[mythtv-users] Fedora 9 caveat

[Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.]

1.  nVidia has recently released drivers that work with xorg-1.5 so
this is not an issue any more.

2.  The new xorg seems to automatically find more display modes to
use.  Unfortunately, some of the ones it finds have timing rates that
may not be optimal for Myth.  For example, on my Macbook, it uses a
59Hz mode so the 2X deinterlace filters don't work.  On my Samsung
1080p DLP, it uses a mode that prevents 1:1 pixel mapping over VGA.
In both cases, I can run "xrandr" to switch to the correct display
mode.

3.  Use of LIRC with bttv cards causes a kernel oops.  For now, it
seems you need to rebuild the kernel with this patch:

http://www.nabble.com/-PATCH--Fix-lirc_i2c-oops-with-linux-2.6.25-p17045894.html

4.  There's an application hang when recording from bttv cards.  This
kernel patch is also required:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/5/17/139

5.  There is another problem with recording from bttv cards -- it
seems that using V4L1 mode with the V4L2 drivers in the 2.6.25 kernel
is not working (lots of "VIDIOCMCAPTURE*: Device or resource busy"
messages) .  I don't know the history behind this -- mplayer warns
that this is broken and I got the impression that the v4l devs won't
be fixing this.

        It works if you patch Myth to use V4L2 mode for bttv cards.  I
can't remember if there was a reason for Myth to stick to V4L1 mode --
it already uses V4L2 for other "dumb" capture cards (eg.cx8800).

6.  I bypass pulseaudio for SPDIF (AudioOutputDevice = "ALSA:plughw")
and it works well.


NOTE 1:  I do not use ATrpms, so YMMV.

NOTE 2.  I do not use firewire capture or ivtv tuner cards -- just
bttv, PCHDTV-3000, Air2PC (v2?), and HDHomerun.
-- 
Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.