View unanswered posts    View active topics

All times are UTC - 6 hours





Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1 post ] 
Print view Previous topic   Next topic  
Author Message
Search for:
PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 7:34 pm 
Offline
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2005 5:02 pm
Posts: 3
Stock R5A22 works reasonably well, but I had to tweak a few things.

First of all, my hardware is as follows:

MB: Asus P4S533 w/ P4 2.4, 512MB SDRAM (purchased many moons ago)
Video In: PVR-150 (retail, non-MCE) with silver remote (purchased 10/05)
Video Out: EVGA FX5200 w/ VGA & S-Video TV-Out (purchased 10/05)
DVD+RW: Liteon 1633S (purchased 10/05)
STB: Cablevision (Motorola) Explorer 4200 (new to me 10/05)
Sony CRT TV connected via S-Video (5+ years old)

The RF/tuner input of the PVR150 is connected to the RF output (channel 3) of my set top box. I use a serial IR blaster to instruct the STB to change channels.

Here are some misc fixes & stuff I discovered during my setup of R5A22.

1) I added the changechannel.sh script as follows:

------------snip--------------

#!/bin/bash
REMOTE_NAME=SAE8000
DEVICE=/dev/lircd1
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=$DEVICE SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.4 # note, you may have to tweak the interdigit delay up a bit
done
irsend --device=$DEVICE SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME select

------------snip--------------

I put this file in /home/mythtv/changechannel.sh but it can be anywhere (including the "standard" location everyone else seems to use in their examples). I left it in the home directory following some debugging and just never put it in the "standard" location.

2) Blue Lines on TV Out:

I noticed two blue lines (one on the left border and the other on the top border) that were present only when playing video either in mplayer or xine. The blue lines did not appear while in the mythfrontend.

Several people on the net suggested tweaking the XV_COLORKEY parameter to make the blue lines turn black (thus invisible). I had some trouble finding exactly where to put the necessary command but eventually discovered that modifying the file:

/home/mythtv/.fluxbox/apps

and adding the line:

[startup] {xvattr -a XV_COLORKEY -v 0}

before the line:

[startup] {KnoppMyth-run}

and restarting the X server (ctrl+alt+backspace) fixed the problem.

3) Serial IR-Blaster

I had trouble getting the PVR150 IR blaster to work, though its receiver and silver remote worked fine after choosing "PVR150" option during installation (I think it's option 4).

I later traced this problem to a BIOS misconfiguration, but before I realized that I decided to go with a serial IR blaster solution (see irblaster.info). I bought the model with the red diagnostic LED in it. Now that the serial IR blaster is working, I've had little incentive to go back and try the PVR150's transmitter.

I followed the instructions elsewhere on this board to support two instances of LIRC, one to control the PVR150's receiver and the other to drive the serial transmitter. I had to rebuild lirc-0.7.2 from scratch and using the setup script in the package to use COM1 and build support for the transmitter.

While most of the examples show everyone using COM2, COM1 worked provided I put

setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart none
modprobe lirc_serial

at the end of /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh.

Note that the Explorer 4200 provided by Cablevision in New Jersey appears to work with the remote configurations for either the SA2000 or SAE8000 provided in the scientific_atlanta directory on lird.org.

4) Default volume levels too low.

The setup slider bars were set to 90%. When I used F10 / F11 to control the volume, it said it was initially set to 72%. Not sure where that came from. In any case, I set the slider bars to 100% and rebooted. Sound levels were what I'd consider to be "normal" at that point.

5) XF86Config installed by default incorrect for TV-Out

I had to swap /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

with the sample

/etc/X11/XF86Conig.nvidia.tvout

to get nvidia tv out to launch X in the correct resolution (640x480).

6) mythweather refuses to connect to server

This fixes the problem:

mysql <enter>
use mythconverg; <enter>
Update settings Set settings.data='type in your zip code' Where settings.value='locale'; <enter>

7) I have a Netgear VPN Router on my network that provides DHCP addresses. It works beautfully with all other hosts (including linux hosts) but I noticed that my myth server/client box would occasionally not get an IP. I switched to a fixed IP and network connectivity has been fine. If there is a compatibility problem, I'm sure this is not limited to knopmyth.

8. Edit mode (E while viewing a recording) is crashy. Haven't really investigated why because I've had bigger fish to fry.

9) Eliminate Nvidia Logo by setting

Option “NoLogo” “1”

To the “Device” section of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

This should definitely be changed in the default settings files provided in knopmyth. There's no point in appeasing nvidia's marketing department -- we know what hardware & drivers we're running. And in a darkly-lit room, that big white screen can be very distacting and annoying.

10) DVD's won't eject

Logged in via an ssh session, I found I could manually umount and eject the media, so I figured the frontend had failed to clean things up.

Had to add a manual eject command to the mythtv frontend "Optical" menu:

Modified /usr/share/mythtv/optical_menu.xml with:

<button>
<type>DVD_EJECT</type>
<text>Eject Media</text>
<action>EXEC umount /dev/cdrom;eject cdrom</action>
</button>

This took effect immediately after saving. No need to restart frontend.

11) I don't seem to be able to determine the base version of knopmyth that is installed. We need a file somewhere (llike /etc/mythtv-version) that contains text like "RA522". I realize that the value of such a thing decreases the second one uses "apt-get" but I think it would still come in handy.


Top
 Profile  
 

Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1 post ] 


All times are UTC - 6 hours




Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group

Theme Created By ceyhansuyu