[mythtv] Beginner's questions...

[James Fidell]

I installed mythtv on a RedHat 8.0 machine yesterday and whilst I appear
to be close to getting it to work, I'm still having a few problems.  I
have a Hauppauge WinTV/FM PCI card, Matrox G400 video card and Ensonic
1371-based sound card.  The WinTV card has a combined remote unit and
I have the line out on the tv card patched to the line in on the sound
card.  The OS is RedHat 8.0, fully patched.  Xawtv works fine in both
windows and fullscreen modes, but I can only hear sound if I raise the
gain on line in.  It's probably also relevant that I'm in the UK.

Now for the problems :)

ALSA didn't work when I installed it.  Once all the kernel modules are
loaded, aplay hangs writing to one of the /dev/asound devices.  I've
not looked at this any further because it was easier to go back to OSS
temporarily, but if it sounds familiar I'd appreciate advice on resolving
the problem.


I have the Hauppague remote working fine.  It would be more intuitive if
I could use my Sony RMT-V259K VCR remote, but lirc doesn't appear to
"see" it.  I have the lirc_i2c module built and installed and running
irrecord with any device other than the Hauppauge remote just results
in an "irrecord: gap not found, can't continue" error.  Is there anything
I can do that might get this to work?


When I run "mythdatabasefill --manual" I'm a little confused by the
options (I tried running with the "--xawchannels" option, but I wasn't
getting the right data, so I left it).  At the end I get asked:

Choose a channel ID (positive integer)  [0]  
Choose a channel name (any string, long version)  [BBC1 (South)]  
Choose a channel callsign (any string, short version) 
Choose a channel number (just like xawtv)  [south.bbc1.bbc.co.uk]  
Choose a channel fine tune offset (just like xawtv) 
Choose a channel icon image (any path name)  [http://www.ananova.com/tv_listings/images/logos/logo-15.gif]  

Presumably the channel ID is any unique integer and the channel number is
the number from the "channel = " part of the config. for xawtv?  Currently
in the database I have:

mysql> select chanid, channum, name from channel;
+--------+---------+----------------------+
| chanid | channum | name                 |
+--------+---------+----------------------+
|      1 | 39      | BBC1 (South)         |
|      2 | 45      | BBC2 (South)         |
|      3 | 42      | ITV1 (ITV1 Meridian) |
|      4 | 66      | Channel 4            |
|      5 | 35      | five                 |
+--------+---------+----------------------+

Does that look correct?


When I start mythfrontend and choose the "watch tv" option, the picture
is very dark, grainy and jittery.  Xawtv is fine though.  I guess this
may be that I haven't answered the above questions from mythdatabasefill
correctly and the channel tuning isn't working.  If I do have the channel
tuning correct though, it looks like mythtv isn't selecting the channels
correctly.  For example, if I go into the EPG and pick a channel, I get
"snow" rather than a picture.

Finally, I get no sound from mythtv although I do with xawtv (as long
as I unmute line in).  Any ideas why this should be?

Thanks,
James