tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-166903822011-04-22T00:27:49.889+01:00My experiences building and running a <a href="http://www.mythtv.org/">MythTV</a> PVRMezzaninenoreply@blogger.comBlogger421100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-82798461911402953972007-02-13T13:32:00.000Z2007-02-13T14:51:26.979Z

Well since November, I've:Upgraded to MythTV 0.20Moved to using the OpenGL painterManaged to get the internal video player working nicely with (compressed) HD content and digital audio out - requires at least 32Mb of AGP Video RAMImplemented a fully idle-managed system with automatic startup and shutdownFixed the Shuttle ZEN boot-up FSB hardware fault that affects almost all of these boxesUsed

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1163169281682785142006-11-09T19:11:00.000Z2006-11-10T15:03:44.380Z

Made all of the hardware changes and everything still works! While I was at it - with PC guts all over the floor, I replaced the PSU in my GX150 (the fan on the original sounded like a heard of cows) and swapped out the RAM modules for a 512Mb stick - the max supported memory on this PIII.I didn't change any software with the exception of moving the relevant IVTV and LIRC drivers, support

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1162894756198854572006-11-06T21:32:00.000Z2006-11-07T11:46:51.466Z

nvram-wakeup works great on the Dell Optiplex GX150 (my master backend). The bundled guess-helper script didn't produce a usable config. Instead, I took a look at the source as suggested in this MythTV wiki page and used# nvram-wakeup -iwname dell_optiplex_dxaIt's worth noting that the GX150 can only be set to wakeup at a specific 24hr time. Date and second components are not used. Within the

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1162383010570309252006-10-31T22:34:00.000Z2006-11-01T14:29:44.060Z

...between £165-£330 per year!I'm increasingly disturbed by the energy consumption within my home and some time ago, bought a little plug-in power monitor to see where all of those KWh were going. The monitor plugs in to a wall socket and the kit plugs in to the monitor, either directly or indirectly via a PDU.It was quite useful in showing me that my cable-box consumed 100% power while on

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1157711524332878362006-09-07T22:57:00.000+01:002006-09-08T11:34:33.596+01:00

I've updated my new remote controlling setup further and I'm now able to manage my screen via it's serial port - yes the commercial grade Panasonic plasma screens come with a serial port! As my Shuttle's only serial port was already used for the IR-blaster, I bought a 2m USB-RS232C serial lead with an ftdi chipset from these guys.It worked out-of-the-box and came up as /dev/ttyUSB0:usb 3-1: new

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1157103873255721382006-08-31T22:11:00.000+01:002006-09-01T16:55:26.596+01:00

So, I'm finally approaching happiness with the ATI's VGA output. Yes, it's taken me about a fortnight but I guess that's what I expected. I won't go into all of the gory details, but here are some of the more interesting highlights...Use the Xorg 6.8.2 radeon driver at 852x480@60Hz and digital SPDIF audio: serious ALSA problems on pause/skip/LiveTV channel-change, high CPU usage, video output

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1157028272085645102006-08-30T23:18:00.000+01:002006-08-31T13:58:13.406+01:00

Screen with the new CCFL lights installed from Neonlights. This shows 4x 12" white CCFL running off of a pair of inverters fed by a variable (5,6,7.5,9,12,15v) DC adapter at 7.5v. Light-output is at ~50%. The adapter is drawing a mere 5w @ 230v AC.I intend to install a 12v varilight adaptor to compliment a remote-controlled varilight dimmer feeding a regular wall-light outlet. Once this is in, I

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1155906103482925212006-08-18T23:40:00.000+01:002006-09-01T16:57:28.890+01:00

I decided to change my output method from the Hauppauge PVR350 TV-out (Svideo) to my onboard ATI 9100 IGP (RGB over VGA). "No...." I hear you cry, "the 350s output is perfect!". Well yes, the quality is very good but at the cost of some flexibility.PVR350 pros:Excellent quality hardware MPEG2 decoding at up to 720x576Negligable CPU overheadSupports Xv for DVD/MPEG4 playbackPVR350 cons:Limited to

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1155906913560675992006-08-18T20:02:00.000+01:002006-08-23T09:38:30.920+01:00

Doing it the old wayAll of my kit is now inside a cupboard - well out of IR line-of-sight. Of course, I still have my PVR350-bundled IR receiver and this is positioned just below the bottom edge of the plasma screen. It continues to happily accept instructions from the Hauppauge remote across the room. However, it only controls the MythTV interface. My cable feed (NTL Pace box) is indirectly

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1155893003897515052006-08-17T20:54:00.000+01:002006-08-18T11:47:26.773+01:00

My old 32" Panny setup. Located in the corner of the room, bad viewing position, terrible sound characteristics.Side-by-side, my old TV and the new 42" Panny panel on it's temporary stand....in all it's glory.The wall where it's going to end up.The mess begins...Ok, here's goes. The bracket template is up and I've drilled the first hole; the 40mm cable route - 300mm long, angled through the wall

