Not idea, but would allow the osd for volume in TV etc. Ben Actually there is supposed to be a plugin for this in alsa called softvol. Check out the bottom of this page: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html I messed with it for a while but I've been unable to figure out how to make it work Paul pgpDxLAkJKmqg.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] autotranscode old shows?
Hey all, I was just wondering if there was an easy way to set myth up to go back and transcode a bunch of shows that I have already recorded from mpeg2 - mpeg4. I tried a couple things with phpmyadmin like marking them 1 for autotranscode and 1 for autojob but they do not seem to get scheduled for transcoding. Is there a way to do this that I can automate (I want to do it for whole large groups of programs). Thanks! Paul pgpqngmxKSPZe.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] RE: Configuring SPDIF digital out.
On Saturday 17 December 2005 04:59 pm, James C. Dastrup wrote: I might suggest that all alsa utilities, alsactl, and everything else is NOT required to use digital out with MythTV. I'm using MythTV 0.18.1 on Gentoo and I only have the necessary alsa drivers compiled in the kernel. I've never used alsamixer or alsactl, or installed/emerged alsa-utils, alsamixer, aplay, or anything else alsa related. I'm not starting any alsa services during startup. The only thing I did is: Enable alsa support and driver in the kernel. Put .asoundrc in my home directory. Set MythTV as follows: -Enable AC3 -Device = ALSA:digital -Mixer = digital and that's it. I also have all the other mythplugins working by setting their device to ALSA:digital. Is my setup unique, or are people doing more than need to to get digital audio working? Does setting the mixer to digital allow volume control from mythtv of the digital out? I'd like to be able to do that. Also I'd like to be able have both analog and digital have the same output, is that possible? Thanks! Paul pgpIfOad3A200.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] Using ALSA's Softvol plugin to create a volume control for SPDIF output?
Hey All,
A little while back someone mentioned that you could use softvol to
create a volume control for S/PDIF output. I've been trying to make
this work. I've got S/PDIF output working great (thanks to help from
reading this mailing list and a few sites found w/ google) however my
receiver is placed in side a thing that does not allow IR access to it
w/o opening it. I'd like to set my receiver's volume at a certain
level for normal listening and then use softvol to adjust it down from
there when we want to lower it (IE, at night when others are sleeping
or whatever). Here is what I tried for my .asoundrc:
pcm.spdifvol {
type softvol
slave.pcm spdif
control {
name SPDIF Playback Volume
card 0
}
}
but I'm not sure how to use this. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Paul
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Re: [mythtv-users] Using ALSA's Softvol plugin to create a volume control for SPDIF output?
On Saturday 03 December 2005 04:56 pm, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
Paul V. Gratz wrote:
Hey All,
A little while back someone mentioned that you could use softvol to
create a volume control for S/PDIF output. I've been trying to make
this work. I've got S/PDIF output working great (thanks to help from
reading this mailing list and a few sites found w/ google) however my
receiver is placed in side a thing that does not allow IR access to it
w/o opening it. I'd like to set my receiver's volume at a certain
level for normal listening and then use softvol to adjust it down from
there when we want to lower it (IE, at night when others are sleeping
or whatever). Here is what I tried for my .asoundrc:
pcm.spdifvol {
type softvol
slave.pcm spdif
control {
name SPDIF Playback Volume
card 0
}
}
but I'm not sure how to use this. Any ideas?
Maybe this helps
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html
Kevin
Yeah, I was looking at this but I wasn't sure how to apply it...
Paul
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Re: [mythtv-users] Distributing TV throughout house w/MythTV
Absolutely. I have two tuners in my backend (a single PVR500 card) and two front ends connected to it, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Take a look at the docs on the mythtv website, they go into how to set this up. Paul On Wednesday 30 November 2005 11:23 am, Robert La Ferla wrote: Can MythTV be used to distribute television throughout a house? i.e. The ability to watch different LIVE programs and/or recorded programs in different rooms from a single backend? ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgpvf0q1urAxm.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Gentoo n00b needing advice!
