Mailing List Archive

At 02:49 PM 6/5/2003 -0500, mOjO wrote:
>MythTV is off by one channel. Like if I'm watching Channel 9 then the OSD
>and program info says its channel 10. Also the picture is bad and many
>channels are in black and white. I have the same problem in xawtv but can
>correct it with the left/right arrow keys which brings the color back into
>the picture (Kinda like fine-tuning i guess.) I read the section of the
>How-To about "Canada-Cable" but my tuner card is being detected just fine
>as an ATI TV Wonder which is exactly what it is... I am running SuSe 8.2
>with an ATI TV Wonder on an Athlon XP 1700 w/ 512MB ram on a Shuttle SS40G
>system. That section of the How-To just tells me to join another mailing
>list??? Do I really have to join another mailing list and ask
>them? ugh... this is turning into quite the headache... any help for the
>desparate?

Not without details.

1. What card type does bttv report? Are you accepting that setting or
overriding it in /etc/modules.conf (or anyplace else)?

2. What tuner type does bttv report? Are you accepting that setting or
overriding it in /etc/modules.conf (or anyplace else)?

3. What frequencies are you using? (*Reading* about "Canada-Cable" is
useful, but more useful is *doing* what the material you read said to do,
and I cannot tell from what you wrote if you tried other frequency choices
or not.)

4. Are they the frequencies your provider says it is using? (If they don't
say, at leaast next time mention what provider and where you are located.)

The problem you describe is usually caused by getting either item 2 or item
3 wrong.

On Thursday 05 June 2003 03:49 pm, mOjO wrote:
> MythTV is off by one channel. Like if I'm watching Channel 9 then the
> OSD and program info says its channel 10. Also the picture is bad and
> many channels are in black and white. I have the same problem in xawtv
> but can correct it with the left/right arrow keys which brings the color
> back into the picture (Kinda like fine-tuning i guess.) I read the
> section of the How-To about "Canada-Cable" but my tuner card is being
> detected just fine as an ATI TV Wonder which is exactly what it is... I
> am running SuSe 8.2 with an ATI TV Wonder on an Athlon XP 1700 w/ 512MB
> ram on a Shuttle SS40G system. That section of the How-To just tells me
> to join another mailing list??? Do I really have to join another mailing
> list and ask them? ugh... this is turning into quite the headache...
> any help for the desparate?

It is not getting detected 'just fine'. I guarantee that it's wrongly
detecting the tuner type as PAL, while you need to use NTSC. Try loading the
'tuner.o' module with 'type=2' and adding 'tuner=2' to the load line for the
bttv module.

Isaac

mOjO wrote:

> MythTV is off by one channel. Like if I'm watching Channel 9 then the
> OSD and program info says its channel 10. Also the picture is bad and
> many channels are in black and white.

IIRC, those symptoms point to the wrong frequency table. Pick the right
one in the setup app (the standalone one).

> I read the section of the How-To about "Canada-Cable" but my tuner
> card is being detected just fine as an ATI TV Wonder which is exactly
> what it is...

"Canada-cable" is a frequency table. It has nothing to do with the model
of your TV card.

mOjO wrote:
> MythTV is off by one channel.

This is usually the result of the bttv driver not autodecting
the tuner type correctly.

-- bjm

On Thu, 2003-06-05 at 16:41, Ben Bucksch wrote:
> mOjO wrote:
>
> > MythTV is off by one channel. Like if I'm watching Channel 9 then the
> > OSD and program info says its channel 10. Also the picture is bad and
> > many channels are in black and white.
>
> IIRC, those symptoms point to the wrong frequency table. Pick the right
> one in the setup app (the standalone one).
>
> > I read the section of the How-To about "Canada-Cable" but my tuner
> > card is being detected just fine as an ATI TV Wonder which is exactly
> > what it is...
>
> "Canada-cable" is a frequency table. It has nothing to do with the model
> of your TV card.
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

I've had the exact same problem since I started this and finally
corrected it today. Run lsmod (in root) you should see bttv listed.
If it is do a rmmod bttv and then a insmod bttv card=xx tuner=xx and use
the card list in the /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv (or
similar location, personally I did a locate bttv to find it) location to
find the card and tuner settings for your card. I had to shut down my
box pull the tv card and write down the numbers off it to find what the
tuner in it was. That will get all your channels back working/listing as
they should be. Also make sure your using the correct ntsc/pal settings.
After you've found the correct settings and have tested them with insmod
add them to your /etc/modules.conf file to make it permanent.

