Mailing List Archive

MythTV Experiences (resending)
Issac,

[.I am resending this, because my first attempt,
had paragraphs using word wrap and it looks
horrible when viewing on the archive web site]

Thought I'd share my experience and observations
as I just got MythTV up and running a couple
of days ago. Kudos for how nice packaged it
all looks once everything is working. This
is really great considering the short time
the project has been in existence. Everything
is very intuitive and easy to use.

Hardware:
WinTV-radio (bttv) tv card
Matrox Mystique G200 video card
Athlon 1330
Soundblaster 128
756 meg ram
Western Digital 80 Gig (Special Edition with
8 meg cache) hard drive

Software:
Redhat 7.2 - with lots of updates rpms
KDE 3.03

Installation issues and hurdles:

The requirement of Freetype1 (tricky if you have
Redhat 7.x) was met by downloading Freetype1
source and compiling it in /usr/local so as not
to conflict with my Freetype2 rpm on which many
installed rpms apps depend. I did have to
manually edit the source code to point to the
Freetype1 rather than Freetype2. It seems to
be a common subject in the mailing list and I
wonder if it shouldn't be added to the FAQ.

Between MythTV and xmltv, I had to add a lot
of new Perl modules. Fortunately the CPAN
Search Site at http://search.cpan.org made
finding and downloading them fairly easy.
I wish I had made a list of all the modules
I had to add to make it easier for others and
myself for future installs.

As I followed the instructions in the README,
I initially missed the fact that there were
additional steps to follow after the
information regarding special steps for
those upgrading from previous versions.
If I get some time, I may submit an edited
version of README, if that would help.

Running MythTV:

MythFrontend looks great with a very clear
and easily usable menu. One problem, I
cannot shut it down unless I use the kill
command or have started it inside a terminal
and hit [control]-c. Hitting the escape
key causes it to disappear briefly, only
to pop-up again.

When I start MythTV from MythFrontend, the
tv picture appears briefly, then
MythFrontend pops up in front of it. I
have to tab between windows to get the
MythTV screen back.

While MythFrontend appears on top of my
KDE taskbars, MythTV does not. To get
the full picture, I have to retract the
taskbars.

If only one program has been recorded, that
program's information is not fullyavailable
when seeing the list of program on the
program playback or program delete pages.
The name of the program is on the list, but
there is no picture and no description of
the program. Evidently the single program
is not selected by default. The fact the
program's title is not highlighted would
seem to confirm this, despite the fact that
hitting spacebar will work. The up and
down arrow keys only seem to work when there
is a second program that allows the focus
to shift to another program.

Here is another problem that happens when
only one program has been recorded. The
problem occurs after playing back the
program and hitting escape to return to
the program list screen. Instead of the
normal screen, the screen appears without
any details and does not appear to respond
to any keys. The only way to escape this
screen is by using the kill command on
MythFrontend itself. Once again, this
problem is not evident when there is more
than one program in the program list.

I have recorded programs with
mpeg2 - libavcodec, but have been unable
to play them in either MPlayer or Xine,
despite the claims by each of them to
support FFMpeg. Has mpeg2, like rtjpeg,
been modified for MythTV so that it is
unusable elsewhere?

Things to I would like to see:

I like having MythTV's rewind and
fastforward set to 30 seconds to make it
easier to skip commercials, however it
would be nice to also have a 1-5 second
rewind and fastforward in case the 30
second fastforward skips over the first
few seconds of a program after the
commercials. Having two sets of rewind
and fastforward keys and be able to
give them different values would be
very helpful.

I would like a setting that allows the
users to choose between full-screen
playback and a sizeable window. This
would provide functionality both for
those who view programs via a television
and those (like myself) who view them
sitting in front of a monitor.

I want to be able to record programs
with MythTV and watch/convert/edit the
resulting video files using other video
players and editors. Perhaps this is
already possible and I simply have not
spent enough time working with the mpeg2
files.

All in all, I am very pleased with
MythTV. It makes finding and recording
shows a lot simpler than my old VCR. On
the downside, I may find myself watching
more TV as my favorite programs will now
be more available to me! Keep up the
good work. I eagerly anticipate newer
releases.

