Hey all ...

First ... thanks a bunch for all the information. I haven't been able to post in the forum (some problem with the registration email) so I could only read and search. Somehow, someway I managed to get a MythTV setup working with a PVR 350, and older celeron based emachine (ati onboard with the gatos drivers works good). This seems to have taken about 40 hours <SIGH>

I still have a few loose ends. One of the toughest is the video out when watching live tv. It works ... but it is choppy. Playing back recordings works great . I assume this is because the playbacks actually go thru the PVR (not thru any software drivers). Is there any way to fix the choppiness in X for the 350 TV out (live tv)? I had the same slowness with the onboard VGA until I installed the GATOS drivers (which support xv).

The other problem I'm having with the TV out is that the screen seems too wide (can't see entire display). Now, I think there may be some posts out there about how to adjust this?

Well, I look forward to hearing from you guys. Getting really late here... MythTV = many late nights. Time to go to bed.

For the screen being too wide, did you try pressing "w" ? maybe you are in widescreen(zoom) or 4:3(zoom) mode.

Rob

well I'm guessing you have the tvout going through the pvr card? If so then have you checked the use pvr350 box in the setup tv playback setings? tvout does the same thing during both playback of a recording and livetv. the only difference is during livetv it puts it on the disk then plays it back just like it does from a recording just really fast. The other thing to check would be make sure the disk is using dma and 32bit disk access.

I think I checked all that. I am confused about this livetv and recording being the same. For example, when set my X config back to onboard vga ... livetv works and audio come directly out of my soundcard (nothing out the pvr) ... but if I playback a recording .. the screen turns black and the recording comes out the pvr (with sound). I am almost sure I have the 350 output setting checked (if I didn't, how would the recording come out of the pvr?).

To make a long story short ... I don't see how livetv and recordings are the same. It seems that myth allows the pvr 350 to decode and directly display the picture/sound of a recording ... but livetv is merely viewing the x output on your television from the tv out on the pvr? ... and evidently from all the questions ... the tv out for x is pretty flaky

Anyway, I will check the setting again. I just checked DMA on the HDD.. and it's enabled. I'm almost sure I checked 32 bit.. and it was also enabled. If you have any other ideas .. I'd surely appreciate it. Thanks. You guys are great.

well I couldn't really follow everything you said there, but I can assure you playing back a recording (like from tv not ripped dvd or and imported divx) and playing livetv are exactly the same other than which dir they are playing from, and the fact that when watching livetv the file is being written to at the same time it is being read.

"livetv" is not really live tv it is about 2 seconds behind, because it records it and then immediately starts playing it back from the recording, which is why it takes more processing power, and why you see more pronounced problems if dma and 32bit IO are not turned on. I would suggest that you are out of processing power but if your pvr350 is configured correctly the encoding to disk and decoding back from the disk are both done in hardware on the pvr card and shouldn't require much processing power.

Hmm ok.. well not sure if I said earlier ... but this is a celeron 466 emachine. The HDD is a run of the mill 40 or 60 GB Maxtor (I think). HDParm reports dma is on .. but IO_support = 0. I did have an Ultra100 card on this emachine earlier ... I don't remember why I had it .. but I had to remove it to make room for the PVR. I wonder if the IO_support at 0 means 16 which means the mainboard ide isn't supporting 32bit. I could put the HD card back in.. but I'd have to remove the NIC card. Does linux support the Linksys USB/Ether adapters? I've got one of those here. Thanks again and in advance for your help!

0 does mean 16 bit but it doesn't necessarily mean that the mb doesn't support 32 you should run hdparm with -c 1 to turn it on. That should turn on 32bit IO and if for some reason it totally borks things then a reboot will put it back. If you want it to stay through reboots you use the -k 1 switch and unfortunately that seldom works.