I just completed an install of R4V2 and I am impressed with the features available however I cannot watch live tv at the default resolution of 1024x768. It drops many frames. This same system runs perfectly with 7-15% utilization when running any of the windows pvr packages. My system is as follows:

Via KT4AV motherboard with Athlon XP 2200+ clocked at 2.03Ghz.
512 ddr266 ram
Hauppauge PVR-250 II capture board with silver remote
ATI Radeon 9200 AGP 8x with s-video out to tv
160GB ata133 drive (8 MB buffer)

Being a linux newbie who has only worked with firewalls up til now I am cluess on what to do to fix this (lower resolution is not an option). I welcome your suggestions as I dont want to just say "well, that didnt work" and give up.

What am I doing wrong? What do I need to change?

TIA
Bill

well off the top of my head I would make sure that dma is turned on for the harddrive, but it may well be that you are not doing anything wrong. Motion compensation works for ati cards in windows, but unfortunately there is no working xvmc support for the ati cards in linux.

As I don't have an ATI, I'm not certain but does ATI have drivers for that card? It may yield better results than the default drivers. Also check XF86Config-4. If the driver is "vesa" change it to "radeon". Perhaps some with a Radeon will chime in an offer some suggestions.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I was just looking at the docs for the ATI driver and I see that they are only provided in .rpm format. My understanding is that Debian does not support .rpm's. They mention a tool called "alien" for converting the package.

Does the KnoppMyth install support rpm or do I need to figure out how to convert the thing?

Thanks for the quick replys.

apt-get install alien
man alien
I've never used it..
You can also try:http://kano.mipooh.net/install-radeon-agpgart-debian.sh

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

I just thought of one other thing. If you did install with xvmc support you need to take the xvmc support out and install the regular without xvmc, as xvmc will cause problems with ati cards.

I had already discovered the issue with xvmc and just installed the version with support for my remote. Thanks. Will try out everyone's suggestions when I get home tonite.

I'm certainly impressed you managed to get Svideo out to work on a ATI radeon 9200!

I've had numerous issues with the ATI cards under X. I would try something un-TV related, perhaps glxgears and see if you can get any sort of decent frame rate --- or even play an mpeg movie.

If neither movie playback or glxgears can manage anything over 30 fps, then the problem is related to your drivers *which ATI has many performance problems X related*

I think you misunderstood me. The S-vid out is under windows. I have not been able to get things working under linux yet. I am going to give it a try here in a couple of hours and see what happens. I am still trying to puzzle thru the installation instructions for the drivers from the ATI site. Not sure just how to integrate them into xfree86 at this point. Will post my results here later.

I don't think you will be able to get 1024x768 on any adapter through svid. From my understanding 800x600 is the max for svid.

The max resolution of the s-video port is 1024x768 and I am able to use that resolution with the ati card and windows. It makes for a great display on my widescreen hdtv monitor, almost as good as the RGBHV component inputs. The component inputs allow me to use full 1920x1080i which is about 50% clearer still. (Clear enough that it can replace my desktop monitor as its higher resolution than 1024x768)

Unfortunately I have not been able to get the ati card to play under linux so I have canned linux in favor of myHTPC running on win XP. Perhaps when linux is a bit more mature and actually supports ati card's hardware I will try again.

BTW - I was not able to install the ati linux drivers under Debian. Perhaps if I were to install RedHat and do a manual install of everything I could have gotten it to work but that is far far too much work for me. The wife is already ready to divorse me over this business

I would advise you to look into getting a cheap nvidia card with TV out capabilites. Your options for TV out on the ATI 9XXX series are very limited, you basically have the atitvout tools, which will work, but it's basically FrameBuffer and a SUPER SUPER Low frame rate (about 15 - 20 fps). You can also try using generic Vesa drivers, which will also provide about 15 - 20 fps.

All in all that ATI card is going to cause some serious headackes, and most likely will not work as you'd expect.

mike

I tried the same thing with ATI TV OUT and Linux. It just doesn't work.

Everything I have read shows that ATI TV OUT and Linux are spotty at best. However, NVIDIA and Linux make a great combination and work well.

On the plus side the All-In-Wonder on Windows will give you the best capture quality available.

well you probably made the right decision if you want something easy to setup and you have the hdtv I would go with the windows and the ati with the component output. I would imagine that this will not be supported in linux for a LONG time as ati won't give the devs the specs.

We, the Myth community, should start a 'Special Interest Lobby' through the web to petition stingy companies to release Linux drivers. Through projects like MythTV, and the emergence of Open Office, etc., the Linux desktop community is growing quickly! Hardware vendors need to make a profit, and Linux desktop users want better HW support. Think of how many sales ATI has lost to nVidia of the past 12 months B/C of MythTV!

In hardware slales, a few percentage points is HUGE. And Linux users are probably at least a few percentage points of overall HW sales by now, or will be shortly

Does this make sense to anyone?

_________________
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann