First, thanks for putting KnoppMyth together! I'm new to Linux and screwed around for a while trying to get MythTV working under RH9. Just one night with KnoppMyth and things are (mostly) working.

For the most part, everything loaded fine... I had to search this board for a couple of tweaks to get things running correctly but nothing major. I'm running a Compaq P4 2.4 using the onboard video and sound (for now) and a PVR-350. The machine has a CDR and DVD-ROM drive on it as well. I'm just playing video to the screen... not an external TV.

The final problem I have is that I can't play anything. I can watch live TV and record shows okay but when I try to play them back I just get a black screen. After about a second, there will be a blue flash then just the black screen.

I have a similar problem trying to play a DVD. I've tried a few DVD movies and, when I click on the Play DVD icon, it just pauses for a minute and does nothing. I did notice that the light on the CDR drive flashes but there is no activity with the DVD drive.

I've searched this board as well as some others... any insight anyone could give me would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-20.html#ss20.28

The dvd is symlinked to the cdr instead of the dvd. ln -sf /dev/hdd /dev/dvd , assuming the dvd is the secodary slave.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

so it won't play when you go to tv/watch recordings/ and pick a recorded show? and it won't play from dvd. have you tested puting a video file in /myth/video to see if you can play from the video section. Not playing dvd's is quite likely a decss issue. but the tv playback would not be that issue and even uses a different player than dvd or video, as a matter of fact it uses the exact same player as watching live tv does. which makes it very odd for live tv to work but playback not.

Thanks for the replies! I'll focus on the recorded shows issue for now so as not to confuse things (for myself).

I've recorded a few shows. When I go into TV/Watch Recording and select a show I get a black screen, then a quick blue flash then nothing but black.

I copied the files over to the videos directory and selected each from "Browse Videos". I get a quick "Loading" message then the black screen.

When viewing the file as a video there is a fair amount of disk activity which led me to believe it was reading what was recorded (nothing). However, when trying to view a recording under TV/Watch Recording there is virtually no disk activity.

Thanks,
Scott

This may be irrelevant but I also found that, after running for 18 hours I was unable to view live TV under I rebooted the machine.

when you go to the watch recordings screen does it show the preview before you try to watch the show?

No.

I didn't even realize it was supposed to. Now that you mention it, all I get is a green flicker to the right of the description.

yet you say the live tv functionallity works?

well I started to say I'm out of ideas, but I just got one more. livetv and recording can use different recording profiles. try checking to make sure all your recording profiles are the same.

Yep, I'm watching live TV as I type. Live TV will work for several hours but, when I come back to it in the morning, it won't work until I boot the machine.

"try checking to make sure all your recording profiles are the same."

What am I looking for? Is this under "setup" in MythTV or the main setup (mythtv-setup in XTerm)?

Thanks,
Scott

It's under the setup in mythtv. I'm going to try to do this from memory.
setup/tv/recording profiles

I may be off a little.

Okay, I found it. Is there anything in particular I should be looking for? When I go into recording profiles, I have:

MPEG-2 Encoders (PVR-250, PVR-350)
Transcoders

Going into MPEG, there are listings for Default, Live TV, High Quality and Low Quality.

The settings in each of these appear to be the same.

The Transcoder category contains RTjpeg/MPEG4 and MPEG2. The settings in each of these are the same.

Thanks,
Scott

well I'm out of idea's it's just very odd that livetv works but recordings don't because livetv is not really live tv it records it to disk and plays it back with a couple second delay, so it's the exact same as if you were watching a recording. You may have to go the mythtv mailing lists on this one.

Naturally, I'd have the one installation that would stump the experts!

Nevertheless, thank you very much for all of your input. I think I'll try doing a fresh installation to see if I configured something incorrectly. If that doesn't work, I'll try the MythTV list.

Thanks,
Scott