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daft newbie questions :-)
paullocal at pscs
Mar 28, 2003, 4:17 AM
Post #1 of 14 (4226 views)
Permalink
OK, I've just found mythtv and I'm going to have a go at setting it up, but
I have some daft questions.

1) (I don't know if I dare ask this....) - which is the 'best' flavour of
Linux to use for this - the PC in question isn't going to be used for
anything else except mythtv. Is there any real difference between them for
this? (I have a copy of RedHat sitting around, but I can use something else
if it's better/easier)

2) Is there any 'trick' to having two TV cards in a single PC? Don't they
conflict? I presume 'basic' TV cards are better than fancy ones (eg a WinTV
Theater rather than a WinTV PVR-350). If I want two cards should they be
different makes to avoid conflicts? Are any TV cards better than any others?

3) Does RAM make any difference to MythTV (would 1GB be better than 256M or
512M?) given that the PC is ONLY going to be used for MythTV.

Any problems with the following PC spec?
- AMD Athlon XP 2800+
- Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
- 512MB DDR RAM
- 120GB UDMA-100 drive
- IDE DVD-ROM drive
- ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
- Hauppauge WinTV Theater (x 2?)
- PC BlastIR
any components there which are going to be a problem? Would there be any
that anyone would recommend instead?

Sorry if these are daft questions but I'm not a Linux expert (Windows,
yes..) and I've never used MythTV before so I thought I'd better ask before
trying and wasting money.

Any other thoughts/comments would be welcome :-)
RE: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
rkulagowski at thrupoint
Mar 28, 2003, 7:37 AM
Post #2 of 14 (4191 views)
Permalink
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> 1) (I don't know if I dare ask this....) - which is the
> 'best' flavour of
> Linux to use for this - the PC in question isn't going to be used
> for anything else except mythtv. Is there any real difference
> between them for
> this? (I have a copy of RedHat sitting around, but I can use
> something else
> if it's better/easier)

That's a matter of personal preference. Mandrake and Redhat have the
most documentation in the HOWTO, debian and Red Hat have pre-made
RPMs for MythTV. Other than that, they're just about all the same.
Personally, I'm a Mandrake fan, but it doesn't really matter.

> Are any TV cards better than any others?

There are some poor tuner designs that cause the video to not be as
clear as they could be. Problem is that vendors will come out with
radically different designs, all under the same name, so there's no
way to know ahead of time.

For now, you're going to want to ensure that your card has a BT8x8
chip on it, not a CX23881, since there's no drivers for the latter.

Finally, the HOWTO has a list of cards that support btaudio. From
the system specs below, you either need to run btaudio, or get
another sound card.

> 3) Does RAM make any difference to MythTV (would 1GB be
> better than 256M or
> 512M?) given that the PC is ONLY going to be used for MythTV.

256M is more than enough for a dedicated Myth box.

> Any problems with the following PC spec?
> - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
> - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
Check the archives for issues with nForce audio chipsets.

> - 512MB DDR RAM
> - 120GB UDMA-100 drive
> - IDE DVD-ROM drive

> - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
Check the archive about issues with ATI cards and X drivers.

> - Hauppauge WinTV Theater (x 2?)
Should support btaudio.

> - PC BlastIR

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RE: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
paullocal at pscs
Mar 28, 2003, 8:27 AM
Post #3 of 14 (4194 views)
Permalink
Thanks for the response :-)

> > 1) (I don't know if I dare ask this....) - which is the
> > 'best' flavour of
> > Linux to use for this - the PC in question isn't going to be used
>
>That's a matter of personal preference. Mandrake and Redhat have the
>most documentation in the HOWTO, debian and Red Hat have pre-made
>RPMs for MythTV. Other than that, they're just about all the same.
>Personally, I'm a Mandrake fan, but it doesn't really matter.

I'll use RedHat then, since I've had a bit of experience with it.

> > Any problems with the following PC spec?
> > - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
> > - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
>Check the archives for issues with nForce audio chipsets.

The A7V8X motherboard has a Realtek audio chipset and VIA KT400 main
chipset - I can't find any reference to 'nForce' on Asus' website regarding
this motherboard - so I think I'm Ok there.

