Well, now I'm just trying my luck.

I've edited /etc/mysql/my.cnf and commented out "skip-networking" so that mysql is listening, and I've nmap'ed the KnoppMyth box and see mysql and two MythTV ports listening. Good stuff.

I went down to my mac mini, and launched the MythFrontend application. After several false starts (took me a while to realize that mysql wasn't listening) MythFrontend happily comes up. All guide data is there (awesome!), but all recordings claim that the file is missing, and when I go to watch Live TV, I get one of two outcomes:

1. All tuners are in use for recording, please stop recording...blah blah blah (not so, apparently there was a bug about live tv not releasing a tuner? ), so...

2. killall -HUP mythbackend, go back and try watch Live TV again, and this time I get a blank, black screen, until I get tired of waiting and kill the application.

Now, I'll acknowledge that there's the possibility that the MacOS X client may not be very polished, and that what I'm seeing is simply a side-effect of that fact, but presuming that's not the case, could anyone postulate what might be causing this behavior? I can still schedule recordings and such, I just can't seem to view any video.

Oh, a few more useful(less?) tidbits of info. This is where I got the MacOS X MythFrontend from:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Myth_on_Mac_OS_X

specifically

http://www.willamette.edu/~gkruse/myth/

Also, I found out the hard way that a Linksys as my default wireless AP (WRT54GS v2.4) and an Airport Express as a WDS client with the MythTV box plugged into the Airport Express is not such a good setup. Apparently remote Myth packets the daylights out of the AE until the AE gives up and locks up. Hard. I have to reboot it afterwards. I've since been testing through a hardline 100base ethernet connection. After I know it's working I might try it through the AE again just for grins. I'm definitely wanting to try this over mesh-node wireless.

The binaries in http://www.willamette.edu/~gkruse/myth are a bit old. I'm uploading a newer version now (9438 which is a recent 0-19-fixes):

http://web.netcall.com.au/NigelPearson_ ... 38.tar.bz2

It should be there in about an hour. Also, a few diagnostic questions:

1) What Mac are you running this on? A G4 400 or better? If not, it may be an exercise in futility

2) When it says the file is missing for the recording, what does the console say? (please post the exact lines). Could you also try it at a higher level of verbosity? In a terminal:

MythFrontend.app/Contents/MacOS/mythfrontend -v all

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Let me start by saying it can be made to work. I bought a mini the day it came out specifically to be my frontend. It has worked (for the most part) since day 1.

First question. Does your backend work properly? I mean recording, playback, live TV, etc? If not you need to resolve this.

Second question, which I think you answered but just check to make sure. Is your mySQL setup for remote access? You need to uncomment a single line in the config file and then restart it.

Third question. Does your OS X frontend match the version of your backend. In other words if the backend is MythTV 0.17 your frontend needs to be the same version. Figure out what backend version you are running and get the proper OS X front end (google: OS X MythTV and then search around the links provided)

I have found that for V0.16, 0.17, 0.18 it all worked right out of the box. I plan on upgrading to 0.19 this weekend.

That's the good news. The bad news is:
1) Wireless is very finiky and seems to require a VERY solid signal (if you don't get all the bars don't even bother)

2) 16x9 is a problem. My mini is connected to a 32" LCD 16x9 monitor. However I needed to setup everything to display 4:3 Otherwise it would skip frames or pixelate. My mini is a G4 1.4GHz and its on a 100MBit ethernet wire, but for some reason the mini can't seem to display either a resized 16x9 or initially recorded 16x9 without skipping frames, or slight freezes. Other people have reported the same.

Okay guys, this is going to by yucky, and I know it.

I have a Core Duo mini (ducks).

That said, Rosetta is pumping away and running the app, although at a time in the near future I should compile an i386 native version (unless you can build a universal one there?).

Backends are working perfectly for the local box. MySQL is indeed allowing remote connections.

Both are running 0.9 (latest version) although apparently there are unspoken sub-versions in the form of bugfixes, am I right?

I'm using KnoppMyth R5B7 on the backend, and I will now try the version posted in this thread. I'm back on the airport express again, so I may wind up clobbering my WDS again in the process. Here's hoping.

Verdict - LiveTV, nothing. Black screen. It doesn't hang, but it doesn't do anything either.

Watch Recordings - I get audio. Choppy (probably due to it coming via WDS) but the audio is there. No video though.

Oh.

Sossy Numbski, it didn't click that you are on an Intel Mac. Try emailing one of the people on this thread:

http://www.threebit.net/mail-archive/my ... 02084.html

to see if they will put a binary up somewhere for you to grab?

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Now THAT worked. Very nice. I can't get it to compile myself, but "someone" posted a binary with all plugins disabled. Don't know if they enabled MMX or not either. I'm still working through the compile process myself.

It seems that if you allow it to use Mac stylings, MythTV's appearance is actually worse. It's counter-intuitive, but the Mac buttons on the Myth interface are just waaaaay out of place.

Perhaps there's a theme out there to keep the whole thing very mac-looking? Otherwise when I build I need to make sure not to use the QT-Mac stylings.

But everything works as expected. I can schedule recordings, watch videos, everything. I could get used to this.

Since we're all mac users in here, I have a question though. Is there anyone out there's that has done a script or small .app that calls ./mythtv (don't know if you've ever run that before, but it just calls up the current tuner) and runs it in a window as opposed to full screen? I have a 23" studio display here, and although 99.999% of the time if I'm going to watch TV on this thing, I'd use the full mythfrontend .app, I can see it being useful to just have a smaller window doing it. I won't say "actual resolution", as because on a display this large, it'd be tiny! Perhaps a 640x480 window.

Oh, btw....I don't have an HD capture card or device, so I've not tried HD across the WDS. Standard def seems to work beautifully. I'd get the slightest of skips once over 5-10 mins, and that's it. I could probably work that out if I'd put a spectrum analyzer to the task. Too bad ThinkGeek is sold out of WiSpy's. :\

1) Setup->Appearance lets you use a window, and set the GUI (window) width to 640x480

2) You could type this in a Terminal window: You could put something like that in a .command file.

3) There are also special options in the Mac frontend for displaying in a floating window (about the eleventh screen under Setup -> TV settings -> Playback)

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

Yup, I got that working too, thanks. Pretty nice setup. I need to play with the settings a bit more. Seems like I should have it buffering on the client side just a touch and that would kill off any skipping issues.

Even played around with MythStreamTV from the web interface so my wife could watch the NCAA College Hockey tournament at work. Frustrating though...the stream would die after 5-10 mins and I'd have to kill it off and restart it for her. Weirdness.

Besides the point. I think I can call this thread "resolved". Once I get the build environment to work correctly here I'll post an MMX-enabled binary with all of the plugins enabled.

Random thought with messing with this...with ALSA you can export sound to another remote system, right?

I'm wondering how badly taking that command line and setting up remote X11 forwarding to another system where myth isn't installed, and run it that? Maybe set up cygwin on a windows machine, X11, ssh back to the KnoppMyth system and execute MythTV? Probably badly.

Unfortnately I can't find any buffer settings in the MythFrontend for OSX/x86. :\ Kinda sucks. I just get a little bit of breakup here and there. Buffering would clear that right up.