Revision as of 13:15, 12 December 2009

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

MythBuntu 8.10 with separated front-end/backend

• Live TV/TV recording Free to air HD/SD (from Sydney, Australia)
• Multi-rec
• DTS/AC3 passthrough including 5,1 surround digital out
• MythMusic
• MythGallery
• MythVideo

Backend

Hardware

• 2 x 500GB HDDs
• Intel S775 Core 2 Q6600 Quad-Core CPU
• Gigabyte S775 GA-G33M-S2 Motherboard
• 4GB RAM
• DNTVLive LP Tuner
• PCI Hauppauge Nova-T-500 MCE(OEM) Dual DVBT tuner

Software

• Ubuntu 8.10 64bit
• MythWeb on Jetty rather than apache including the WAP version on the BlackBerry!
• Shepherd XMLTV grabber
• NFS server for music/images

Configuration

• DVICO used device id 17de:a8a6 for two distinct devices requiring different drivers. Need to set "options cx88xx card=19" in /etc/modprobe.d to force use of Conexant reference drivers. Fortunately the Hauppauge tuner is a USB device so we can override the autodetection rather than patch the v4l dvb drivers to override it.

Frontend / Slave Backend

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
• DVICO FusionRemote MCE
• BenQ PE8700 DLP Projector
• Samsung LCD Television
• CambridgeAudio AV receiver

Software

• MythBuntu 8.10 64bit
• Synergy to allow laptop to be the keyboard/mouse.

Configuration

• cx88_dvb in /etc/modules (needs to start early to load properly, not sure why)

• autostart irexec to restart MythTV and switch xorg layout between the Projector and TV

Auto-start X Server

• disabled GDM in /etc/X11/default-display-manager
• Simple mingetty startup with a tty definition and a startx script in the console
• user .xsession linked to /usr/share/mythbuntu/session.sh so we get the same xfce startup.

/etc/event.d/tty7

# tty7 - mingetty for MythTv
#
# This service maintains a mingetty on tty7 from the point the system is
# started until it is shut down again.

start on runlevel 2

stop on runlevel 0
stop on runlevel 1
stop on runlevel 4
stop on runlevel 5
stop on runlevel 6

respawn
exec /sbin/mingetty --autologin=<user>  tty7

~/.profile

Appended to detect if we are on tty7, in which case we start-up X with an optional layout specified in ~/.mythrc

Note that when X is stopped we automatically logout and respawn

start-frontend() {
MYTHRC="$HOME/.mythrc"
if [ -r $MYTHRC ] ; then
   . $MYTHRC
fi

LAYOUT_SPEC=
[ ! -z "$LAYOUT" ] && LAYOUT_SPEC="-layout $LAYOUT"

startx --  $LAYOUT_SPEC -dpi 100 -logverbose 5
logout
}

tty | grep tty7 && start-frontend

xorg.conf

For PE8700 Samsung LCD. See also the tips for the NVidiaProprietaryDriver

The FX5200 cards were the cause of my DVI problems on my projector. Apparently they freaks out a PCB component causing the EDID data to become corrupt. (the Gigabyte card lasted from Aug 2006 to Dec 2007. Fortunately the new nvidia driver allow you to use a CustomEDID to load the data from a file.

Option ExactModeTimingsDVI is also important for the projector.

Option "UseEDIDDpi" "false" or some equivalent control of DPI is important for the Samsung television otherwise you get really small fonts (fixed in 0.21)

There are two layouts, the default uses outputs via VGA to a Samsung LCD television, the second uses DVI to the PE8700 projector.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Main" # PC VGA output to Samsung LCD television
    Screen         0 "LCD[0]" 0 0
    Option         "Xinerama" "off"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Projector"
    Screen         0 "Projector[0]" 0 0
    Option         "Xinerama" "off"
EndSection
 
Section "Module"
        Load    "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "FX5200[0]"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen         0
    Option         "NvAGP" "3"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "LCD[0]"
    Device         "FX5200[0]"
    Monitor        "AnyMonitor"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "UseEDIDDpi" "FALSE" #Computed DPI values not so good for TV display
    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "CRT" # VGA out
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1360x768" "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Projector[0]"
    Device         "FX5200[0]"
    Monitor        "AnyMonitor"
    Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP"
    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP" # DVI out
    Option         "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/benq-c.bin"

    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x720" "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "AnyMonitor"
    Option       "DPMS"
    Option       "ExactModeTimingsDVI" "true"
    Option       "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

LIRC Remote Control

Standard mythbuntu setup with a few tweaks.