On Wednesday 30 November 2005 08:25 pm, stephen wrote: Yup - that's what I'm running. Now if I can only figure out how to get it to auto-login and startx automatically. I'm using evilwm for a window manager on gentoo, and used some info from this site to get the autologin working: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue72/chung.html There's probably an easier way, but this worked great for me. A simpler, yet arguably slightly more bloated route is to install gdm and use its menu system to setup autologin for a particular account. I did this with fluxbox as that account's window manager. Then I setup fluxbox to launch mythfrontend and everything is set. Sure there is some gtk and etc bloat but for a noob its much easier to setup than messing with arcane stuff like inittab .xsession or .xinitrc. Plus, IMHO its less brittle than scriptifying it. Paul pgpYXaI94i7CD.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Converting shows to PDA suitable format
On Saturday 26 November 2005 06:26 am, ffrr wrote: Paul V. Gratz wrote: I use nuvexport to give me the raw *.nuv file What is a raw *.nuv file? I feed the nuv files, as recorded, straight into ffmpeg. It can handle the mpeg2-TS directly. I've recently switched from software to hardware encoding so I've had both the mjpeg and mpeg2 files in side the .nuv container. I will be comparing mencoder, especially as you report very good speed. Thanks. Yeah I think mencoder is faster (its certainly easier to figure out than transcode). The processor may have something to do with it too, P4's excel at code that has very predictable branches like video encoding. Less branch mispredict penalty means they can really take advantage of their deep pipelines. Paul pgpIgzeV5J9Dv.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Converting shows to PDA suitable format
On Saturday 26 November 2005 09:38 am, Wendy Seltzer wrote: On 11/26/05, Nathan Allen Stratton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What player are you using on your 650? Have you been able to stream anything to your treo using mythstream? Not the original poster, but I've transcoded a few shows to the 650 for playback with TCPMP http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about, which works quite well with Xvid or avi files, as well as mp3s. Yeah this is the same player I'm using on my Treo. I haven't tried mythstream though. I don't think that player has the ability to pick up a stream via TCPIP. Even if it did, my only internet access on that phone is through SprintPCS's vision plan which has really low data bandwidth (think dialup). It'd be a cool hack though. Perhaps I could get it working over bluetooth... Paul pgphGeGMxNKkl.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Converting shows to PDA suitable format
On Friday 25 November 2005 04:32 pm, ffrr wrote: I am fairly new to converting video, so I have been trying to discover the best way to convert my recordings (PAL mpeg-TS from a DVB-T card) to a small format suitable for my Palm Tx PDA. Firstly, I have read that divx is a popular format and the TCPMP player on the palm will play it. Is xvid the same thing? What's the difference? Any other suggestions for a target format? I have a treo 650 and I've encoded a few shows for it. I have been using mencoder to encode it to the built-in lavc endcoder for divx. In my understanding divx is an early implementation of mpeg4 (prior to the release of the standard). Xvid is another. I'm not sure what the relative differences are but I think they more or less amount to the same kind of quality per bitrate. Now that mpeg4 is out I think they both produce legal mpeg4 output. OK, so I have experimented with nuvexport. Unfortunately, under Knoppmyth R5A22, nuvexport with ffmpeg seems to be broken, so I tried it with --transcode and chose xvid format and a screen width of 240 (a suggestion as a reasonable compromise in quality and size). The show I am converting was 3.9GB in size. The problem is, on my mythbox, which is only a 800MHz celeron, it has been over 12 hours, the target file is 200MB and it's still not finished ! I tried running transcode manually from the command line on a faster (non-myth) machine I have. It's a 2.2GHz sempron. I used this command line transcode -i in.mpg -V -x mplayer -y xvid4,xvid4 -Z 240x160 -E 16000 -b 48,1,7,1 -w 150 -f 24,2 -o out.avi but it still is going slow (20 fps) So, I guess I am hoping for some suggestions on better ways to do this? I get much better performance using mencoder (part of mplayer). Its something like 15-20 minutes to encode a 1 hour program on my P4 2.8Hz HT machine. I use mythtranscode to give me the raw *.nuv file then I run mencoder on that file to re-encode for my palm machine. Here is the mencoder command line I use: mencoder -o outfile.avi -aspect 4:3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:turbo:vbitrate=300:aspect=4/3:acodec=mp3:abitrate=96 -oac lavc -vf-pre pp=lb -vf scale=320:200 -af volnorm infile.nuv Replace outfile.avi and infile.nuv with the input and output files you want. The resultant file is ~150MB for 1 hour. The quality is very high so you could probably halve the 300kbs bit rate and still have a usable video if you want smaller files. The assumption is that you are going from a full screen TV program to a full 4:3 aspect ratio output file. You can get slightly better quality if the program is 16:9 and you crop it but it may be more pain than its worth (look at the mencoder man page for the info on autocrop). ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgp8psTA0wEJo.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Converting shows to PDA suitable format
Doh, I mispoke, see my change below: On Friday 25 November 2005 11:12 pm, Paul V. Gratz wrote: On Friday 25 November 2005 04:32 pm, ffrr wrote: I am fairly new to converting video, so I have been trying to discover the best way to convert my recordings (PAL mpeg-TS from a DVB-T card) to a small format suitable for my Palm Tx PDA. Firstly, I have read that divx is a popular format and the TCPMP player on the palm will play it. Is xvid the same thing? What's the difference? Any other suggestions for a target format? I have a treo 650 and I've encoded a few shows for it. I have been using mencoder to encode it to the built-in lavc endcoder for divx. In my understanding divx is an early implementation of mpeg4 (prior to the release of the standard). Xvid is another. I'm not sure what the relative differences are but I think they more or less amount to the same kind of quality per bitrate. Now that mpeg4 is out I think they both produce legal mpeg4 output. OK, so I have experimented with nuvexport. Unfortunately, under Knoppmyth R5A22, nuvexport with ffmpeg seems to be broken, so I tried it with --transcode and chose xvid format and a screen width of 240 (a suggestion as a reasonable compromise in quality and size). The show I am converting was 3.9GB in size. The problem is, on my mythbox, which is only a 800MHz celeron, it has been over 12 hours, the target file is 200MB and it's still not finished ! I tried running transcode manually from the command line on a faster (non-myth) machine I have. It's a 2.2GHz sempron. I used this command line transcode -i in.mpg -V -x mplayer -y xvid4,xvid4 -Z 240x160 -E 16000 -b 48,1,7,1 -w 150 -f 24,2 -o out.avi but it still is going slow (20 fps) So, I guess I am hoping for some suggestions on better ways to do this? I get much better performance using mencoder (part of mplayer). Its something like 15-20 minutes to encode a 1 hour program on my P4 2.8Hz HT machine. I use nuvexport to give me the raw *.nuv file then I run mencoder on that file to re-encode for my palm machine. Here is the mencoder command line I use: (I use nuvexport not mythtranscode) mencoder -o outfile.avi -aspect 4:3 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:turbo:vbitrate=300:aspect=4/3:acodec=mp3:abitrate=96 -oac lavc -vf-pre pp=lb -vf scale=320:200 -af volnorm infile.nuv Replace outfile.avi and infile.nuv with the input and output files you want. The resultant file is ~150MB for 1 hour. The quality is very high so you could probably halve the 300kbs bit rate and still have a usable video if you want smaller files. The assumption is that you are going from a full screen TV program to a full 4:3 aspect ratio output file. You can get slightly better quality if the program is 16:9 and you crop it but it may be more pain than its worth (look at the mencoder man page for the info on autocrop). ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgp53oKwheENA.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] FYI: The Current Zap2it survey/Reqeust.