John Clement
Re: MythTV Experiences (resending) [ In reply to ]
On Wednesday 02 October 2002 03:36 pm, John Clement wrote:
> Issac,
>
> [.I am resending this, because my first attempt,
> had paragraphs using word wrap and it looks
> horrible when viewing on the archive web site]

Heh. You can use a longer line length than 50 characters =)

> Thought I'd share my experience and observations
> as I just got MythTV up and running a couple
> of days ago. Kudos for how nice packaged it
> all looks once everything is working. This
> is really great considering the short time
> the project has been in existence. Everything
> is very intuitive and easy to use.
>
> Hardware:
> WinTV-radio (bttv) tv card
> Matrox Mystique G200 video card
> Athlon 1330
> Soundblaster 128
> 756 meg ram
> Western Digital 80 Gig (Special Edition with
> 8 meg cache) hard drive
>
> Software:
> Redhat 7.2 - with lots of updates rpms
> KDE 3.03
>
> Installation issues and hurdles:
>
> The requirement of Freetype1 (tricky if you have
> Redhat 7.x) was met by downloading Freetype1
> source and compiling it in /usr/local so as not
> to conflict with my Freetype2 rpm on which many
> installed rpms apps depend. I did have to
> manually edit the source code to point to the
> Freetype1 rather than Freetype2. It seems to
> be a common subject in the mailing list and I
> wonder if it shouldn't be added to the FAQ.

Hopefully should be unnecessary soon.

> Between MythTV and xmltv, I had to add a lot
> of new Perl modules. Fortunately the CPAN
> Search Site at http://search.cpan.org made
> finding and downloading them fairly easy.
> I wish I had made a list of all the modules
> I had to add to make it easier for others and
> myself for future installs.
>
> As I followed the instructions in the README,
> I initially missed the fact that there were
> additional steps to follow after the
> information regarding special steps for
> those upgrading from previous versions.
> If I get some time, I may submit an edited
> version of README, if that would help.

Sure, have a go at improving the docs.

> Running MythTV:
>
> MythFrontend looks great with a very clear
> and easily usable menu. One problem, I
> cannot shut it down unless I use the kill
> command or have started it inside a terminal
> and hit [control]-c. Hitting the escape
> key causes it to disappear briefly, only
> to pop-up again.

It's not meant to be exited -- in CVS, the main menu won't even disappear
anymore when you hit escape on it.

> When I start MythTV from MythFrontend, the
> tv picture appears briefly, then
> MythFrontend pops up in front of it. I
> have to tab between windows to get the
> MythTV screen back.

Fixed in CVS.

> While MythFrontend appears on top of my
> KDE taskbars, MythTV does not. To get
> the full picture, I have to retract the
> taskbars.

Hrm. What do you mean by taskbar? It covers my kde panel fine.

> If only one program has been recorded, that
> program's information is not fullyavailable
> when seeing the list of program on the
> program playback or program delete pages.
> The name of the program is on the list, but
> there is no picture and no description of
> the program. Evidently the single program
> is not selected by default. The fact the
> program's title is not highlighted would
> seem to confirm this, despite the fact that
> hitting spacebar will work. The up and
> down arrow keys only seem to work when there
> is a second program that allows the focus
> to shift to another program.
>
> Here is another problem that happens when
> only one program has been recorded. The
> problem occurs after playing back the
> program and hitting escape to return to
> the program list screen. Instead of the
> normal screen, the screen appears without
> any details and does not appear to respond
> to any keys. The only way to escape this
> screen is by using the kill command on
> MythFrontend itself. Once again, this
> problem is not evident when there is more
> than one program in the program list.

I'll check into this.

> I have recorded programs with
> mpeg2 - libavcodec, but have been unable
> to play them in either MPlayer or Xine,
> despite the claims by each of them to
> support FFMpeg. Has mpeg2, like rtjpeg,
> been modified for MythTV so that it is
> unusable elsewhere?

Well, when you select a different video compression method, it only changes
how it compresses the video part of the file. The overall format mythtv
produces doesn't change, regardless of if you're using mpeg4 or rtjpeg.
MPlayer or Xine's nuppelvideo readers could be modified to read this format
fairly easily, if someone wanted to do that.

> Things to I would like to see:
>
> I like having MythTV's rewind and
> fastforward set to 30 seconds to make it
> easier to skip commercials, however it
> would be nice to also have a 1-5 second
> rewind and fastforward in case the 30
> second fastforward skips over the first
> few seconds of a program after the
> commercials. Having two sets of rewind
> and fastforward keys and be able to
> give them different values would be
> very helpful.
>
> I would like a setting that allows the
> users to choose between full-screen
> playback and a sizeable window. This
> would provide functionality both for
> those who view programs via a television
> and those (like myself) who view them
> sitting in front of a monitor.

