I definitely had the -ac hwac3, (with comma) option in there, but now I'm not sure I left it in there while experimenting with different options. Will have to try again and confirm. Thanks for the suggestion.

OK, made sure that option was in there, still no joy.

I tried running mplayer from the command line so I could see any reported errors. With any -ao option that included "alsa", I would see a message that said "Could not open/initialize audio device: no sound." Removing that or replacing it with (say) "-ao oss", I did not get the message.

If I run mplayer with the option "-ao help" (which is supposed to report the available audio output drivers) it gives me this list, which suspiciously does NOT include alsa:



Any ideas what my next step might be? Is there any way to configure mplayer to recognize that alsa is out there, or do I have to do something like compile it again? Thanks.

EDIT: Well, managed to find an answer by Googling for "mplayer configure for alsa"... a Fedora guide page that says "Known issues: MPlayer version 1.0pre3 (or newer) is required to use/detect ALSA 1.0.x drivers and libraries. Version 1.0pre2 will not work. Either remain with ALSA 0.9.x or use MPlayer 1.0pre3. " So I will upgrade my mplayer and see if that does it for me. Thanks.

EDIT2: just did an apt-get update mplayer-k6 and then a -ao help, and viola, there's alsa. Hope this helps someone.

Well, of course, it wasn't that simple. Installing mplayer via apt-get ended up installing it in /usr/bin/mplayer, and left /usr/local/bin/mplayer there. The command line in the MythVideo setup was still referring to the old mplayer that didn't support ALSA, so that was the first thing to fix.

Second thing was that d*mned -ao option. Rather than list the bazillion different combinations that DIDN'T work, I'll just say that the one that did end up working was



Actually, without being able to look at the command line, it may well be that should be "alsa1" or "alsa1x". I know the device part is correct, though.

Following the directions on Wiki, I can get audio from live TV, video's, dvd's, etc, but I don't seem to have it on recorded show playback...

Any idea's?

have no idea there, but I can tell you that is extremely odd, as livetv and recorded playback are basically the exact same thing, unless you have two tuners, and the recordings were made while you were watching livetv.

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Xsecrets

pieces that go along with this include:

I do have 2 tuners - BTTV and PVR-350. The recording's I'd tested with were recorded prior to working with optical out. Oh, and it may be important that the 350 is set as the higher priority tuner for recording.

What's weird is that it worked, and then I upgraded mplayer, installed gnome-alsamixer (trying to see if that would help identify my no audio on live-tv issue - after reading a different thread). I've succeeded in getting live tv to work, but somewhere along the line in the process of getting live tv playback working I seem to have killed playback on recorded stuff...

What is the player used to play back recorded shows (is it mplayer? or... just built into mythtv?)

Is there any correlation between the recorded files that don't play back with audio, and the card that recorded them? IOW, are they all recorded from the BTTV based card, or all from the PVR-350?

I have a feeling its a difference in how one of your cards records sound vs the other. I know the 350 records MP2; no idea how the BTTV card does audio.

livetv and recording playback are handled by mythtv video player. This is not mplayer and is not based on mplayer. it is a new totally separate program.

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Xsecrets

all of the recording's I'm currently working with are PVR350 based recordings.

I wasn't sure if something I'd upgraded had somehow messed up the playback...

The reality of this is so close it's frustrating

Interesting - if I turn off AC3 passthrough, live TV and playback seem to work fine...

if I turn it back on, live TV works, and recorded program playback seems to be broken once again.

Darn it, I was going to ask if you had AC3 passthrough selected. Yeah, don't select that. No idea why it's only affecting your recorded programs.