Yeah that was me. I was hoping we could get them to chime in on what they would like us to do. Paul On Tuesday 15 November 2005 11:51 am, George Nassas wrote: On 15-Nov-05, at 11:08 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote: So, I would say don't make any changes until you're explicitly asked to do so. If anyone finds any specific instructions for the community at large, please let us know. Check this out: http://bb.labs.zap2it.com/viewtopic.php?t=139 In an instance of mutual recursion the Nov 15 post references this thread and now we're referencing back. How romantic! Unless you're in a dialup situation where you want to avoid interrupting voice calls it's best to have myth run the fill any time it's convenient. For me that makes the job gradually rotate around the clock. - George pgp7wIWDWdrZz.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] $20 tuner at CompUSA
You could always buy it, see if it works with linux and if not return it. Worst case you are out $20 if they wont let you return it... Paul On Tuesday 15 November 2005 11:08 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 12G per hour? 4G per 20 minutes? Holie! Sounds like uncompressed recording... $20 seems like a good deal, but you're better off springing a little more for a 150, in my opinion. Save yourself the hassle in the long run. I have a 150 now, and yeah it's great. Perhaps the quoted filesize is incorrect? I was thinking either: A. Good second tuner for that occasional time when I need to record two shows at once (until I get a HD card) B. Cheap remote for a frontend, especially if the remote is USB and doesn't need the card installed, but either way it is cheap. One concern is that for now I would need the recordings viewable on my MVP. But you're right - I was thinking about getting another 150 anyway (MCE so I could get radio). ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgpBpcjh8WYwD.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] $20 tuner at CompUSA
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 12:50 pm, Jeff Simpson wrote: On 11/15/05, Paul V. Gratz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You could always buy it, see if it works with linux and if not return it. Worst case you are out $20 if they wont let you return it... Paul Worst case is you spend $20 on it, and then spend 3 weeks tinkering around trying to make it work, only to eventually give up and have to spend the $60 anyway :-P Thats the fun part right g. Actually I have to admit that I've bought on-the-edge of support hardware, just for the challenge of getting it working, more than once I'm afraid (how much of a geek am I). (I did exactly that trying to get an old ATI All-in-Wonder to workI gave up and regifted that ancient card) I feel your pain, had one of these cards :-P. Paul pgpKLEfg3Fzab.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] LiveTV Broken or Bad Permissions?
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 10:03 pm, Dustin Nicholas Jenkins wrote: Hello all, I've been using the Subversion build of MythTV for the past couple of weeks now, and the 'Watch TV' (LiveTV) link hasn't worked at all (i.e. the link text flashes and does nothing, no log entry or anything). Does anyone know if this is currently broken (SVN build 7892), or is this a permissions problem on my box? I've put my mythtv user into the video group, so they can see /dev/video0, and mplayer can read from it too. I have two tuner cards (PVR-250 and PCHDTV-3000) that play together well as far as I know. The only reason I ask about the permissions is that I had the same problem playing a DVD at one point, then I added mythtv to the cdrom group (or whatever the /dev group was) and it worked. Thanks, Dustin Dustin, LiveTV is broken (on purpose, you probably should search the mailing list before posting). Everyone, As much fun as it is to jump on people for not searching the mailing list before posting, perhaps an easier solution would be to have a message pop up on the screen if you try to go to LiveTV in the SVN version. It would cut down on a certain amount of useless posts. Paul pgpRR6NcjF02M.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] LiveTV Broken or Bad Permissions?
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 11:31 pm, Michael T. Dean wrote: Paul V. Gratz wrote: On Tuesday 15 November 2005 10:03 pm, Dustin Nicholas Jenkins wrote: I've been using the Subversion build of MythTV for the past couple of weeks now, and the 'Watch TV' (LiveTV) link hasn't worked at all (i.e. the link text flashes and does nothing, no log entry or anything). LiveTV is broken (on purpose, you probably should search the mailing list before posting). Everyone, As much fun as it is to jump on people for not searching the mailing list before posting It's not so much that people should be searching the mailing list for this type of thing as they should be *following* (=reading /and/ caught up on) the -dev and -commits lists if they use SVN. If not, they're simply picking a random version of Myth to use and any problems they have are their own fault--they're basically playing Subversion Roulette. Mike Yeah I understand and I agree that its a bad idea for them not to follow it. Personally I like to stick with offical releases so I don't have to follow that stuff relegiously. I'm just suggesting that if we really want people to not post on here about this, make it impossible for them to use the SVN and not know. Especially when its simple to do so. Everyone knows that this guy will not be the last to post on here about this. Who does it help to nail the next guy to the wall when he/she asks a stupid question. Its just a waste of BW. Paul pgpIXNx3lcmDU.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Is gentoo the way to go?
