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Journal Talinom's Journal: MythTV configuration 20

Journal by Talinom
Just a heads up: Unless you know Linux, hardware, and how to find odd nuggets of knowledge on the internet, skip it. Things I learned:
  1. You can only have one HD-3000 card in your computer if you are going to be recording NTSC. I bought two. Linux currently does not recognize the analog audio decoder (btaudio) of the card. It has to be jacked into the sound card.
  2. Not the Line In, but the Microphone line on my Soundblaster Live Value 5.1. Grrrr.
  3. You need to use the video4linux driver for the NTSC decoder on the card. The one that you would think would work, that being the HD-3000 driver, only works for digital stations.
  4. The video4linux driver skews the colors of the HD-3000 waaaaay off. Grass is red for example. You need to adjust the hue to compensate and then adjust the brightness, contrast,and color (saturation) as well. For each station.
  5. Setting up the data from Zap2it Labs is pretty slick, but you cannot adjust the contrast until the initial setup program has ran and closed itself. Yes, you need to go BACK into it to do that. Or figure out that you can do this by logging onto the system via it's rocking web interface and digging into a few layers of configutation to get to an easier way of doing it.
  6. You get one chance to get your root password to start the setup program correctly.
  7. For no good reason alsa doesn't seem to like my onboard nvidia audio system.
  8. My PNY NVidia FX-5200 has functional TV out, except for the part where it doesn't work. It will send the desktop just fine. Anything requiring an overlay doesn't seem to want to go through to the TV out portion. I checked by having the channel guide up with the TV in a little window. Saw the same thing on the monitor that I did on the TV, sans video from the card. Working out if it is the card of if I did something boneheaded, although I didn't change any default options at all all eight (yes 8 and it might have been more) times I did a full reinstall yesterday.
  9. My DVDs don't seem to want to play on the system, nor do they rip. Even changed an option for mplayer from the -vo xv to -vo xover to see if the overlay would finally work on the second monitor. Nope. There are 26 options total for the -vo switch, most of which are obviously not going to work for your given setup.

So now I have just about everything working the way I would like it except for video output to the TV. That is the point of this excercise. Eventually I will have only the TV hooked up to it and have the keyboard, mouse and monitor safely tucked away elsewhere.

Oh, and I need to go hack a file to get my ATI Remote Wonder (that I had just lying around) to be fully functional like I would expect it to be. Right now there is no way to have it use the Esc key to back out of menus.

Who all has had experience with MythTV? Kormoc I know you are reading this and it doesn't look good, but I am really comitted to making this thing work. Got clues for the clueless?

System Specs:
AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton core CPU
PNY FX-5200 8x AGP card with 64MB RAM and Video Out
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe nForce2 Motherboard
Maxtor 250GB L01R250 16MB Buffer Ultra ATA/133 - Retail Hard Drive Kit
2 Corsair 512MB PC3200 DDR memory modules
2 (one in system) HD-3000 HDTV tuner cards
1 Soundblaster Live! Value 5.1 sound card (free)
1 DVD drive (free)
1 17" monitor (free)
1 ATI Remote Wonder (free)
Case w/ power supply

Oh, and the hardware was perfect the first time it went together. Who is the man!

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MythTV configuration More

MythTV configuration

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  • Just remember - Real good notes, so that MY install rocks!
    • The notes are copius, it is Kormoc who rocks and my remote should be working this week!

      If I can do it all the way I want to then I should have some ultra basic scripts so that I can put the thing back to "normal" even after a complete fdisk. THAT would be ideal. The added benefit would be that the scripts, on identical hardware, would allow for rapid deployment (aka rockin' install) with minimal headache.

      This ain't your Sony install that is for sure.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Ooh, what happens when you put both in? dmesg says?
      No error message. The problem is that in order to record using the NTSC portion of the tuner you have to send the audio output to the sound card as it cannot capture the audio directly from the capture card. When recording two stations at once you would either have to have two sound cards (PITA) or the sound would be wrong for at least one of them.

      I now have the line in working but get an echo when using live tv. The sound is off until I choose to watc
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • My number one priority right now is to get the overlay displayed on the TV. No dice yet. Going here [sorgonet.com] just breaks the x-server. I may need to go in, rip out the driver, and reinstall it. Kinda odd as other people have KnoppMyth working just fine with a card just like mine. :( Having the machine boot sans monitor works right up until the X-server starts up. Then it all goes away.

          On the sound:
          1) it is not compatible with the btaudio driver, so the analog audio has to come in via the sound card if you want i
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Video is working. See other comment in this JE. It rocks.

              I have, for recording purposes under alsamixer:
              Surround, Wave, Music, Line LiveDrive, Line2 LiveDrive 1, IEC958 Coaxial, IEC958 LiveDrive, IEC958 TTL, Capture and AC97.

              For playback I have:
              Master, Headphone, Headphone 1, Bass, Treble, 3D Control - Center, 3D Control - Depth, PCM, Surround, Center, LFE, Wave, Wave Center, Wave LFE, Wave Surround, Music, Line, Line LiveDrive, Line2 LiveDrive 1, CD, Mic, Video, Phone, IEC958 Coaxial, IEC958 LiveDr
              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • /lib/modules/2.6.11.9-chw-2/kernel/sound/pci/snd- b t87x.ko is the one I believe you are referring to?

                  I think that I'm going to say the hell with the pcHDTV card for now and go get a Hauppage. This is a PITA. I want maximum tuners in my system with full hardware MPEG encoding. I'm looking at the WinTV PVR-500 [hauppage.com]. I've read that MythTV treats that as two PVR-150 [hauppage.com] cards. It was my hope that I would be able to use the NTSC portion of the card and use the digital portion either later or if we were getting signal
    • My turn for questions from the master :)

      1. My sound works fine at the beginning of a show, but as time progresses it starts to crackle and pop. If I exit the show and go back to the recordings menu, then start the show again immediately, the sound is fine again. Any suggestions? (using an ensoniq Maestro 3, but I have a Sound Blaster Audigy available I can put in. The ALSA drivers weren't recognizing it, so I back revved to the older ensoniq card).

      2. My TV out in my nVidia card doesn't work at all. I'
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • This just in. Video out is working correctly!!!

        I started a thread in the forums [mysettopbox.tv] at mysettopbox and they solved all of my woes. Actually they narrowed down my instructions to KnoppMythWiki [knoppmythwiki.org] and I went to this link [knoppmythwiki.org] to follow the instructions on how to use their auto install.

        I was under the naive impression that an auto install would, um, automatically configure everything. Nope. It just installs. This place helps you to configure everything correctly.

        The big answer for video is that you need to not us
  • Welcome to the reason I'm never going to do this again, if the one I've cobbled together stops working permanently.

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