[mythtv-users] HD3000 50% working -- blank mythfrontend on some chans

[John Goerzen]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 04:35:47PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2004 at 11:16:09AM -0500, Doug Larrick wrote:
> I've done some more checking on this and I'm very puzzled.  MythTV is
> the only thing that is broken.  I even completely removed all the HD3000
> drivers, modules, etc. and rebooted (everything but physically yanking

Finally solved this one.  "IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA" in alsamixer was
at 0.  Setting it at any other value (it only accepts 3) makes
everything work fine in MythTV.  I've never messed with that control and
don't even know what it all means, nor how it got messed up, or why it
bothers only MythTV.  Anyway, fixed.

> > Also, new drivers due to be released next week sometime will increase 
> > the number of DMA buffers the HD-3000 uses, which should fix problems 
> > some people are seeing under load.
> 
> I haven't seen any logged problems or other indications of trouble, but
> I'll keep my eyes open.

Any having done so, I *have* noticed some indications of trouble there,
though it usually seems to be right as I'm tuning to a new channel.

Also, the two stations I couldn't tune to before now work fine, though
it takes about 3 seconds before the signal starts to move past 0.
Strange that.

I did also try scheduling a recording rather than trying to watch live
TV.  It seemd to work with the occasional buffer overrun.  Mythfrontend
would play (slowly) the scaled down image of it in the recording
listing.  However, when it was selected, all I'd get would be a black
screen with all OSD features disabled.  Nothing except Exit had any
effect, and mythfrontend was using no CPU at all.  So that's encouraging
-- a bit.

I did try danielk's HDTV Recorder v32 patch.  Didn't seem to make much
of a difference one way or other.  I guess at this point there's not
much I can do save wait for the new drivers.

Thanks for your suggestions.  They've been helpful.

-- John