(The A7*N*8X motherboards seem to use nForce chipsets)

If all else fails I've got a spare SB-Live card sitting around, so I could
disable on-board audio and use that instead.

> > - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
>Check the archive about issues with ATI cards and X drivers.

Where? Sorry, I can see issues with ATI 'All in wonder' cards (with tuner
etc), but nothing about plain old graphics cards. Do you remember what the
problem was?

If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost) card
to use?


Paul VPOP3 - Internet Email Server/Gateway
support@pscs.co.uk http://www.pscs.co.uk/
RE: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
rkulagowski at thrupoint
Mar 28, 2003, 8:46 AM
Post #4 of 14 (4178 views)
Permalink
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> > > Any problems with the following PC spec?
> > > - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
> > > - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
> >Check the archives for issues with nForce audio chipsets.
>
> The A7V8X motherboard has a Realtek audio chipset and VIA KT400
> main chipset - I can't find any reference to 'nForce' on Asus'
> website regarding
> this motherboard - so I think I'm Ok there.
> (The A7*N*8X motherboards seem to use nForce chipsets)

OK, my error. Eyes blurred and read what I wanted to see, rather
than what you wrote.

> If all else fails I've got a spare SB-Live card sitting
> around, so I could disable on-board audio and use that instead.

Sound good.

> > > - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
> >Check the archive about issues with ATI cards and X drivers.
>
> Where? Sorry, I can see issues with ATI 'All in wonder' cards
> (with tuner
> etc), but nothing about plain old graphics cards. Do you
> remember what the
> problem was?

Sorry - If there isn't anything in the archive (did you look at
myth-dev and myth-user?), then I may be confusing the AIW issues /
ati.2 gatos driver issues with reality. Does someone with a working
ATI 9000 want to chime in as to whether the TV-Out is going to work
and whether the card has Xv support?

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RE: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
thormj at ieee
Mar 28, 2003, 10:58 AM
Post #5 of 14 (4201 views)
Permalink
>> Any problems with the following PC spec?
>> - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
>> - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
>Check the archives for issues with nForce audio chipsets.

I know he corrected the motherboard model #, but
I wanted to say that I'm running nForce1 audio
without problems (use ALSA, not the nVidia driver,
and be sure to disable ACPI in the bios).

You do have to muddle with the mixer stuff
(Capture on line-in, not mixer, Capture on the Captur
channel, and set the volume so it won't clip...
the nForce makes horrid noises when it clips!)

-Thor Johnson
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
gtgj at pacbell
Mar 28, 2003, 11:42 AM
Post #6 of 14 (4194 views)
Permalink
>>>>> On Fri, 28 Mar 2003 11:17:15 +0000, Paul Smith <paullocal@pscs.co.uk> said:

p> Any problems with the following PC spec?
p> - AMD Athlon XP 2800+
p> - Asus A7V8X/LAN motherboard (built in audio)
p> - 512MB DDR RAM
p> - 120GB UDMA-100 drive
p> - IDE DVD-ROM drive
p> - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
p> - Hauppauge WinTV Theater (x 2?)
p> - PC BlastIR
p> any components there which are going to be a problem? Would there be
p> any that anyone would recommend instead?


I have an A7V8X. Full-duplex audio is fine with the ALSA driver
(snd-via82xx). I haven't tried the OSS/Free driver which I think
comes with only the latest kernels. I also have a Radeon 7500.
TV-out was a little painful to get working (need to build "devel"
branch of gatos ati.2 driver, which requires that you have a
compatible XFree86 source tree around). Even then, you can't tweak it
to do overscanning. If this matters to you, there is currently a
thread on video card recommendations.

--
Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.
gtgj@pacbell.net
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
bjm at lvcm
Mar 28, 2003, 11:56 AM
Post #7 of 14 (4187 views)
Permalink
Paul Smith wrote:
...
>> > - ATI 9000 card with TV-Out
>> Check the archive about issues with ATI cards and X drivers.
>
>
> Where? Sorry, I can see issues with ATI 'All in wonder' cards (with
> tuner etc), but nothing about plain old graphics cards. Do you remember
> what the problem was?