The previous two would be extremely easy for someone with even just a tiny bit
of programming experience to do (hint, hint).. =)

> I want to be able to record programs
> with MythTV and watch/convert/edit the
> resulting video files using other video
> players and editors. Perhaps this is
> already possible and I simply have not
> spent enough time working with the mpeg2
> files.

Someone just needs to write a converter for the file format. It's not
something particularly interesting to me, so I won't be doing it. However,
I'm planning on having some rudimentary editing abilities in the 0.7
release.. 2 releases away, but, it'll happen.. It'll at least be able to
edit out commercials.

> All in all, I am very pleased with
> MythTV. It makes finding and recording
> shows a lot simpler than my old VCR. On
> the downside, I may find myself watching
> more TV as my favorite programs will now
> be more available to me! Keep up the
> good work. I eagerly anticipate newer
> releases.

Thanks,

Isaac
Re: MythTV Experiences (resending) [ In reply to ]
john@churchdrama.org wrote:

> I like having MythTV's rewind and
> fastforward set to 30 seconds to make it
> easier to skip commercials, however it
> would be nice to also have a 1-5 second
> rewind and fastforward in case the 30
> second fastforward skips over the first
> few seconds of a program after the
> commercials. Having two sets of rewind
> and fastforward keys and be able to
> give them different values would be
> very helpful.

My thought on this (and something I was looking to implement if Isaac
is OK with it) was the following:

When the on screen display is up and displaying the "forward" or
"reverse" messages after you have pressed the forward or rewind button
then pressing a number would change the behaviour. For example
pressing forward and then 5 might skip forward 5 times as far as
normal. This way you could skip through large parts of the recording
with a few key presses.

Or it could be that forward and then 9 skips forward further than
normal but forward and then 1 skipss forward less than normal. This
way the numbers from 1 to 4 give less than the normal skip and the
numbers 6 to 9 give more than normal skip with a total of 9 different
step sizes.

After the on screen display has gone the behaviour goes back to
normal.

The other option would be that the forward and reverse buttons are
"sticky". When you press one it starts skipping forward until you
press it again. This is how my old video worked and is great for
programs where you want to only see a small part of the whole
recording.


The reason that I would not want a different set of key presses to do
this is that my remote control only has a small number of
buttons. They are all used now, any more won't fit. I don't think
that MythTV should require the use of a keyboard.

--
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk
http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/
Re: Re: MythTV Experiences (resending) [ In reply to ]
>When the on screen display is up and displaying the "forward" or
>"reverse" messages after you have pressed the forward or rewind button
>then pressing a number would change the behaviour. For example
>pressing forward and then 5 might skip forward 5 times as far as
>normal. This way you could skip through large parts of the recording
>with a few key presses.
>
>Or it could be that forward and then 9 skips forward further than
>normal but forward and then 1 skipss forward less than normal. This
>way the numbers from 1 to 4 give less than the normal skip and the
>numbers 6 to 9 give more than normal skip with a total of 9 different
>step sizes.
>
>After the on screen display has gone the behaviour goes back to
>normal.
>
>The other option would be that the forward and reverse buttons are
>"sticky". When you press one it starts skipping forward until you
>press it again. This is how my old video worked and is great for
>programs where you want to only see a small part of the whole
>recording.
>
>
>The reason that I would not want a different set of key presses to do
>this is that my remote control only has a small number of
>buttons. They are all used now, any more won't fit. I don't think
>that MythTV should require the use of a keyboard.
>
>--
>Andrew.

You make some good points about not wanting too many different key presses, although I suppose some "nonessential" key presses could simply be ignored, in terms of using with a remote. The "sticky" suggestion sounds like a good one to offer a way to quickly fastforward or rewind through several minutes of program.

At Issac's prompting, I did drag out the source code and figure out how to implement another set of fastforward and rewind keys, tied to <PageUp> and <PageDown>. It occurred to me though that just setting the original fastforward setting to 30 seconds and the rewind setting to 5 seconds would have given me the functionality that I was missing with just one set of rw/ff keys. Oh well, I learned a few new things in the process.

John Clement