On Thursday 03 November 2005 05:29 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 09:07:24PM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: There seems to be a lot of gentoo users here! And maybe one of them can help me. I have a Xebian/Debian mix on my xbox right now and effectively can't use it for anything until the Xorg driver issue is resolved and/or MythTV is updated. I'd be interested in taking this opportunity to learn about Gentoo. Two questions: 1) Is it possible to transition to Gentoo on the X-Box without doing the save-game hack again? I see Xebian bzImage/initrd files in three different locations on my XBox (I installed Xebian into the E drive) and don't know which needs to be moved/replaced to cause it to boot to the minimal kernel for reinstallation. You should be able to bootstrap yourself from any working linux dist as long as there is a working ethernet. Its slightly off the beaten track but I think they even have docs for it on the gentoo website. I presume you want to keep using the same linux kernel due to some constraints in setup of the Xbox? This should also be possible, although a bit more of a hack. 2) Does MythTV/MythDVD/MythVideo work on Gentoo on XBox or am I just going to end up in the same place, with an X that's not compatible with Myth? I'm not an expert on this but I'm pretty sure others here have posted on it. Paul ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Getting started, which tuner card Haup. or NVTV
On Friday 14 October 2005 10:11 am, Frank Dux wrote: Hello, I am trying to figure out which tv tuner card to buy for mythtv. I plan on running Xbox (XBMC mythtv plugin) as frontend. However, for my backend I am trying to decide between Hauppauge series or eVGA NVTV series card. Does eVGA NVTV series cards even work with mythtv ? Never heard of it so I can't help you there. I want to be able to watch TV and record shows at the same time, does this mean I need the Hauppauge pvr 500 - dual tuner card ? Well it means that you want two tuners. I have the pvr 500 myself and I do like it although its been a bit of work to get the card to work reliably, the drivers are still fairly new. Once you get it working the quality of the video is very good, much better than the cheap winTV Go I had before this. In summary, I have Xbox frontend so that covers my video out and I want to watch and record shows at the same time, so I need a dual tuner card, is this right? Don't know about the Xbox, but I've seen people posting on it so hopefully someone else will pipe up. pgpSPeUhxcWit.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Thanks to developers, plus a few tips from someone who finally got it working
On Wednesday 05 October 2005 09:42 am, Kevin Kuphal wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, 2) Don't mess with wireless! I know this will probably start some flames, but to be honest, I never had much luck with 802.11g under Linux. I got it to work sometimes, but it was always flakey and would stop working randomly. Save yourself a headache and go with tried-and-true 10/100. Believe me, it's much easier than reading serial numbers off of boxes at Best Buy trying to find the one magic revision of some wireless card that is rumored to work 85% of the time. FYI. Using a wireless bridge to a PCs built in 10/100 port is a very workable solution for Wireless in Linux as it takes Linux out of the equation. IMHO even 802.11g is not really good and consistent enough for mythtv. Ultimately you want your TV to work like an appliance, ie it should always work and not need constant tinkering. I've fought with using wireless for my mythtv setup as well but I could not get a 100% consistent signal that had enough BW to not have hickups in the playback. I live in a moderately high density area where several neighbors in my building also have wireless, perhaps it would be different in the 'burbs but thats my experience. Paul pgp29Ygf3eGHi.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ability to do quick manual recording ?
Pressing the record button from Live TV does the correct thing in that it records the show you are watching from now until it ends. It would be nice though to have a way to extend past the end time of a given show. This comes up fairly often when watching sports programs. After being burned by this I now always record the show after the game I want to watch just in case we go into overtime... Paul On Tuesday 04 October 2005 12:39 pm, Tom Lichti wrote: Ricardo Kleemann wrote: Hi, I was wondering if there's a way to setup manual recordings without going into the scheduler setup. For example, some VCRs will allow you to do one-touch recording, and then if you press record again, it will allow you to incrementally setup the recording for 0:30, 1:00, 1:30, and so on... so specify the length of recording time very easily. It would be really really nice to have a feature like that in mythtv... like pressing R multiple times... is this possible? Maybe a feature request? The manual recording is quite nice for future recordings... but if I want to record live tv for say 2 hours, starting now, it's quite cumbersome to have to go out of live tv, then go into the scheduler and so on. Go into the EPG and press record on the program you are watching (should only be two button presses). It might actually work if you just press record while watching Live TV, but I've never tried it as I don't watch Live TV. Tom ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgp8dA4MSqWU5.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] Mythburn confusion, how do I install it on gentoo?