For ATI TV-OUT to work (All in wonder or not), you need to
use the abandoned 'devel' branch of the GATOS ati.2 driver.

> If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost)
> card to use?

NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.

-- bjm
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
mythtv at zencow
Mar 28, 2003, 12:53 PM
Post #8 of 14 (4178 views)
Permalink
Bruce Markey wrote
> Paul Smith wrote:
> > If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost)
> > card to use?
>
> NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
> nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
> other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.

Also, cards based on the GeForce2 MX chip are dual-headed, which
allow you to use TwinView, providing both monitor and tv-out at
the same time (if that matters to you). Other GeForce chipsets
also support TwinView. You can find a list in the documentation
on NVidia's website in the linux driver section.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123

There's also a version 4191 of the driver, but there are some
problems, so if you go with an NVidia-based card, the 3123 driver
is the way to go.

-Chris
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
paullocal at pscs
Mar 28, 2003, 5:56 PM
Post #9 of 14 (4180 views)
Permalink
At 10:56 28/03/2003 -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
>Paul Smith wrote:
>...
>>If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost) card
>>to use?
>
>NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
>nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
>other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.

OK, you and others have persuaded me - I'll look for an NVidia GeForce2
instead.


Paul VPOP3 - Internet Email Server/Gateway
support@pscs.co.uk http://www.pscs.co.uk/
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
gtgj at pacbell
Mar 28, 2003, 6:30 PM
Post #10 of 14 (4181 views)
Permalink
>>>>> On Sat, 29 Mar 2003 00:56:12 +0000, Paul Smith <paullocal@pscs.co.uk> said:

p> OK, you and others have persuaded me - I'll look for an NVidia
p> GeForce2 instead.

There's a nice database on http://tvtool.de/ (the tool that
inspired nvtv) which lists which cards have which kind of encoder
chip.

--
Gregorio Gervasio, Jr.
gtgj@pacbell.net
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
mike at woodsnest
Mar 29, 2003, 9:36 AM
Post #11 of 14 (4209 views)
Permalink
Chris,

Could you tell me more about your last comment below? What is wrong
with the 4191 Nvidia driver? I have that installed now and it seems
ok...but I could be missing something.

Thanks,
Mike


Chris Palmer wrote:

>Bruce Markey wrote
>
>
>>Paul Smith wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost)
>>>card to use?
>>>
>>>
>>NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
>>nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
>>other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.
>>
>>
>
>Also, cards based on the GeForce2 MX chip are dual-headed, which
>allow you to use TwinView, providing both monitor and tv-out at
>the same time (if that matters to you). Other GeForce chipsets
>also support TwinView. You can find a list in the documentation
>on NVidia's website in the linux driver section.
>
>http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123
>
>There's also a version 4191 of the driver, but there are some
>problems, so if you go with an NVidia-based card, the 3123 driver
>is the way to go.
>
>-Chris
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
>
>
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
mythtv at zencow
Mar 29, 2003, 2:54 PM
Post #12 of 14 (4205 views)
Permalink
Mike...

I don't have first-hand experience with it, since I never installed
the 4191 driver, but some folks on the list have reported performance
problems. I did a quick look thru the list archive and found this
from about a week ago. This link gets you into the relevant part of
the thread where folks mention the issue:

http://gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Users_F11/Locks_Up_and_Slow_Performance_P55093/#55435

I pulled this snippet from there, which gives you a link to *even*
more to read about it on the NVidia forums. :)

Gregorio Gervasio wrote on March 21,2003, 1:50am:
> Here's a long discussion with reports of 2D performance
> problems with the 1.0-4191 drivers:
>
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=a6e76319689ed72255686de1a0ca141d&threadid=4997
>
> Anyway, nVidia is aware of the problem.

Hope that helps!

