Note: This question pertains to a PC that I am building to be a combined backend/frontend myth box, and must be able to decode and playback live TV simultaneously

I just installed a PVR-150 in my myth box last week, and got it working "o.k." with an older video card that I had in the machine previously. The video during live TV playback was a little herky jerky, though, so I swapped out the old GE Force4 MX440 64MB PCI video card with a brand new Nvidia FX5200 256MB PCI video card (from PNY). After I rebooted my machine, I went to watch live TV and all I got was 15 seconds of blank/black screen (and no sound) and then I was kicked back to the main myth menu.

At this point, I thought that maybe I should redo a fresh install of Knoppmyth, so I ran that overnight. The following morning, I finished the configuration, and re-attempted to watch live TV. The live TV worked fine (although it was still a little herky jerky), but after about 30 seconds; the screen went blank and a message popped up saying that there was a "video output errror" or something to that effect. At that point, I didn't have time to mess around with it anymore, and had to leave for work.

So I am wondering if anyone has any ideas? Or are there certain myth logs I can look at or commands I can run to determine what the problem is?

I am really starting to think that my processor it too week for live TV playback, and perhaps even for DVD playback. I originally thought that if I upgraded my video card to the FX5200 256MB, it would cure my problems, but the "upgrade" did not seem to help at all. In fact, I only seem to be getting this "black screen" problem with the FX5200 card (and not with the old video card). I did a little bit of testing with this PC the following weekend in Windows XP, and tried to play some ripped DVD (VOB files); but the processor was pegged at 100%. This is what led me to think that my CPU is too weak.


Here are my machine specs:
AMD Athlon 850
400MB of RAM
Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE edition (model #1062)
PNY Nvidia FX5200 PCI video card w/256MB of ram (the reason I am using a PCI video card is that this old mobo only has a 2x AGP port)
PCI ethernet card
PCI sound card (some old yamaha clunker)
PCI USB2.0 card
IDE hard drive and CD-RW


If anyone has any ideas, I would GREATLY appreciate it. I am still trying to figure out if I should return the FX5200 video card to Best Buy or not...

An Athlon 850 should be powerful enough to watch TV. If you cannot even get TV to be displayed, then something else is amiss. Have you checked your logs?

WHen it's time to try and get the remote control working (assuming you're using the one that came with the 150) you should read my post.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewforum. ... f61efa5d9a

Lucky for you R5F1 supports it now, I spent many days trying to get it to work on RE50E or whatever the prior release was.

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Paul O'Flynn

Maybe you meant: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15381

What is with the storm of bad links that people have been posting today? This is the 4th ort 5th botched one I've seen...

Not sure what I was doing there, asleep at the wheel I guess, thanks for the correction!

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Paul O'Flynn

an athlon 850 should be enough. you should check /var/log/mythtv/mythfrontend and mythbackend log files to see what's there.

also you can try turning on xvmc in setings tv playback choose standardxvmc

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Hi,

The 850 should work fine based on experience on having used a lot less. Sounds like your /etc/X11/xorg.conf may not be using nvidia for the driver. In some cases it may need driver nv . also check the depth for either 16 or 24 and the res to be either 1024x78, 800x600 . Anything above that has caused just a black screen for me (but I had sound)

Hope that is helpful.
Mike

Mike, thanks a lot for the tips. I will have to look at the depth and resolution to see what they are set at. Would I find those settings in the xorg.conf file also or are you referring to some special mythtv "tv playback" settings?

Also, I am pretty sure the system is using the Nvidia driver; as I see the Nvidia splash screen each time I reboot. Or does the splash screen not necessarily mean that it is using the driver? Knoppmyth installs the Nvidia driver as default (when applicable), doesn't it?

I still am confused as to why the older Geforce 4 MX440 64MB video card seems to work better (i.e. no black screen) than the FX5200 256MB video card. Any thoughts?

Hi,

All the settings are in the xorg.conf. Look in there to get an idea of what is occurring. The 5200 card may be setting up for something that is too high in res. The Nvidia usually sets up automagicly if the card is the proper type. The FX5200 is the proper type for nvidia.

If you make any edits in xorg.conf, ctl alt backspace will restart and load your changes for the xserver.

In the tv playback settings, I use the lib2 or standard which ever works best at the time.

Mike

Do you all think that I might be able to make my system work with the "older" GEForce 4 MX440 64MB video card; assuming that I can find whatever myth or xorg settings I need to tweak for live TV to work smoothly?

Additionally, I need to be able to watch ripped DVD videos too, so I would be interested to know if this MX440 video card combined with my Athlon 850 will be sufficient for watching DVD files as well.

Thanks.

You should be able to. I have Nvidia 32 Mb card (something I just grabbed from work) on my frontend machine (600MHz PIII), and I can view live tv and recordings with it just fine. About simultaneous recording I don't know, my backend/frontend machine has more power in it.

That being said, I don't have tv out, I'm using Grand Hand View II VGA to TV converter to go around the nasty Xorg configuration problem.

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Jari-Matti

MBE&FE: GeForce MX440, Athlon XP 2000+, MSI KT333 Ultra, onboard audio, 512 MB, 2 x Technotrend T1500 DVB-T, LiteOn DVD±RW 16x DW1650-488C, Seagate 250 GB
FE: 1500MHz Geforce MX200-V, int. audio, 256MB

Auttila, what exactly is the "nasty Xorg configuration problem" you are talking about? I am not familiar with this.

I mean in general. I spent about 40 hours to get Ati TV out working, some 20 to get Nvidia tv out working, and I never got those working as well as I would have wanted. Most likely it is my lack of experience, but purchasing two $50 external devices took three minutes.

60 hours of my time with family versus hundred bucks - not even a tight race for me.

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Jari-Matti

MBE&FE: GeForce MX440, Athlon XP 2000+, MSI KT333 Ultra, onboard audio, 512 MB, 2 x Technotrend T1500 DVB-T, LiteOn DVD±RW 16x DW1650-488C, Seagate 250 GB
FE: 1500MHz Geforce MX200-V, int. audio, 256MB

Look at the X logfiles in /var/log for which settings it is using. You will have to wade through a lot of very detailed hardware information but along the way you should be able to find what resolution and color depth it picked.


If you see the splash screen then it is using the driver. Given your CPU speed, you may want to enable XvMC under the TV Playback settings.

Maybe RRDtool (http://mythtvhost/rrd/CPU.html) could shed some light on your processor usage.

I experienced poor live tv performance on my new rig, however, having dual 2.8 Ghz CPUs leads me to believe that CPU utilization is not the problem: probably the video card or some configuation issue or something is tagging the HDD.

Bottom line, make your best guess, then collect data and test your idea.

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R7.3: 0.22.20091023-1, Hauppauge PVR-500 (Philips FQ1236A MK4), Gigabyte Gigabyte EG45M-UD2H, E5200 2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 256MB