[mythtv] Re: Whats wrong with myth

[jam at tigger.ws]

Hi

First a sincere thanks for the many (gentle) answers.

> >>I'll second that.   HDTV works well on my setup. 
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Sure, and I have HDTV working too.  He was a bit overbearing saying
> >it doesn't work.   But it is true that it took a lot of work to get
> >it going, and I know that's true for a lot of people, and I would
> >be curious to know if there was even a sizeable group who didn't encounter
> >some level of snags to fix in making and HDTV box.  What fraction of
> >people just said "apt-get mythtv-suite" then did some basic config and
> >had an HD box ready to go?
> >  
> >
> Well in my case I had zero issues, I built the driver, installed it as
> was ready to go (aside from my setting Myth to /dev/video0 instead of
> /dev/dtv0 at first).  Then again, from day one I've done my homework and
> not tried to force Linux/Myth to adapt to my hardware and instead bought
> hardware I knew would less of a hassle.  Every piece of hardware in my
> Myth machines was chosen after having researched things on the mailing
> lists.
> 
> 
> >It's often nothing to do with Myth, but instead the immaturity of the
> >various drivers for hardware -- video cards and xvideo, tuner cards,
> >sound drivers for multichannel sound.   
> >  
> >
> See above.
> 
> >Of course, if you build myth only for yourself, the problems other people
> >have in getting it going are not relevant.   If you want the system to
> >gain more users (and developers) for either philanthropic or selfish
> >reasons, then you have to listen to the people who announce they are
> >walking away in frustration.   If they are reasonably skilled linux
> >users, and they walk away in frustration, it's not their fault, much
> >as any particular error made can be seen to be their fault.
> >
> User who choose to walk away because they couldn't make things work on
> their hardware either 1) need to wait for a commercial Myth solution or
> 2) need to do a little homework and select different hardware.  I'm
> happy to help people, but most of the complaints I see from people who
> are TRULY frustrated and not just doing something wrong involve them
> having tried to force their hardware/distro of choice instead of
> following the path of least resistance.  Most issues aren't Myth issues
> at all and it's not really the Myth developers place to debug every
> possible combination of hardware/distro.

Just to re-iterate:

I was involved with two mates.
We researched for weeks, before choosing the DVICO fusion card, because
it was the best fit I could find in Australia, and it had hardware
compression.
Myth was built from source.
SDTV is good, HDTV is blocky and pixelated,
    "I'm with mom on this, its so jerky I get a headache watching it"

PIDs, sql, sound all handled without too much loss of sleep, and 0.17's
scan is much better (once you've handled the no feeds situation)

Machines were celeron-2.6 PATA, p4-3.2 PATA, p4-3 SATA.
on the c-2.6 and p4-3,2 machines (theirs) windows is very good.
on my machine p4-3 kaxtv in HD is good, kaxtv SD is excellant.
on a c-1.7 kaxtv HD is ok (occasional pixellated line).

All machines were using Pascoe's FUSION drivers.

Just for the archives, would those who said that they have no HDTV problems
please give a one line answer on their hardware.

Thanks
James