Hey all, I'm totally confused by the various emails, the howto's and forum threads. Is it possible to install mythtvburn on a gentoo platform? The install scripts seem to have been written for a debian variant (I guess Knoppmyth?) I have seen a couple posts though from people running gentoo that claim to have it running. Did you hand hack the scripts or is there a howto or documentation for it that is usable somewhere? Also what is the true location to dl it from? Sorry to be so dense. Thanks a ton! Paul pgpbSOC8iVhHt.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Slave backend keeps crashing
On Tuesday 27 September 2005 08:20 pm, Paul V. Gratz wrote: Hi, I recently got a PVR-500mce and put it in my front end machine. It is setup with a shared NFS mount from the machine running the master backend. Anyways, mostly it works well except that about once every 24 hours or so the slave backed seems to crash. The master keeps going and luckly I still have an old winTV GO in there that picks up some of the slack but its getting a bit annoying. I couldn't find anything relevent in the logs so this time I ran the backend from the command line and this is what I got on the screen: 2005 2005-09-27 18:31:00.003 Finished recording That '70s Show on channel: 1068 2005-09-27 18:31:00.051 Changing from RecordingOnly to None 2005-09-27 18:39:32.598 Finished, 6 break(s) found. 2005-09-27 18:57:48.588 Changing from None to RecordingOnly 2005-09-27 18:58:47.832 ChannelBase: Could not find input: Television on card when setting channel 69 2005-09-27 18:58:47.937 Changing from None to RecordingOnly 2005-09-27 19:00:50.097 Starting Commercial Flagging for Seinfeld recorded from channel 1002 at Tue Sep 27 18:29:00 2005. 2005-09-27 19:00:52.525 New DB connection, total: 1 2005-09-27 19:00:52.575 New DB connection, total: 2 2005-09-27 19:29:56.175 Finished, 2 break(s) found. 2005-09-27 19:42:26.867 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:42:29.770 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:42:36.596 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:29.603 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:30.534 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:30.934 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() Killed livingroom mythrun # livingroom mythrun # This is with mythtv version .18.1 installed on gentoo machines. Do you guys have any advice as to what is going on? Thanks a ton! Paul Just to reply to my own message here, is there a chance that this is related to my NFS setup? I've got the slave and master connected to each other over 100Mb wired ethernet. I have had the situation where I'm trying to record two streams while watching another on the slave machine (slave also houses the main frontend. What do you all think? Thanks! Paul pgpnrCDGnIMU8.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] Slave backend keeps crashing
Hi, I recently got a PVR-500mce and put it in my front end machine. It is setup with a shared NFS mount from the machine running the master backend. Anyways, mostly it works well except that about once every 24 hours or so the slave backed seems to crash. The master keeps going and luckly I still have an old winTV GO in there that picks up some of the slack but its getting a bit annoying. I couldn't find anything relevent in the logs so this time I ran the backend from the command line and this is what I got on the screen: 2005 2005-09-27 18:31:00.003 Finished recording That '70s Show on channel: 1068 2005-09-27 18:31:00.051 Changing from RecordingOnly to None 2005-09-27 18:39:32.598 Finished, 6 break(s) found. 2005-09-27 18:57:48.588 Changing from None to RecordingOnly 2005-09-27 18:58:47.832 ChannelBase: Could not find input: Television on card when setting channel 69 2005-09-27 18:58:47.937 Changing from None to RecordingOnly 2005-09-27 19:00:50.097 Starting Commercial Flagging for Seinfeld recorded from channel 1002 at Tue Sep 27 18:29:00 2005. 2005-09-27 19:00:52.525 New DB connection, total: 1 2005-09-27 19:00:52.575 New DB connection, total: 2 2005-09-27 19:29:56.175 Finished, 2 break(s) found. 2005-09-27 19:42:26.867 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:42:29.770 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:42:36.596 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:29.603 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:30.534 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() 2005-09-27 19:44:30.934 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write() Killed livingroom mythrun # livingroom mythrun # This is with mythtv version .18.1 installed on gentoo machines. Do you guys have any advice as to what is going on? Thanks a ton! Paul pgpQoyWLRhAVc.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ACPI sleep problems
