Difference between revisions of "User:Lwoggardner"

Revision as of 06:11, 29 March 2008

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

& 500GB 7200rpm SATA driver

• 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 0.21-fixes branch

What's working for me

• Live TV/TV recording Free to air HD/SD (from Sydney, Australia). Both tuner's simultaneously AND multi-rec
• Video profile Standard + Bob2 deinterlace (anything else uses excessive CPU, XvMC will not upscale smoothly to the TV resolution)
• AC3 passthrough including 5,1 surround
• Shepherd XMLTV grabber
• MythMusic
• MythGallery
• MythDVD using xine as an external player
• MythWeb on Jetty rather than apache including the WAP version on the BlackBerry!
• Using irexec to restart Myth, including with a different Layout to switch between the Projector and TV

What's not

• 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.

(the Gigabyte card lasted from Aug 2006 to Dec 2007. Fortunately the new nvidia driver allow you to override the EDID from the device with a file...).

Useful config info

xorg.conf for PE8700, Samsung LCD. See also the tips for the NVidiaProprietaryDriver

Option ExactModeTimingsDVI is 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
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
    Option         "Xinerama" "off"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Projector"
    Screen         0 "Projector[0]" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
    Option         "Xinerama" "off"
EndSection
 
# .... skipped Files, Modules, InputDevice ....

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         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP" # DVI out
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x720" "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

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

.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() {
rm $HOME/.serverauth.*
irexec --daemon $HOME/.lircrc >> $HOME/irexec.log

MYTHRC="$HOME/.mythrc"
if [ -r $MYTHRC ] ; then
   . $MYTHRC
fi

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

startx --  $LAYOUT_SPEC -logverbose 5
}

tty | grep tty1 && start-frontend

.xsession To start Ratpoison, mythtv-setup and mythfrontend

#Remove blue background... from TV-Out picture
xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0
ratpoison &
echo $DISPLAY

if [ -r $HOME/.mythrc ] ; then
    . $HOME/.mythrc
    rm $HOME/.mythrc
fi

if [ ! -z "$MYTH_SETUP" ] ; then
   mythtv-setup
fi
mythfrontend  -l mfe.log  $MYTH_ARGS

.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

ir_mythtv.sh script to restart MythTV via irexec.

#!/bin/bash

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

parseopts() {
    MYTH_SETUP=
    LAYOUT=
    MYTH_ARGS=

    while [ ! -z "$1" ]
    do
        case "$1" in
            -l|--layout)
                LAYOUT="$2"
                shift;;
            -s|--setup)
                MYTH_SETUP="y"
                ;;
            -m|--mythargs)
                MYTH_ARGS="$2"
                shift
                ;;

            *) break ;;
        esac
        shift
    done
}


GETOPT=$(getopt -l "setup,layout:,mythargs:" -o "sl:m:" -- "$@")

if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
    exit 1
fi

eval parseopts $GETOPT

OLDEST=$(pgrep -o -u $USER $(basename $0))
if [ $OLDEST -ne $$ ] ; then
   log "Process $OLDEST is still running, so I ($$) will abort"
   exit 1
fi

log "Restarting on tty1 $USER $(basename $0)"

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

pkill -u mythtv irexec

pkill -t tty1 -u mythtv mythfrontend
sleep 2
pkill -t tty7
#Kill the login shell.
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_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

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).