A mythbuntu xsession starts irexec before the window manager which is no good as we want to be able to logout of Xfce on a button press. We disable that with a non-empty ~/.noirexec file. We then use a desktop entry to start it.

/etc/lircd/hardware.conf

Default chooser from mythbuntu did not find the usb device at /dev/usb/hiddev0, so need to edit this file explicitly.

#Chosen Remote Control
REMOTE="DVICO_MCE"
REMOTE_MODULES=""
REMOTE_DRIVER="dvico"
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/usb/hiddev0"
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="/usr/share/lirc/dvico/lircd.conf.fusionHDTV"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

~/.config/autostart/irexec.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=IrExec daemone
Comment=A daemon for lirc
GenericName=irexec daemon
Exec=irexec -d
Type=Application

~/.lirc/irexec

File is included into ~/.lircrc

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

#Bounce the tty, use the Projector layout.
begin
    button = tv_onoff
    prog   = irexec
    config = /home/ggardner/bin/ir_mythtv.sh --layout Projector &
end

~/bin/ir_mythtv.sh

Optionally specify a layout, kills mythfrontend and logs out of the window manager, triggering a restart.

#!/bin/bash

function log() {
   logger -t "mythtv" "$@"
}

parseopts() {
    LAYOUT=
    while [ ! -z "$1" ]
    do
        case "$1" in
            -l|--layout)
                LAYOUT="$2"
                log "Setting layout to $LAYOUT"
                shift;;
            *) break ;;
        esac
        shift
    done
}


GETOPT=$(getopt -l "layout:" -o "l:" -- "$@")

if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
    exit 1
fi

eval parseopts $GETOPT

log "Restarting mythtv"

cat - << EOF > $HOME/.mythrc
LAYOUT=$LAYOUT
EOF

#Logout of our current session
pkill mythfrontend
xfce4-session-logout

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_mythtv.sh &
end

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

#Bounce the tty, use the Projector layout.
begin
    button = tv_onoff
    prog   = irexec
    config = /home/mythtv/bin/ir_mythtv.sh --layout Projector &
end

Sound

I use a set of ruby scripts so I can use lirc to switch between analog (TV speakers) and digital audio (AV receiver).

The remote's volup/down buttons are used to control the volume. In analog mode calls the amixer program, in digital/passthrough mode uses the serial port to change the volume directly on the receiver.

~/.asoundrc

ALC650 onboard sound.

Could probably do better 48/44kHz switching on the analog output between music and video but if that is important we just go digital passthrough and let the receiver do the work.

In myth config, you can see that default sound device is ALSA:myth-video, the passthrough device is ALSA:myth-passthru, and mythmusic uses ALSA:myth-music

#First line comment
pcm.myth-music {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "hw:0,0,3"
}

ctl.myth-music {
  type hw
  card 0
}

pcm.myth-video {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "hw:0,0,3"
}

ctl.myth-video {
  type hw
  card 0
}

pcm.myth-passthru {
  type copy
  slave.pcm = "spdif"
}

ctl.myth-passthru {
  type hw
  card 0
}

New ION front-end

Minimyth based

• ZOTAC ionitx-d-e board, 2G memory
• tiny, tiny case
• external DVD player

minimyth.conf

TODO - when I get it working

Mythbuntu 9.10 upgrade

Mythbuntu 8.10 upgrades

Not yet tested/configured

• HD playback
• DVD rip/playback

0.21-fixes

upgrade smooth

0.20-fixes

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).