On Tuesday 20 September 2005 04:56 am, John Pullan wrote: On 19/09/05, Paul V. Gratz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I actually use the suspend to ACPI ram all the time on my laptop (dell inspiron 8500). I did have some pretty heavy problems trying to get it running on my mythfrontend though. There the problem was mainly in getting the motherboard to respect a USB wake-up event (crappy cheap MB). In any event, I'd strongly recommend getting the hibernate script that the ACPI team puts out. This script can be run from the acpid or commandline. It does things like manages modules that are not compatible with ACPI (as best it can) and restarting network interfaces on resume. I suspect that with a reasonable motherboard you should be able to get this working. Paul Any chance of a link to this script please ? Sure all this stuff comes from the acpi4linux project: http://acpi.sourceforge.net/ (I just installed it via gentoo's ebuild). From what I've read and etc it sounds like it's very dependent on the motherboard's bios implementation of ACPI whether or not it will work for you. Some are written in a very clean, standards upholding way, others are really poor, not following the ACPI standard so they only work well with on OS (hint, not Linux). Paul pgpqW8nfYFCHb.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] ACPI sleep problems
I actually use the suspend to ACPI ram all the time on my laptop (dell inspiron 8500). I did have some pretty heavy problems trying to get it running on my mythfrontend though. There the problem was mainly in getting the motherboard to respect a USB wake-up event (crappy cheap MB). In any event, I'd strongly recommend getting the hibernate script that the ACPI team puts out. This script can be run from the acpid or commandline. It does things like manages modules that are not compatible with ACPI (as best it can) and restarting network interfaces on resume. I suspect that with a reasonable motherboard you should be able to get this working. Paul On Monday 19 September 2005 02:36 pm, Greg Woods wrote: On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 20:28 +0100, Steve Hill wrote: Everything I read says I just need to set the wake-up alarm by echoing a time and date to /proc/acpi/alarm and then suspend the machine by doing: echo -n mem /sys/power/state Where did you read this? I'd like to know because everything *I* have read says that ACPI suspend-to-RAM doesn't really work on Linux. I have never been able to make it work on my laptop; I can get it to suspend to RAM by doing echo 3 /proc/acpi/sleep, but there appears to be no way to wake it up after that. Suspend-to-disk (so-called software suspend) supposedly works but I've never been able to make that work either (and even if it did, it wouldn't be suitable for this purpose because there's no way to do a wakeup other than physically powering it on). ACPI is essentially a power management standard that pushes all the power management out of the BIOS hardware and into the OS. The more paranoid among us think this was a ploy by Microsoft to make it harder to run non-Windows OS's on PC laptops. But either way, the ACPI implementation in Linux is not very robust as yet. Whether or not it will work will likely depend on exactly what kernel version you are running and what motherboard and BIOS chip. But it is highly unlikely that it will be as simple as echoing something to a /proc or /sys file. If you do manage to make it work, I'd love to hear about it. --Greg pgp08SoedlNwK.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Recommended OS
Hmmm, are you meaning Linux vs Mac vs Windows? In that case I think its mostly Linux although I hear there is a MythWin project and possibly a similar Mac project as ports from the linux version. If you are asking what distribution of Linux, I think there is a fairly wide range. I and several others use Gentoo Linux (On Gentoo there kind of is no version beyond saying that I updated about a week ago). I've seen people posting saying they were using RedHat/ Fedora and Mandrake. I'm sure there are lots of others. Paul On Saturday 16 July 2005 10:35 am, Ravi Malghan wrote: Hi: I couldn't find this info. Wondering which OS (name and version) is recommended to run mythTV? Thanks Ravi Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users pgp9fh3tAwUQ5.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Multi backend TV card preference?
