[mythtv-users] Debian Squeeze - 0.22 Fixes Upgrade Experience

[Paul Gallaway]

Upgraded on Saturday. Installed/compiled from SVN 0.22 fixes checked
out Saturday evening. I assume this would be roughly equivalent to the
RC2 release (if not exactly).

As the subject states, base OS is Debian Squeeze. This is an always on
system as I haven't gotten around to creating any hibernation rules
etc. Only has one PVR-150 analogue recorder which records directly
from basic cable (not digital boxes etc). It's an AMD Phenom II 720
processor, 4GB of ram, and Nvidia 9600 GSO with VDPAU support. I'm
using the binary driver 185.16.36-2 from the SID repository. The
system is a combined BE/FE. Compared to what a lot of people have, my
setup is pretty basic. It's used daily for recording and playback to a
'720p' LCD in my livingroom and considered a must function device in
my household. Also have a couple other frontends that are used
irregularly by only me and will probably upgrade these in the next
month or so. I may wait for a Debian repository for 0.22 to appear
(debian-multimedia or other).

Here's the steps I followed for my upgrade. These should apply to
anyone that has 0.21 installed from SVN and are not Debian specific.
If you're upgrading from a pre-packaged source there may be additional
steps such as backing up and editing the init scripts. Total upgrade
including compile time was less than an hour although I didn't
strictly keep track (steps 1-9). Count on another half hour to an hour
to configure VDPAU, playing with themes and making the other changes
to playback in mythvideo.

1) Compiled mythtv 0.22 from SVN source checked out Saturday night. No
change from 0.21 in preparation method. Checkout the source with SVN,
./configure (enable/disable options you want, see ./configure --help),
make.
2) Shutdown mythbackend using my init script (/etc/init.d/mythbackend stop).
3) Run 'make install' in the compile directory to replace the 0.21
binaries with the freshly compiled 0.22 binaries.
4) Compiled my mythplugins from source. Again, ./configure, make, make
install first enabling/disabling the plugins per my preferences before
installing. (You need to install the main program before the plugins
will compile properly. At least for me that's how it worked.
5) Ran mythtv-setup. Run from an x-term which will allow you to tab
between the window and the terminal. The database upgrade takes quite
a bit of time even on my fairly hefty backend so it gives some piece
of mind to alt-tab to the x-term to watch the progress.
6) My old-theme was MythCenter-Wide which appears to be the basis for
'default' in 0.22? Anyway, the screens came up with the plain blue
menus I'm use to seeing (and possibly because my themes were still
broken at this point). There were some new directory definitions for
artwork so I defined these at this time (although still working on
getting artwork). Checked that my tuner was still defined, everything
looked good so I just left it.
7) Ran mythfilldatabase (just because) and then started the backend
with my init script (/etc/init.d/mythbackend start).
8) Started mythfrontend, again from an xterm so I could watch the
console output for problems. After some shorter schema updates, the
frontend came up.
9) Selected the settings menu and tried to select one of the new
themes only to realize they were all missing. Didn't realize I needed
to 'make install' in the myththemes folder within the SVN source
(doh!) - which makes me wonder how I had any themes in 0.21 although
maybe I had done it once in the past. Anyway, make install within the
themes source folder will copy all the themes to where they need to
be. You can safely do this after installing the 0.22 binaries.
10) Go to TV Settings and adjust playback. You need to setup a new
VDPAU rule (assuming you have an NVidia capable card). Depending on
the card you're using you should set the best quality deinterlacer
your card will run. I believe there are recommended/working settings
on the wiki. Something I've just realized is that I should probably
configure a non-VDPAU fall back (probably YADIF or Greedy) for the
filetypes that cannot utilize VDPAU currently.
11) I also suggest editing the filetype settings under mythvideo (if
you use the plugin) to use Internal for all file types. I had been
using mplayer for certain files as Internal in 0.21 was bogged down
quite frequently. I've changed all my settings back to Internal and so
far everything I have tried has worked well with Internal. The use of
bookmarks here is great! There's still a few filetypes I haven't tried
yet.
12) Enjoy!

Feedback:
Was a little nervous about the upgrade as it's my first upgrade since
I started compiling from source for my backend. Couldn't have been
happier with how smoothly things went. I didn't tell my wife I was
upgrading but she figured it out as soon as she started mythtv within
minutes of me finishing the install ("did up upgrade mythtv?"), even
before I had a chance to change the theme. Lucky for me it went
smoothly ;) All upgrades were done remotely as my box has no
keyboard/mouse connected. I used SSH and X-forwarding to do the
initial configuration running mythtv-setup and mythfrontend tunneling
it to my desktop and tweaking with the remote on my couch after.

VDPAU playback looks fantastic. I cannot say enough about how great it
looks with Advanced X2. Was previously using YADIF X2 and the
improvement is significant. Standard definition TV recordings look far
better than they ever have on my system. When I upgraded my system to
the Phenom II processor, I would have said YADIF X2 was at about the
same quality, maybe less when compared to the TV's built in
deinterlacer when watching standard definition. With Advanced X2 in
the VDPAU deinterlacers I get better quality playback than the TV's
built in deinterlacer (e.g. better than plugging the analogue cable
directly into the TV's tuner). That's great news for me!

I also liked a lot of the changes in the new themes. The new mythui
'feels' really nice. Looks all-around much cleaner. I *really* liked
Terra but my wife did not like the horizontal layout. She wants to see
a full list of the episodes as we did with mythcenter-wide and not
side scroll. Once I get my files renamed in the proper format and get
JAMU to grab the images and metadata I want to try Graphite again. I
can see that there's lots of room in the layout for the
fanart/graphics. I've tried mythbuntu - which was OK but the dark
theme doesn't go with my livingroom (did I just say that?). The
Mythbuntu theme will be perfect on my desktop system when I upgrade
it. Also downloaded blue-abstract from the wiki which I think I'm
going to stick with for a little while because of the similar feel to
mythcenter-wide. I also need to spend some more time with the
metallurgy theme. Overall the new feel from mythui with the new
layouts and added graphics is excellent. There are so many good
interface options with different tweaks that should be attractive to
new users, possibly trouble for long time users supporting family
members through layout changes.

All in all really happy with the transition. The upgrade couldn't have
gone smoother. VDPAU has really improved my playback experience
significantly. MythUI, as others have mentioned, both looks crisper
and feels snappier. Really liking the new theme options and playing
with them has been fun. I haven't really changed my theme up since I
installed 0.20. This week I'll be turning my attention to getting JAMU
functioning and integrating metadata and graphics (which I never
bothered with on 0.20 or 0.21). I then look forward to playing with
the themes all over again!

~pAul.

all good things, all in good time...



-- 
~pAul.

        all good things. all in good time.