[mythtv-users] Matrox Millennium G400 MAX

[aaron]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 13:58, mike at grounded.net <mike at grounded.net> wrote:
>> Obviously the solution is to buy a new TV that has a VGA input! ;-)
>
> I know you're joking but you're actually on something hehe.
> I do have a crestron VGA to svideo/composite converters. In fact, I think I also have an extron unit as well sitting in a rack.
>
> However, not having any hands on with myth yet, this is the problem. I'm not sure why I would want to output the desktop to tv? I thought there is a secondary, or user interface (GUI) that can be displayed when you have a secondary output, just to watch media? I mean, I don't care to see the setup tools on TV.
>
> Obviously, I'm missing something that I've not read or seen about myth yet. This is where it's been unclear to me because I've not had any hands on yet ).

I may be spewing nonsense, but your success with that may be
hardware-dependent ... I didn't have too much trouble getting two
monitors (both VGA connections) to work with my G450, but I can only
get accelerated video on the primary output (hard-wired to the first
connector, apparently). I may well be wrong, but I don't think Myth
supports putting the GUI on one screen and video on the other... I'm
sure others will correct me if I'm wrong.

I have my system set up something like this: when I turn it on, it
boots up and goes into X. It auto-logs in as the "myth" user, which is
configured to load my window manager (blackbox) and then go into a
loop running mythwelcome (which is then used via remote control to
start mythfrontend). So there is no "desktop" per se... the only thing
it does is run MythTV. If X dies (or I kill it for some reason) it
gets restarted automatically and goes back to mythwelcome.

I'm running my system on Slackware, and I used some hack-tackery to
get things working nicely (with auto-login) that probably wouldn't be
necessary on other distributions like Ubuntu.

I think the usual way of running Myth (again, I'm sure I'll be
corrected if I'm wrong) is that "everything" is output to the TV, and
if you are looking for an "appliance" then you'd configure things so
the only thing that runs is Myth. If you really need finer-grained
control (like if your TV is of the same vintage as mine and you can't
read the setup screens :) )  then you would probably connect via SSH
from another machine and forward the X display.

aaron