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1155031297471565392006-08-07T22:32:00.000+01:002006-11-03T16:55:27.693Z

To correct the ergonomic disaster that is our living room, it was agreed that we needed to replace our 5yr old 32" Panny CRT with a wall-mounted screen. That was a few months ago and despite the lure of new technology, I was having a hard time trying to find the right piece of kit at the right price.LCD, Plasma or Projector?SD, HD-compatible or HD-ready?37", 42" or more?The budget was

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1151576087977277932006-06-29T08:13:00.000+01:002006-06-29T14:14:42.463+01:00

All of the 0.19 problems I mentioned in earlier posts are now gone. This has been achieved by using ATRPM mythtv updates. I currently have an uptime of 67 days on my master backend and 35 days on my slave/frontend Shuttle. These boxes are still running FC3, although their kernels are hand-built from vanilla 2.6.15.x and 2.6.16.x series kernels.The master would have been up longer but it gets

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1151578801132559462006-04-06T17:45:00.000+01:002006-06-29T14:05:41.470+01:00

Space and power problemsIt was time to upgrade my MythTV storage but the Dellbox I use for my master back-end had run out of drive capacity and more importantly; 12v power. I had to attach and power additional storage externally or acquire a completely new server...Adding 300GbBought a bare 300Gb PATA Maxtor DiamondMax drive and a cheap PCI USB 2 card (the Dell only had USB 1 onboard). I already

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1141638409891099292006-03-06T08:33:00.000Z2006-03-06T14:34:54.446Z

Since 0.19, I (and several others) have noticed that timing is broken during playback on the PVR350. It may only affect people in PAL-land. Jumping forwards takes you backwardsReturning to a bookmark positions you before the bookmarkShows continue playing beyond the length of the show as displayed by the OSDThe time distortion gets progressively worse as playback continues. Jumping or returning

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1141133575502451752006-02-28T13:23:00.000Z2006-03-06T09:48:49.263Z

I mentioned a couple of preview-generation issues in my last post, after which I saw a few related posts in the MythTV lists...It looks like preview images are only generated after the show has finished recording in 0.19. This means selecting a show that's currently recording from the watch recordings screen or just using a jump key into the watch recordings screen will cause a 6s freeze while

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1140981994992372152006-02-26T19:18:00.000Z2006-02-28T13:34:42.853Z

Upgraded to 0.19 today via the most recent atrpm packages. I held off for a couple weeks to see how others faired and to give a chance for some fixes to get folded back in. LiveTV in 0.18.x hasn't worked properly for me in ages and I was waiting for 0.19 to avoid having to spend a lot of time tracking down the problem. However, several people reported a bunch of issues with the reworked LiveTV

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1140981515567262242006-02-25T23:16:00.000Z2006-02-27T17:45:03.020Z

Finally, I have digital audio out working on the Shuttle. The SPDIF output is hooked up to my Yamaha amp which is now cheerfully decoding Dolby Digital and PCM data.This required a recent version of the kernel ALSA drivers (it first worked with 1.0.9b but I'm now using 1.0.10 which appears to be more stable) and I had to use the following atiixp module option in /etc/modprobe.conf:# try the

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1136461110519235822006-01-05T12:58:00.000Z2006-02-26T19:44:24.100Z

My logical setup:mythtv0 Master backend DVB-T (unused at present) MySQL server MythTV filestore server (via NFS) Headless1GHz PIII, 384Mb RAM mythtv1 Slave backend PVR350 fed from cable-box Primary frontend driving TV2.53GHz Celeron D, 512Mb RAM Ever since splitting Myth into a master and slave system, I've had issues with the master hanging hard. It doesn't happen that often

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126696551905208672005-09-13T23:51:00.000+01:002005-09-15T09:55:57.033+01:00

Lots of Hauppauge PVR150/250/350/500/550 driver improvements recently...I'd been working with Hans Verkuil to try and get the widescreen VBI switching to work in MythTV. We tested lots of configurations and he made a number of changes to VBI but he couldn't reproduce the problem and didn't have Myth to test against.To compound the matter, the cheapo RGB->svideo converter I bought strips VBI

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126632049632420602005-09-13T18:18:00.000+01:002005-09-14T10:42:19.053+01:00

I received the message below from Axentra. I've just ported the contents of my blog across but not the comments. I'm afraid they are gone...Dear Axentra.net Member,It is with regret that we hereby notify all axentra.net members that the axentra.net service will be retired in 30 days, on October 9, 2005. All logins and access to the service will cease on that date, and new account registrations

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630954886899162005-08-24T16:04:00.000+01:002005-09-13T18:02:34.886+01:00

