VIA SP13000

Installing Myth on SP13000

The SP13000 is a relatively low-power motherboard that can be run fanless when using a case such as a Tranquil T2e heatsink case.

To playback a/v media the system offloads Mpeg2 decoding to the graphics processor using the XvMC architecture in Linux. XvMC was broken in a few generations of linux and is fixed in 2.6.30 kernel and later.

This is a rough installation instructions proven to work to get a MythFrontend running on an SP13000 (and possibly other Via CN400 based boards)

Hope this is of help - I will tidy this post up at some point.

I installed Karmic Xubuntu Alpha6 on a 4gb usb stick from the live CD (i used a standard Xubuntu Karmic installation and partition layout). Once installed I removed apps that were irrelevant for this systems purpose or administration; openoffice, gimp etc.

install nano text editor - so much easier to learn than vim sudo apt-get install nano install and enable SSH and VNC servers for administration if desired

configure xrandr to run on startup to resize to 1440x900 sudo nano etc/gdm/Init/Default

add at the top of the file: xrandr --output default --mode 1440x900

1440x900 was selected as this res was available in the display options of XFCE and has the x to y resolution ratio of 1.6; the same as the monitor connected to the system and the max output of the graphics cards is 1600x1200. There is no point setting it too high for 2 further reasons: 1) Standard Def tv is only 576 pixels high. 2) XvMC only supports upto a certain resolution (I understand)

turn off unwanted services - laptop-mode, ondemand, cups, saned,bluetooth... to remove conservative cpu scaling, printing scanning and other unwanted services - use: sudo rcconf

XFCE OSD for volume causes stuttering; turn off OSD - one of these may work

 Go to Settings --> Session and startup Application Autostart tab and uncheck xfce4-tips

OR

 remove notify-osd

I had to update the /etc/X11/XvMCConfig file to libXvMCVIAPro.so.1 (for the SP13000 MB). add the myth user into the mythtv group. restartX/reboot

install mythtv-frontend from files using dpkg -i <package>

install neon-wide and projectgreyhem-OSD themes install mythVideo and MythMusic

setup network drive mount fstab network drives onto lib/var/mythtv

$ /etc/fstab //192.168.0.2/store /var/lib/mythtv cifs rw,username=<username>,password=<password> 0 0

OSD Stutters Playback The fading of the OSD caused playback to pause temporarily. To get aroung this, I disabled fading by editing the theme and setting the fade duration to 0. I'm using the ProjectGreyhem-OSD theme, so I edited /usr/share/mythtv/themes/project-greyhem-OSD/osd.xml and changed the following line: <fadeaway>30</fadeaway> to <fadeaway>0</fadeaway>

Tinny Sound I got tinny sound when watching recording in MythTV. This was fixed by setting an option in the sound driver: sudo -s -H echo "options snd_via82xx dxs_support=2" >> /etc/modprobe.d/sound

edit /etc/default/grub - see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2595626

sudo nano /etc/default/grub change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=force"

this forces software control of the power supply among other things.

add the myth user into the mythtv group. restartX/reboot

The system runs Myth at 1440x900 with BBC2 (high bitrate SD DVB-T uk transmission) playing with Myth using 25-35% cpu.

See Also

Manufacturers Page: Via EN Series Mini-ITX Mainboards