User:Lwoggardner

Revision as of 10:52, 4 October 2006

Let me just start by saying MythTV rocks. I was keeping track of where I was at with Myth on my home wiki, but then figured I might as well share it here!

My Setup

Combined FE/BE.

Hardware

• AMD S754 Athlon 64 3700+
• Gigabyte S754 GA-K8VM800M
• 1GB Ram
• 320GB Western Digital 7200rpm 8M Serial ATA HDD
• Albatron FX5200LP 128M 8x Video Card with DVI output.
• Gigabyte FX5200 128M 8x Video Card with DVI output.

• DVICO FusionHDTV Hybrid Tuner
• DNTVLive LP Tuner

• DVICO FusionRemote

• BenQ PE8700 DLP Projector

Software

• Ubuntu Dapper (upgraded from Breezy server install)
• Kernel 2.6.15-27-amd64-k8
• v4l-dvb-0.9 drivers patched to handle vendor/device codes being the same between 2 different devices!! (Many thanks to Chris Pascoe for getting the DVICO card going)
• NVidia amd64 version 8774
• lirc version 0.8.0 (Dapper upgrade changed device from /dev/usb/hiddev0 to /dev/hiddev0
• Ratpoison window manager
• MythTV 0.20.x fixes branch

What's working for me

• Live TV/TV recording Free to air HD/SD (from Sydney, Australia). Both tuner's simultaneously.
• AC3 passthrough including 5,1 surround (not tested since 0.20 upgrade)
• XMLTV grabber from the OZTivo site
• MythMusic
• MythGallery
• MythDVD using xine as an external player
• Using irexec to restart Myth, including with a different Layout to switch between the Projector and TV

What's not

• XvMC not sure if this is an NVIDIA driver thing or 0.20 but bad stuttering and "audio buffering" messages in the logs
• The Gigabyte FX5200 card does not do PAL output properly, as it renders in B&W. Fortunately my TV autodetects NTSC colour.
• The Albatron FX5200 card has been fingered as the cause of my DVI problems on my projector. Apparently it freaks out a PCB component causing the EDID data to become corrupt. (1 day and counting, so far so good on the Gigabyte card).

What more do I want to do

• I'd like MythMusic to use MythGallery as a visualisation!
• More cleanup of MythGallery thumbnail code. (Thumbnail cache is unnecessary if EXIF thumbnails are available in the images themselves)

Useful config info

xorg.conf for PE8700 and TV-Out

ExactModeTimingsDVI is important for the projector. This is the main detail, the driver autodetects the connected display and will use the Projector (DFP) in preference to TV-Out.

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "FX5200[0]"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen         0
    #Not sure of the effect of this
    Option         "NvAGP" "3"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen[0]"
    Device         "FX5200[0]"
    Monitor        "Either"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x720" "720x576" "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Either"
    Option       "DPMS"
    #Option      "UseEDIDFreqs" "true"
    Option       "ExactModeTimingsDVI" "true"
    Option       "RenderAccel" "true"
    #Option      "TVStandard" "PAL-B"
    Option       "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
    Option       "TVOverScan" "0.5"
EndSection

Because the projector still signals that it is "connected" during its 2 minute warm down phase I have a second ServerLayout that points to a Screen section that specifies

 Option "UseDisplayDevice" "TV"

in case I am in a hurry to switch back to the TV.

.asoundrc For ALSA digital audio out

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "spdif"
rate 48000
format S16_LE
}
}

/etc/inittab entry to auto login the mythtv user

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin mythtv tty1

.profile to start X from the auto login, also starts irexec.

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

start-frontend() {
irexec --daemon $HOME/.lircrc

#If $HOME/.xlayout exists use its contents to specify a layout to the XServer
LAYOUT_SPEC=""
XLAYOUT=$HOME/.xlayout
if [ -r $XLAYOUT ] ; then
   read LAYOUT < $XLAYOUT
   LAYOUT_SPEC="-layout $LAYOUT"
   rm $XLAYOUT
fi

startx -- $LAYOUT_SPEC -logverbose 5

}

tty | grep tty1 && start-frontend

.xsession To start MFE and Ratpoison

#Remove default blue background around TV-out picture
xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0
ratpoison &
mythfrontend -l mfe.log

.ratpoisonrc

#Make escape (default C-t) not clash with mythTV key bindings
escape C-r
#Banish the mouse cursor out of the way.
addhook switchwin banish

script to restart MythTV via irexec.

#!/bin/bash
pkill -t tty1 -u mythtv mythfrontend
if [ $# -gt 0 ] ; then
   echo $1 > $HOME/.xlayout
fi
sleep 1
pkill -u mythtv irexec
pkill -9 -t tty1 -u mythtv

the .lircrc file (buttons as per the DVICO remote, which I think are now standard in the lirc distribution)

## irexec
# Bounce this tty
begin
    button = power_onoff
    prog   = irexec
    config = /home/mythtv/bin/ir_power_onoff.sh &
end

#Run myth-setup
begin
    button = cpf
    prog   = irexec
    config = /home/mythtv/bin/ir_myth_setup.sh &
end

#Bounce the tty, set the TV layout.
begin
    button = tv_onoff
    prog   = irexec
    config = /home/mythtv/bin/ir_power_onoff.sh TV-Only &
end

0.19.x fixes info

• MythTV 0.19.x fixes branch (had to move /usr/lib/libdts_pic.a to /usr/lib/libdts.a to compile)
• Xine external DVD/video player
• XvMC ( with Bob de-interlacing for HD channels. Have to manually turn it off for SD stuff).