So I finally bought a KWorld/VStream XPert DVB-T card and put into into my master backend. I chose the V-Stream card based on reputation in the MythTV lists and it's status at the linux v4l wiki. Oh, and recent models also have a good quality Samsung tuner. However, it still came as a shock to find the card fully autodetected on first-boot after installation. This was with a stock 2.6.12 FC3

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630914773605042005-08-11T08:54:00.000+01:002005-09-13T18:01:54.776+01:00

In an effort to squeeze a little more out of the my shuttle hardware (without increasing the heat output), I dived into the BIOS again. This time, I was looking at memory issues. I was hoping to speed up memory access a little and find out why my 512Mb memory stick was only delivering 480Mb of usable RAM. The size issue was due to the onboard ATI graphics stealing system RAM for it's framebuffer

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630875082114362005-08-11T08:17:00.000+01:002005-09-15T10:15:36.880+01:00

The PVR350 X driver didn't used to support the Xvideo extension that video players such as xine, mplayer and realplayer try to use. Instead, display was limited to using standard X11 or Xshm which was just too slow/inefficient to display video in realtime.Having spent a considerable amount of time testing and debugging the new Xv support for the 350, I'm happy to say that it's now working really

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630834028052692005-07-25T18:35:00.000+01:002005-09-13T18:00:34.030+01:00

Being interested in Xv support on the PVR350 for playing DVDs and videos in formats other than MPEG2/nuv, I started playing with the latest ivtv and ivtvfb drivers. I installed ivtv 0.3.7, X driver 0.10.5 and the latest Hauppauge firmware, recommended with the dynamic DMA buffer code in the new ivtv driver. I had a few problems at first - ghosting was corrected by using ivtvctl -c dnr_temporal=0

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630793435106672005-07-25T17:58:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:59:53.436+01:00

I started having a few issues with MythTV 0.18.1 after moving from my all-in-one setup to the distributed master/slave setup. If you ever need to setup a slave backend, you may find you need to edit /.mythtv/mysql.txt aswell as ~root/.mythtv/mysql.txt. I found that the former was read if mythbackend was started as a service and the later was read if I ran the command by hand! I've seen a few

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630764171040502005-06-17T13:23:00.000+01:002005-09-14T12:37:24.753+01:00

I've been playing with a Hauppauge MediaMVP briefly as a MythTV frontend using mvpmc. It works great but doesn't yet have all of the functionality offered by mythfrontend. I'm only using this for test purposes at the moment but plan on getting a w/s LCD TV for the spare bedroom...I've gradually shifted all of the backend services off of my shuttle and onto the GX150. This migration is now

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630720615167622005-06-09T12:20:00.000+01:002005-09-13T23:47:19.756+01:00

Looking back at what I wanted for phase #2:Heat & NoiseI've mostly achieved this. I didn't replace the fan but managed to quieten it down considerably using active PWM fan-control. It no-longer bothers me. However, the seek-noise of the Barracuda v8 was driving me mad and instead of trying various magic tricks inside the shuttle, I just moved it elsewhere and am mounting it up va NFS. This works

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630677630329912005-06-09T08:54:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:57:57.630+01:00

I'm now moving toward a new setup. The idea is to have the Shuttle as a frontend and slave backend (fed by NTL through a PVR350) with a new master backend in the loft getting a Freeview DVB-T feed. I'm currently missing a DVB-T card, a suitable aerial and network and power feeds in my loft but I do have the new master backend - a 1GHz PIII Dell GX150. On my way toward this, I've moved the

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630566432035392005-06-02T12:54:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:56:38.890+01:00

I was about to order a replacement fan for my Shuttle when I stumbled upon pwmconfig. It's part of the lm_sensors pack and is used to discover PWM (pulse-width-modulation I guess) controllable fans on your system.It found that fan1 (the only connected fan) was controlled by PWM and manageable via the lm_sensors /sys interface.It writes a config for fancontrol which can be used to manage the fan

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630465826689522005-05-25T08:54:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:54:25.826+01:00

26/05/05 UPDATE: New numbers. Played with the recording profiles some more after finding that 352x288 was unwatchable. Infact, anyresx288 caused a really jumpy picture with awful artifacts. This even continued when using higher bitrates, so I gave up on x288. I'm wondering if the interlace is killing these half-line modes... This is what I'm now using: LiveTV: 7.5-8.5Mbit@720x576 16:9 DVD-S2

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630432070352952005-05-24T15:10:00.000+01:002005-09-14T14:36:57.260+01:00

25/5/05 UPDATE: See New Modes above.Found this useful FAQ describing the different legal frame sizes. This one helps with mpeg2 bitrates. I'm now testing these recording profiles: HQ: 5.5-9Mbit@720x576 (DVD)LiveTV: 4.5-7Mbit@704x576 (analogue broadcast TV)Default: 2.5-4Mbit@352x576 (SVHS)LQ: 1.5-2Mbit@352x288 (VHS)

