Revision as of 19:33, 28 March 2007

This will be a hub to gather all info around using MythTV on the Playstation 3.

Current status

MythTV is running under YellowDogLinux with packages from atrpm. The problem: As others reported before: playback is choppy because XVideo is not available and MythTV falls back to XSHM for playback.

I have installed Gentoo on my PS3 to start experimenting with DirectFB. DirectFB 1.0.0 compiled cleanly. I rebuilt SDL with directfb-support, and compiled mplayer with directfb support.
Unfortunatly, mplayer does not work with directfb or sdl, it always crashes at some point. I still need to figure out why. Though the test-program DFBPoint does work nicely. When run with --dfb:mode=1280x720 it entered fullscreen nicely, but some of the slide-animations where a little bit sloppy. I wonder if Mythtv would run smooth via directfb if there is no hardware acceleration.

Information found on the web

For now I found the following interesting bits of information regarding MythTV on the ps3:

Framebuffer related

• First of all the wiki has dedicated page for using MythTV on the Framebuffer
  Unfortunatly this is a little bit outdated (mentions MythTV 0.19) so we have to look in what way this is still up to date
• Here is a Gentoo HOWTO for installing MyhtTV with framebuffer: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV_in_Framebuffer
  This is also outdated but is a good base to start
• Here is a thread from small_frenchy who tries to get running MythTV on the framebuffer under Gentoo: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3919197.html
  Although this is not directly playstation 3 related it provides some current facts about MythTV on the framebuffer.
• Here is a thread from the dev-mailiniglist concerning Qt/Embedded 3.3.8 with directFB 1.0.0rc4 and MythTV: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/256098?page=last
  It has some useful information on getting the stuff compiled

General bits of information

• Here is a thread of someone reporting about having YellowDog Linux on the PS3: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/258573
  Not very informative, but who knows what will be replied to that thread in the future...
• Here is a task in the Myth-Trac which relates to a new branch (mythtv-vid) in MythTV which aims to work on the video-output of mythtv: http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2287
  The howto in this wiki mentions that this branch should be used when using MythTV in a framebuffer

Whats next?

Since I have Gentoo up and running now on my playstation, the next step will be to compile Qt/Embedded and test if that works. After that, i plan to compile the mythtv-vid branch with directFB support.

I will report back when there is progress...