Hello all. I'm new to Myth TV, just installed KnoppMyth R5A30, when watching live TV I get a green screen, top portion has static. I searched forums , and found a few similar threads, but none really had a resolution for me. I will try to post everything I can think of. Please let me know if you need more info to help me.

FWIW, same exact hardware works OK under WinXP Pro SP2, I know that doesn't mean much, but may help. I have 2 identical drives, unplug one, use other for this KnoppMyth install.

I was going to use older hardware, but decided to use some newer stuff:

System:
Asus A7V-600x VIA KT600 (I know..I know.. VIA = sometimes bad)
Athlon XP2500+
1GB RAM
80GB WD Harddrive
ATI Radeon 9550 128MB
Soundblaster generic
WinTV 878 cheapo Tuner card , Hauppauge

OK. Here is some more info:

mythtv@mythtv:~$ dmesg | grep bttv
bttv: driver version 0.9.16 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:00:0b.0, irq: 19, latency: 32, mmio: 0xd7800000
bttv0: detected: Hauppauge WinTV [card=10], PCI subsystem ID is 0070:13eb
bttv0: using: Hauppauge (bt878) [card=10,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00fffffb [init]
bttv0: Hauppauge/Voodoo msp34xx: reset line init [5]
bttv0: using tuner=2
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv0: PLL can sleep, using XTAL (28636363).
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
xwatv gives me black screen with static on top & I can't seem to launch Mplayer to check if mpg files I created with cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/test1.mpg has real data in it:


mythtv@mythtv:/tmp$ mplayer -vo /dev/video0 -ao /dev/audio0 test1.mpg
MPlayer 1.0pre6-3.3.5 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team
CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon MP/XP/XP-M Barton (Family: 6, Stepping: 0)
Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection - WARNING - this is not optimal!
To get best performance, recompile MPlayer with --disable-runtime-cpudetection.


Failed to open /dev/rtc: Permission denied (it should be readable by the user.)
Setting up LIRC support...
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: Connection refused
Failed to open LIRC support.
You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing test1.mpg.


Exiting... (End of file)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I am guessing I am doing that horribly incorrectly.

I don't have much linux knowledge, but have a lot of Solaris and AIX backround. So editing config etc isn't a problem, I just need to know where they are

Great forum btw, lots of good info in the archive. This is the first time I've instaled a linux distro onn a half-way decent system, runs much smoother! (posting from the same box now!)

Only change I made was apt-get install mozilla-firefox .

have you defined your video source? if you are tuned to a proper station sometimes you get that.

also search around and make sure of what the card and tuner settings need to be for your card and double check that they are right. from your logs it is autodetecting at card 10 and tuner 2, but the autodetect doesn't always work correctly.

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

Xsecrets

If you mean in the 5 steps wizard config Myth thing, yes. I set it to the cable/television input.



When you say "settings", where exactly (which config file(s) ) do those settings go into ? I've been doing searchs as root from / like find . -name *config* | grep vid and many other variantsd and can't find much to edit.

I just assumed (incorrectly I guess?) that the install , since it deteced my card, would set config correctly? I know I never said check channel "3" , which is what my sat TV coax is coming out on. EDIT: Meaning, how do I tell the Myth Live TV software to tell the tuner, "Hey, tune to Channel 3!".

FWIW I am running COAX from DirecTV tuner to coax input on this cheapo card.

ahhh it's starting to make sense now. There is a setting in one of those 5 steps I think it's step 4 that asks about what channel to tune to, sorry I can't be more descriptive I haven't used a stb other than over firewire where you don't have to worry about that.

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

Xsecrets

OK , thank you XSecrets! I will check that setting & try this tonight and post my results.

OK Xsecrets you were right. I went thru mythtv-setup again, actually a few times, and set it pretune to channel 3 and tuner on channel 3. Then it worked. All that was needed was pre-tune to channel 3. That was a "duh" on my part, I skipped that field. Audio worked fine and picture was displayed semi-live (see below). I rebooted afterwards since I am not sure how to stop/start the MySQL db and all the myth services. Anyone point my to a Wiki article for that one?

OK 2 new problems. I swear I am researching thease before posting my annoying noob questions!

1) I don't think its hardware related since under XP it works fine, only swapping identical HD's here. Choppy video, bad lag (I'm running DirecTV tuner to TV and Pc at same time, my audio/video is 2-3 seconds behind). Very odd. I'm going to re-search the forums and the Wiki (the Wiki rocks!). So far my searches yielf nothing, since most solutions are about using wrong drivers or different tuner capture cards. Anyone point me to correct solution ?

