Difference between revisions of "User:Bill"

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Revision as of 09:13, 15 April 2007

Bill lives in Melbourne Australia and works as a Software Engineer for a bio-medical company. At home he likes to tinker with Linux, electronics, and spends way too much time doing Medieval Stuff with the SCA.

MythTV for my brother

I was not happy with the noise from the original system and so I bid on a couple of ex-Commonwealth Games Dell machines, with warrentee, and at a reasonable price. They are BTX form factor and the BIOS does a great job at controlling the Fan speed to keep the box quiet. Having two of them means that I can support my brothers STB and push any tweaks or fixes back remotely.

Hardware

The Dell has a built in graphics adapter, but came with an ATI Radeon with svideo TV Out as well. 

(--) Chipset ATI Radeon X300 (RV370) 5B60 (PCIE) found

Software

Specific Details from /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
       Identifier      "ATI Technologies, Inc. RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
       Driver          "ati"
       BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
       Option          "UseFBDev"              "true"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
       Identifier      "Samsung LCD"
       Option          "DPMS"
       HorizSync       30-61
       VertRefresh     60-75
       # Samsung LCD TV LA32R51B  1360x768  Hsync=47.712kHz Vsync=60.015Hz Pixel_Clock=85.800MHz
       Modeline        "1360x768" 85.500 1360 1424 1536 1792 768 771 777 795 +Hsync +Vsync
EndSection
Section "Screen"
       Identifier      "Default Screen"
       Device          "ATI Technologies, Inc. RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
       Monitor         "Samsung LCD"
       DefaultDepth    24
       SubSection "Display"
               Depth           24
               Modes           "1360x768"
       EndSubSection
EndSection

Samsung LCD TV LA32R51B

Manufacturer: SAM  Model: 180  Serial#: 0
Year: 2005  Week: 40
Sync:  Separate
Max H-Image Size [cm]: horiz.: 89  vert.: 50

Supported additional Video Mode:
clock: 85.5 MHz   Image Size:  885 x 498 mm
h_active: 1360  h_sync: 1424  h_sync_end 1536 h_blank_end 1792 h_border: 0
v_active: 768  v_sync: 771  v_sync_end 777 v_blanking: 795 v_border: 0

Supported additional Video Mode:
clock: 65.0 MHz   Image Size:  885 x 498 mm
h_active: 1024  h_sync: 1048  h_sync_end 1184 h_blank_end 1344 h_border: 0
v_active: 768  v_sync: 771  v_sync_end 777 v_blanking: 806 v_border: 0

Ranges: V min: 60  V max: 75 Hz, H min: 30  H max: 61 kHz, PixClock max 90 MHz
Monitor name: SAMSUNG
PLL parameters: rf=2700 rd=12 min=20000 max=40000; xclk=19600

Samsung LCD: Using hsync range of 30.00-61.00 kHz
Samsung LCD: Using vrefresh range of 60.00-75.00 Hz
Clock range:  20.00 to 400.00 MHz

Need to look at ModeLinesHowTo to create a new Modeline for 50Hz.

Extra Cooling Fan

The Dell Optiplex had an airflow problem with the two Twinhan cards taking up the PCI slots. I have added a fan inside the case that blows air through and over the PCI cards. Using some temperature probes from work I measured the ambient case temperature at the middle of the case, and the temperature between the Twinhan PCI cards, after 1 hour of operation.

Ambient Temp PCI Card Temp
Without Fan 35 58
With extra internal Fan 32 43

Old MythTV system

MythTV Setup with LCD TV

Hardware

  • Total Cost is around AU$1000
  • Partitioned with LVM so that extra disks are easy to add
  • Running Debian Sarge (would use Ubuntu next time)

Specific Details from /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

  • Using the binary driver from NVIDIA in an attempt to utilise XvMC acceleration
Section "Device"
       Identifier      "NVIDIA Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
       Driver          "nvidia"
       Option          "NoLogo" "True"
       Option          "RenderAccel" "True"
       Option          "XvmcUsesTextures" "false"
EndSection
  • Use the Monitor refresh rates as specified in the Samsung LCD TV User Manual
Section "Monitor"
       Identifier      "Generic Monitor"
       HorizSync       31-60
       VertRefresh     50-75
EndSection
  • The Samsung LCD TV User Manual specifies the VGA resolution as 1280x?? so we use a customised Modes line.
Section "Screen"
       Identifier      "Default Screen"
       Device          "NVIDIA Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
       Monitor         "Generic Monitor"
       DefaultDepth    24
      SubSection "Display"
               Depth           24
               Modes           "1280" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
       EndSubSection
EndSection
  • This section makes sure that XWindows can start up even if there is no mouse or keyboard connected, which is really important for a true Set Top Box.
Section "ServerFlags"
       Option "AllowKeyboardOpenFail" "true"
       Option "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

XWindows startup script for Frontend from /home/mythtv/.xinitrc file

  • Fix the Blue Line that is shown on the screen using xvattr command
  • Turn off the auto screen blanking using xset
  • Start the FVWM window manager, myth transcode daemon, and the frontend
xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 66048
/usr/bin/X11/xset s noblank
/usr/bin/X11/xset s off
/usr/bin/X11/xset dpms off
/usr/bin/fvwm&
/usr/bin/mtd -d &
/usr/bin/mythfrontend --logfile /var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend.log

MythTV for myself

Specific Configuration Required

  • The Bttv module configuration had to be specified because of the stupid Generic Analog capture card doesn't have a PCI EEPROM which means it can't be auto recognised and configured. Luckily you can specify multiple [Bttv]] card types as module options, like so:

/etc/modprobe.d/bttv 

 options bttv radio=0,0,1 pll=0,0,1 card=113,113,0x25 tuner=4,4,5

The order of the card paramters is probably the PCI device order, and I have 2 TwinHan cards (Card ID 113 or 0x71) followed by the Generic card (Card ID 37 or 0x25), hense the comma seperated list of card parameters. I discovered the required order by inspecting dmesg with all the cards in the system.

Australian TV Guide

There is a list of Australian EPG TV Guides XMLTV#Australia and I think the [tvguide.org.au] source. 

 sudo -i
 wget http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~willu/xmltv/tv_grab_au_reg
 chmod +x tv_grab_au_reg
 mv tv_grab_au_reg /usr/bin/.
 mv /usr/bin/tv_grab_au /usr/bin/tv_grab_au.orig
 ln -s /usr/bin/tv_grab_au_reg /usr/bin/tv_grab_au

Running mythtv-setup and selecting the Australian source. This will run the grabber in configuration mode which creates a config file in /home/mythtv/.mythtv/tvguide.org.au

MythTV XBox Frontend

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