Mailing List Archive

On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 07:48:07AM -0500, Emmett Pate wrote:

> Here's my question: I'm using a Matrox G400 Dual Head with the Matrox X11
> drivers. After starting X, I get the mythfrontend on both the CRT and the
> TV-OUT. However, when I select "Watch TV", the TV-OUT goes blank and the
> Television only displays on the CRT. Is this an additional X setting or
> something in MythTV?

Does it work if you only have the TV connected? I don't have one of these
cards.

> Also, since this is intended to be a dedicated PVR, I don't have KDE *or*
> GNOME installed. I just run "startx", get an xterm window and then run
> "mythfrontend". When I select "Watch TV", X displays a window "marquee" -
> I click the mouse and the TV displays full-screen. Is it possible to have
> X start MythTV as the "window manager" and startup full-screen?

MythTV requires a window manager to manage its windows. You don't need KDE
or GNOME, just a standalone window manager (preferably a lightweight one).
I use fvwm.

--
- mdz

On Friday 22 November 2002 03:13 pm, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 07:48:07AM -0500, Emmett Pate wrote:
> > Here's my question: I'm using a Matrox G400 Dual Head with the Matrox X11
> > drivers. After starting X, I get the mythfrontend on both the CRT and
> > the TV-OUT. However, when I select "Watch TV", the TV-OUT goes blank and
> > the Television only displays on the CRT. Is this an additional X setting
> > or something in MythTV?
>
> Does it work if you only have the TV connected? I don't have one of these
> cards.

I'm not quite sure how to configure it with the TV on the primary connection.
That was going to be the last step before installing the box as my primary
PVR.

It's very frustrating: mplayer will play full screen on both the CRT and TV
simultaneously, xawtv will play on one or the other (one screen is paused
while the other is live), and MythTV will only play on the CRT (the TV just
goes blank). All of the them are started from an 'xterm' window.

Any help is *greatly* appreciated!

Emmett

I am using a G400 Dual Head as well, but you appear to have gotten a little
further than I have. Are you using a Rainbow Runner too? Today I was able
to get the tuner working using the mgavideo-0.1.0 drivers so I was able to
watch xawtv and it looked great in full screen even with audio. I also
managed to get it all working in MythTV as well, except its really chopping
(that I haven't figured out why yet, its on a 1ghz machine, the drives have
DMA turned on and they are decent drives). The problems I'm trying to
address first are why I dont have any audio while playing back a recording,
why its incredibly choppy when watching live tv, and why the audio is so
flaky, sometimes it just stops working if I go through the menus then go
back to the tv. Also, while watching a recording the appears to slowly
speed up, and when I fast forward through a video, say its a 6 minute
record, if I skip like 1:30 by hitting right 3 times, if it I hit it once
more the recording exits.. I dont understand... but at any rate, what I'm
asking here is how you succeeded in getting the MythTV main screen to output
to your tv, I would assume this is from some settings in the XF86Config?
Anyways, lemme know any hints you may have, thanks.

Russell Hatch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Emmett Pate" <emmett@epate.com>
To: <mythtv-dev@snowman.net>
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: [mythtv] G400 TV-Out


> On Friday 22 November 2002 03:13 pm, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 07:48:07AM -0500, Emmett Pate wrote:
> > > Here's my question: I'm using a Matrox G400 Dual Head with the Matrox
X11
> > > drivers. After starting X, I get the mythfrontend on both the CRT and
> > > the TV-OUT. However, when I select "Watch TV", the TV-OUT goes blank
and
> > > the Television only displays on the CRT. Is this an additional X
setting
> > > or something in MythTV?
> >
> > Does it work if you only have the TV connected? I don't have one of
these
> > cards.
>
> I'm not quite sure how to configure it with the TV on the primary
connection.
> That was going to be the last step before installing the box as my primary
> PVR.
>
> It's very frustrating: mplayer will play full screen on both the CRT and
TV
> simultaneously, xawtv will play on one or the other (one screen is paused
> while the other is live), and MythTV will only play on the CRT (the TV
just
> goes blank). All of the them are started from an 'xterm' window.
>
> Any help is *greatly* appreciated!
>
> Emmett
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev@snowman.net
> http://www.snowman.net/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev

On Friday 22 November 2002 11:08 pm, Russell Hatch wrote:
> I am using a G400 Dual Head as well, but you appear to have gotten a little
> further than I have.
<snip>
> but at any rate, what I'm
> asking here is how you succeeded in getting the MythTV main screen to
> output to your tv, I would assume this is from some settings in the
> XF86Config? Anyways, lemme know any hints you may have, thanks.
>

That part was pretty easy. I downloaded the X11 drivers from the Matrox site.
They come with a pretty good REAME file that gives several example
configurations for the XF86Config-4 file. There's also a PowerDesk utility
that will let you graphically set the options and modify the configuration.
I tried it afterwards and it seems to work well also.

I always compile the kernel from scratch (I'm using 2.4.19 right now - the
development kernel, 2.5.48, has a compile problem in the bttv drivers). There
are several important options in the Frame Buffer section that relate to the
Matrox G400 - especially Dual Head mode. You'll probably need to check those
out.

Hope this helps,

Emmett

Emmett Pate wrote:

>On Friday 22 November 2002 03:13 pm, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>
>
>>On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 07:48:07AM -0500, Emmett Pate wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Here's my question: I'm using a Matrox G400 Dual Head with the Matrox X11
>>>drivers. After starting X, I get the mythfrontend on both the CRT and
>>>the TV-OUT. However, when I select "Watch TV", the TV-OUT goes blank and
>>>the Television only displays on the CRT. Is this an additional X setting
>>>or something in MythTV?
>>>
>>>
>>Does it work if you only have the TV connected? I don't have one of these
>>cards.
>>
>>
>
>I'm not quite sure how to configure it with the TV on the primary connection.
>That was going to be the last step before installing the box as my primary
>PVR.
>
>It's very frustrating: mplayer will play full screen on both the CRT and TV
>simultaneously, xawtv will play on one or the other (one screen is paused
>while the other is live), and MythTV will only play on the CRT (the TV just
>goes blank). All of the them are started from an 'xterm' window.
>
>Any help is *greatly* appreciated!
>
>Emmett
>
>
>
The reason you can not get the bttv card to display on the second head
which is the tv-out head is that there is only one part(ramdac?) that
does analog overlay on the G-series cards. The bttv data gets dma and
put on the screen with no cpu overhead. There may be a setting to make
the tv-out head the primary head and have uses of the analog overly. The
cool thing that the G-series does have is an Xv driver that lets you
have 32 Xv ports for hardware scaling and color convertion at the same
time as long as you are willing to lose dri, with the TexturedVideo option.