[mythtv-users] Re: My Tivo just died. Beyond or Myth?

djg at pdp8.net djg at pdp8.net
Sat Jun 25 15:29:48 UTC 2005


>>2. Season pass option to be able to search for and record programs by name /
>> date / keyword / new or rerun.
>
> Yes, even customize how MythTV determines reruns
>
Where do you do this?  I didn't see any obvious option in the menu or
in the howto.

For shows that are in the nth season (with previous seasons being rerun)
I was only wanting to record this season's or the first showing of the
episode.  I couldn't figure out how to do this so used this time slot
but that missed an episode when they had an extra long previous show
and pushed its start time back.

---

>I think 2 more items that need to be considered is system stability, and 
>ease of installation.

That is a problem with Linux since manufacturers don't want to release
information to allow good drivers to be written.  I didn't do enough 
research before buying pieces for my system so had problems.  I was wanting 
to use one machine for backend, frontend, and general use as my new main 
computer.

I got a Asus A8V Deluxe with Athlon 64 3000, PVR 150, ATI 9550 & 9200 SE
graphics and Fedora Core 3.  Also had an old WinTV Bt878 video card to
use as second tuner.

The MythTV install, setting up guide etc. took a little while with reading some 
howtos -- it wasn't too bad but not trivial either.

The PVR 150 support at the time wasn't usable.  From the mailing list
the progress looks good on the driver but I haven't had time to try again.

For the ATI cards the TV out doesn't work with the open source driver and
the ATI driver is not very good.  If you use the video overlay on the
second screen to get good TV performance it leaves a colored band of
junk across the main screen so you can't use the computer if somebody
else is watching TV through myth.  I can't get the driver to work with
the two cards at once.  The original intent was to have myth on the 9200 and
two screen on the main card for PC use.

Buying a PVR350 probably would have solved the problems above (was more
expensive and I thought the other solution would work).

I also had the PC lock up solid a couple times at the start or end of 
a recording.  With kernel upgrades etc. I haven't seen it recently (reruns 
have also reduced the frequency of recording though).

The WinTV had a high frequency noise tone in its output (19KHz?) that
the motherboard audio was splattering all across the low frequencies
so was annoying at the default sample rate.  I found that if I set the 
sample rate to 48 KHz it would not get splattered across the spectrum and
at the high frequency it isn't audable.  I assume this was another driver 
problem.

These are all more generic Linux problems than MythTV problems but
hurts the MythTV experience.

I also have had the mythfrontend die several times with invalid free errors.
The backend seems pretty stable.  The only serious problem I had with it was 
the daylight savings time bug that caused the program guide to be an hour off 
which was fixed pretty quickly although I lost one recording due to it.

I did verify the hardware I bought worked under XP but didn't try windows
PVR software.



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