-Chris


Mike Wood wrote
> Chris,
>
> Could you tell me more about your last comment below? What is wrong
> with the 4191 Nvidia driver? I have that installed now and it seems
> ok...but I could be missing something.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
>
> Chris Palmer wrote:
>
> >Bruce Markey wrote
> >
> >
> >>Paul Smith wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost)
> >>>card to use?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
> >>nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
> >>other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Also, cards based on the GeForce2 MX chip are dual-headed, which
> >allow you to use TwinView, providing both monitor and tv-out at
> >the same time (if that matters to you). Other GeForce chipsets
> >also support TwinView. You can find a list in the documentation
> >on NVidia's website in the linux driver section.
> >
> >http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123
> >
> >There's also a version 4191 of the driver, but there are some
> >problems, so if you go with an NVidia-based card, the 3123 driver
> >is the way to go.
> >
> >-Chris
> >_______________________________________________
> >mythtv-users mailing list
> >mythtv-users@snowman.net
> >http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
Re: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
mark at zzo
Mar 29, 2003, 3:17 PM
Post #13 of 14 (4206 views)
Permalink
FWIW I'm using the 4191 driver/glx for a couple months now no problems.
M

Chris Palmer(mythtv@zencow.com)@2003.03.29 13:54:54 +0000:
> Mike...
>
> I don't have first-hand experience with it, since I never installed
> the 4191 driver, but some folks on the list have reported performance
> problems. I did a quick look thru the list archive and found this
> from about a week ago. This link gets you into the relevant part of
> the thread where folks mention the issue:
>
> http://gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Users_F11/Locks_Up_and_Slow_Performance_P55093/#55435
>
> I pulled this snippet from there, which gives you a link to *even*
> more to read about it on the NVidia forums. :)
>
> Gregorio Gervasio wrote on March 21,2003, 1:50am:
> > Here's a long discussion with reports of 2D performance
> > problems with the 1.0-4191 drivers:
> >
> > http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=a6e76319689ed72255686de1a0ca141d&threadid=4997
> >
> > Anyway, nVidia is aware of the problem.
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> -Chris
>
>
> Mike Wood wrote
> > Chris,
> >
> > Could you tell me more about your last comment below? What is wrong
> > with the 4191 Nvidia driver? I have that installed now and it seems
> > ok...but I could be missing something.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mike
> >
> >
> > Chris Palmer wrote:
> >
> > >Bruce Markey wrote
> > >
> > >
> > >>Paul Smith wrote:
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>>If plain ATI graphics cards are a problem what's a better (low cost)
> > >>>card to use?
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>NVidia GeForce2 have the advantage of a nifty utility called
> > >>nvtv which can control overscan, x,y position and lots of
> > >>other controls that you wouldn't have with other cards.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >Also, cards based on the GeForce2 MX chip are dual-headed, which
> > >allow you to use TwinView, providing both monitor and tv-out at
> > >the same time (if that matters to you). Other GeForce chipsets
> > >also support TwinView. You can find a list in the documentation
> > >on NVidia's website in the linux driver section.
> > >
> > >http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-3123
> > >
> > >There's also a version 4191 of the driver, but there are some
> > >problems, so if you go with an NVidia-based card, the 3123 driver
> > >is the way to go.
> > >
> > >-Chris
> > >_______________________________________________
> > >mythtv-users mailing list
> > >mythtv-users@snowman.net
> > >http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > mythtv-users mailing list
> > mythtv-users@snowman.net
> > http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

--
------------------------------------------
Mark Ethan Trostler mark@zzo.com
Computing Solutions http://www.zzo.com
------------------------------------------
RE: daft newbie questions :-) [ In reply to ]
thormj at ieee
Mar 29, 2003, 3:50 PM
Post #14 of 14 (4186 views)
Permalink
>FWIW I'm using the 4191 driver/glx for a couple months now no problems.
Chris Palmer(mythtv@zencow.com)@2003.03.29 13:54:54 +0000:
> Mike...
>
>> I don't have first-hand experience with it, since I never installed
>> the 4191 driver, but some folks on the list have reported performance
>> problems. I did a quick look thru the list archive and found this
>> from about a week ago. This link gets you into the relevant part of
>> the thread where folks mention the issue:

FWIW^2, I am using the 4191 drivers. It seems that XV support was improved
(I used to see ~35-40% X usage and now I see less than 10%). 2D support
is noticeably slower than it was under 3193 (but not unacceptable for Myth).
I did have to (manually) turn on the Render Accelleration and AGP support
for 4191 (no GART here), so that might be why I was seeing so much processor
earlier....

-Thor Johnson

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