2) I registered on the zap tv lab website per instructions on mythtv wiki website (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MythTV) which is also a great Wiki, I logged in and set my zip code, and selected my correct listing for DirecTV. However, when doing a mythtv-setup, and selecting DataDirect(NorthAmerica) and entering username/pwd, I click "Update Listing" I forget actualy button name, it gets to 50% really quick, then that pop up window goes away. After ESC-out, The shell shows "Not authorized" messages.

Also, maybe I am missing solutions to these issues because I am not used to the search mechanism for this forums. On some other forums you can select "search title only" and do something like
+poor +video +quality -coax
(for example)

Is that possible on these forums ?

1) coppy video can have a few causes enable extra audio buffering in setings tv playback sometimes helps. TV being 3 sec behind is normal as what is really happening with "livetv" is that it records it to a disk buffer then plays it back which allows for the pause and rewind features.

2) not sure about this one.

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

Xsecrets

Does the audio continue playing if you pause live tv? If so, you probably have the sound going into line in on your sound card instead of having it going to line in on your capture card.

Hi! Yes I do have the sound out on by 878 card going to Line In on my sound card. I do not have a Sound Line In on my capture card, just a BNC Coax in (which I am using), a sound out, which the manual for the card says to run to the Line In on the sound card, and a video In port, nothing else.

I just found this thread and will follow instructions there.

Normally , under XP I have zero to a few milli-second delay when watchhing live TV. I know that Tivo and probably tuner cards record the stream first to disk before playing it (hence the few second delay) but this is just a capture card. I did notice under XP that the standard Happuage application worked fine but I got dual audio streams in SageTV for some reason with this setup...

Hi all. I followed setting thread (link above) instructions for setting commercial flagging to Off and changing VBI to None. Reboot, and still choppy video , watching just on my monitor for now.

I am contuining to search Wiki's and Google, as well as this forum for more solutions. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free!

In the meantime here is top output from an SSH connection via another machine:


Symptons, video somewhat choppy, lags every now and then, audio seems OK though.

Here is disk info:

Did you check if DMA is enabled for the disk? Searching the forum or the wiki for "hdparm" should provide the details.

The phpbb search is conciously simplistic. This isn't really an issue because you can use the Google advanced search options to do anything complicated. See this link: http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=+site:mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all

Thanks for the search tip!

Yes I verified DMA and 32bit were enabled, I found them in another "choppy" post.

I decided to scrap the whole project and start from scratch with my older hardware, mostly because my older PC had a Gforce card. I'll post results elsewhere.

did you ever check your extra audio buffering like I said? also what type of proc do you have that seems to be very high cpu utilization from your top you may very well just be dropping frames because your out of cpu.

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

Xsecrets

Hi Xsecrets, yes I tried the audio buffering, it did not help any. Video quality was still poor. My CPU is listed at the top in my original post (XP2500+). I scrapped it after reading about ATI cards and MythTV.

Either way I scrapped that setup and went to the following setup (slowers all around) and have Windows XP like video performance now (not great but not choppy, I am hoping a PVR-150 makes the video look more like digital TV, Wiki really doesn't explain much about what to expect quality wise).

ABIT KR7A-RAID (Via chipset , but so far it works OK).
1Ghz Duron
512MB RAM
80GB WD
Geforce MX440 64MB vcard
Same tuner as above (bttv 878)

Guess what? That setup pretty much worked out of box after install.

Live TV (same video quality as on XP machine, still not great though)
Record (I had to set a profile for Live TV, High quality etc, otherwise I'd get blank screen when trying to record)
COMMERCIAL SKIP IS FANTASTIC! BETTER THAN TIVO! THANK YOU!
MythWeather (AWESOME RADAR! Is that weather.com?)
I didn't get video games working , catver.ini somethings?, have to search forums/Wiki for that
I didn't get MythWeb working, just blank menu with a few arrows, again I need to search around, I can just ESC back to Knoppix desktop and use firefox though
I have not hooked up a TV yet (I hear that is difficult) need to search around etc
I have not used a remote to control my Sat receiver (change channels) I hear this could be a challenge as well? What about doing what is posted on the Wiki, using IR wireless Keyboard instead of a remote? This is just for our bedroom at the moment, so I can leave it on its own nightstand etc. Wife might not like that though.
I don't have PVR-150 yet or A/V type black case yet. I'm starting to save up for them.

So I have some work to do over the next few weeks.

Wife is very VERY interested in this "second TiVo" I am attempting to install. "Commercials just skip right over? No fast forwarding and "timing" it to stop just right ?"

Of course I gave her the bad news as well, no more recording two shows at the same time (DirecTv) ! That didn't go over well, but what the heck, its the second PVR not the primary...yet...