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630360141607992005-05-24T08:52:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:52:40.143+01:00

From yesterday, in order of completion: Dependency #5 Still haven't finshed hacking tv_grab_uk_bleb but put it to use anyhow. mythfilldatabase now runs twice at 4.15am out of crontab. Once to populate the TV channel info from Radio Times and again to import Radio channels using bleb/xmltv's XML file. Dependency #2 It was time to get my NTL box to play ball (or at least switch channels when

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630316824246302005-05-23T13:21:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:51:56.826+01:00

Almost there. Worked-around a legacy mythtv-suite dependency bug by installing individual myth plugins. I managed to fill the channel listing with some bogus channels while playing with the UK bleb xmltv grabber and coudn't find a way of removing them with mythtvsetup or mythfilldatabase. I installed PhpMyAdmin (Web->MySQL gateway) and cleaned up the 'channels' table by hand. It was only after

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630270362063942005-05-23T13:12:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:51:10.363+01:00

As soon as I hooked my mythbox up to the TV, my subwoofer started rumbling along with the disk seeks. This was actually quite amusing for like the first 2 minutes ;-) It continued even with my TV off. In fact, as long as my AV amp and sub were on, it would rumble. My TV and sub are not connected directly but they do share ground via the amp. I was thinking I'd have to start changing power sockets

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630230430745922005-05-19T13:23:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:50:30.433+01:00

I moved my shuttle into the living room and the fan whine is now really getting to me. Tried adjusting the BIOS but I can't get the fan to spin less than ~1950RPM (according to lm_sensors) even with the CPU temp in the low 40s. Having discovered that I can get a quieter replacement for only a few quid, I think I'll just go-ahead and try swapping it out. I've also been thinking about heat in

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630176830052872005-05-19T00:49:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:49:36.833+01:00

Updated MythTV to 0.18.1 Ran mythtvsetup. This was fairly straightforward with guidance from the Mythtv HOWTO and other sources - For video source, I used tv_grab_uk_rt (Radio Times) which has all of the TV channels in my NTL digital base package. It took me a while to review my package and add in all of my subscribed channels. Strangely enough tv_grab_uk_rt doesn't have any Radio channel

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630106374981792005-05-18T00:03:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:48:26.376+01:00

Made good progress today. Installed all updates, mythtv-suite, ivtv, lirc and MySQL. I have a UK-sourced PAL PVR350 feeding a 32" 100Hz widescreen CRT-based Panasonic TV via svideo (for now). During testing, I found that I needed to use the following to get a clean TVout picture from the 350 (as advised in Jarods HOWTO): # ivtvctl -u 0xff# ivtvctl -f width=720,height=576# ivtvfbctl /dev/fb1 -

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126629682299740112005-05-17T18:05:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:41:22.300+01:00

I'm following Jarods Fedora Myth(TV)ology guide. Tried doing an apt-get update but one of the repo's had bad data. Gave up and used yum. Left it running overnight. In the morning, I find that yum hung most of the way through the update at 1.30am. It's left the RPM db in a right state. I have multiple versions of lots of packages. Not seen this before. I'm thinking that it might have clashed with

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126630036535780742005-05-17T10:40:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:47:16.536+01:00

Last night I had a 750kbit broadband link. This morning I have a 2Mbit link. The wonders of science. I'd been informed of the free upgrade a couple weeks ago but the timing is perfect. The 471Mb of updates will now only take half an hour! ...and then there's MythTV 0.18.1 which has been rumbling for a while but was officially announced yesterday.

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126629630996405352005-05-17T08:31:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:40:30.996+01:00

I've built the shuttle; installed the CPU, RAM, HD and DVD drive. A bit noisier than I'd hoped. The fan has a high-pitched whine that I didn't hear on another ZEN. Installed FC3 and busy doing a yum update...

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126629513639515852005-05-16T17:48:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:38:46.083+01:00

Ok, so some of my Myth Hardware arrived on Friday and the rest has arrived today. Here's the spec: Shuttle ZEN XPC ST62K512Mb RAMIntel Celeron D325 (2.53GHz) CPU200Gb Seagate Barracuda v8NEC ND3540A DVD R/RW DL driveHauppauge Win TV PVR 350

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16690382.post-1126629301547309342005-05-12T21:35:00.000+01:002005-09-13T17:35:01.550+01:00

After taking a look at my mate's new MythBox, I finally committed myself and ordered some gear. I've been considering MythTV for over a year, lurking on the lists and forums, checking out setups and taking a look and listen at friends hardware. Primarily I've been waiting: To have the time to devote to getting Myth up and runningTo have the money for the hardwareAn increase in WAFFor ivtv to

Mezzaninenoreply@blogger.com0