On Tuesday 12 July 2005 08:07 pm, Gregorio Gervasio, Jr. wrote: Michael T Dean writes: m Paul V. Gratz wrote: Is there any way that I can set it up so that the master backend always records or is used for Live TV unless it is already being used for a recording? I'd like it if the only time I'm using the Slave's TV card is if the Master has already started recording something. I've done a bunch of searching but I've had no luck finding a solution for exactly my problem. m Sounds like someone selected, Avoid conflicts between live TV and m scheduled shows. m If enabled, live TV will choose a tuner card that is less likely to have m scheduled recordings rather than the best card available. m (basically, it chooses the lowest-priority available card for LiveTV). I don't think this will help him. I think what he's seeing *is* the default behavior -- LiveTV has a preference for local cards and his frontend and slave backend are on the same host. However, recordings should still use the master backend's card first (assuming it's the lower-numbered card and no changes to card priorities). OK this does not seem to do what I want in that it does not force the live TV to be done on the master TV card instead of the TV card in the slave. It actually kind of the opposite actually in that it will be more likely to choose the slave one which has the lower priority card. Since it's only an issue with LiveTV and there are only two tuners, it's easy enough to just hit 'Y' to change cards. Hmmm while this does work, its not too high on the W.A.F. (in this case its my girlfriend so G.A.F I suppose). It is a bit of a pain in the butt to do this every time I'm browsing TV. Is there any way to force the preference a different way? Thanks for all replies! Pauyl pgpkUFF3BtdLd.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] New Install Recommendations
On Wednesday 13 July 2005 08:29 pm, Thom Paine wrote: I'm downloading KnoppMyth as I type this, and will give it a try. I recently tried installing Gentoo on my spare laptop, and had had really good success. Many people running Gentoo using Myth? I have both my backend and my frontends running on gentoo. I've been very happy with it. It probably the easiest dist. I've every used with respect to maint. Its nice to never have to do a fresh reinstall. Its not for the weak at heart though, the compile times are long and you need to know how to setup your software manually, but to me thats a plus. Basically I'm looking for solid backend and and will likely use Xboxes for frontends where I have TV's. I've been using FC4 on my good laptop, and I'd think that I wouldn't want to run this on the backend just yet. I like FC3, but these few changes is making it hard to get a working install. Thanks. pgpBmGHLSfLCz.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Multi backend TV card preference?
On Tuesday 12 July 2005 08:07 pm, Gregorio Gervasio, Jr. wrote: Michael T Dean writes: m Paul V. Gratz wrote: Is there any way that I can set it up so that the master backend always records or is used for Live TV unless it is already being used for a recording? I'd like it if the only time I'm using the Slave's TV card is if the Master has already started recording something. I've done a bunch of searching but I've had no luck finding a solution for exactly my problem. m Sounds like someone selected, Avoid conflicts between live TV and m scheduled shows. m If enabled, live TV will choose a tuner card that is less likely to have m scheduled recordings rather than the best card available. m (basically, it chooses the lowest-priority available card for LiveTV). I don't think this will help him. I think what he's seeing *is* the default behavior -- LiveTV has a preference for local cards and his frontend and slave backend are on the same host. However, recordings should still use the master backend's card first (assuming it's the lower-numbered card and no changes to card priorities). Since it's only an issue with LiveTV and there are only two tuners, it's easy enough to just hit 'Y' to change cards. Oddly I missed seeing that someone replied to my original email, sorry about that. Hmmm I'll try both of these tonight and report back. It sounds like the Y key might be enough to do it, I'll have to map that to my remote. I'd still rather not have that be the default action. Actually I think the only time I'd like to use the TV card in the slave machine is when I'm recording on the master. I'd also rather not record with if at all possible. Thanks for any help! Paul pgpSR09GTZtEj.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
[mythtv-users] Multi backend TV card preference?
Hey all, I just wanted to ask a quick question about setting up a slave backend. I have successfully setup a master server with one winTV Go capture card in it. I have a front end machine that also has a TV card in it however the processor in it is an old 1.6GHz P4 and the TV card is also a WinTV Go. I've tried to set it up so that it this machine has a slave backend with a low priority on the TV card however for some reason the master always wants to have the slave TV card running when I'm watching Live TV on that machine no matter how low I set the priority on it (or how high I set the priority on the master backend). The problem is that when I view TV on the slave machine using the slave TV card I've found that it can be slightly choppy vs. when I'm watching TV from the master's TV card everything is perfectly smooth (fast ethernet and the master is a much faster machine). Is there any way that I can set it up so that the master backend always records or is used for Live TV unless it is already being used for a recording? I'd like it if the only time I'm using the Slave's TV card is if the Master has already started recording something. I've done a bunch of searching but I've had no luck finding a solution for exactly my problem. I'm currently using MythTV .18-1 on gentoo. Thanks for any help! Paul pgpXMuRGGWMbc.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