Hope this helps.

- Jeff "Muddy" Waters

ps. If you need file references email me I'll send what it should look
like to you.

thanks Jeff!

i looked at the cards in the CARDLIST then set card=63 (ATI TV wonder)
and tuner=2 in /etc/modules.conf, rebooted and the channels were good
and the color was back... still all is not entirely well.. it seems i
cant find a harmonious balance between decent picture and not maxxing
out my cpu thus making the audio get choppy... and then sometimes it
just freezes... i think i screwed up so much crap in this system first
trying to get it to compile and then trying to get it to run right that
it may be best for me to clean install and do it right the first time on
the next install now that i know how...
i would think an Athlon XP 1700 would be adequate to handle myth...
maybe SuSe 8.2 is just too bloated or i've FUBAR'd it good... im gonna
mess with it a little more then maybe try Gentoo, if all else fails its
going back to WinXP [insert sinister music here] because the main
purpose of that box is to watch DivX movies and play mp3s in my living
room, i just thought it would also make a nice capping machine.

mOjO

Jeff Waters wrote:

>On Thu, 2003-06-05 at 16:41, Ben Bucksch wrote:
>
>
>>mOjO wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>MythTV is off by one channel. Like if I'm watching Channel 9 then the
>>>OSD and program info says its channel 10. Also the picture is bad and
>>>many channels are in black and white.
>>>
>>>
>>IIRC, those symptoms point to the wrong frequency table. Pick the right
>>one in the setup app (the standalone one).
>>
>>
>>
>>>I read the section of the How-To about "Canada-Cable" but my tuner
>>>card is being detected just fine as an ATI TV Wonder which is exactly
>>>what it is...
>>>
>>>
>>"Canada-cable" is a frequency table. It has nothing to do with the model
>>of your TV card.
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>mythtv-users mailing list
>>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
>>
>>
>
>I've had the exact same problem since I started this and finally
>corrected it today. Run lsmod (in root) you should see bttv listed.
>If it is do a rmmod bttv and then a insmod bttv card=xx tuner=xx and use
>the card list in the /usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv (or
>similar location, personally I did a locate bttv to find it) location to
>find the card and tuner settings for your card. I had to shut down my
>box pull the tv card and write down the numbers off it to find what the
>tuner in it was. That will get all your channels back working/listing as
>they should be. Also make sure your using the correct ntsc/pal settings.
>After you've found the correct settings and have tested them with insmod
>add them to your /etc/modules.conf file to make it permanent.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>- Jeff "Muddy" Waters
>
>ps. If you need file references email me I'll send what it should look
>like to you.
>
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users@snowman.net
>http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>

At 11:33 PM 6/5/2003 -0500, mOjO wrote:
>thanks Jeff!
>
>i looked at the cards in the CARDLIST then set card=63 (ATI TV wonder) and
>tuner=2 in /etc/modules.conf, rebooted and the channels were good and the
>color was back... still all is not entirely well.. it seems i cant find a
>harmonious balance between decent picture and not maxxing out my cpu thus
>making the audio get choppy... and then sometimes it just freezes... i
>think i screwed up so much crap in this system first trying to get it to
>compile and then trying to get it to run right that it may be best for me
>to clean install and do it right the first time on the next install now
>that i know how...
>i would think an Athlon XP 1700 would be adequate to handle myth... maybe
>SuSe 8.2 is just too bloated or i've FUBAR'd it good... im gonna mess with
>it a little more then maybe try Gentoo, if all else fails its going back
>to WinXP [insert sinister music here] because the main purpose of that box
>is to watch DivX movies and play mp3s in my living room, i just thought it
>would also make a nice capping machine.

Vague descriptions like "a harmonious balance between decent picture and
not maxxing out my cpu" and "would be adequate to handle myth" are ...
well, vague.

If you want help with this one, you need to give us some information, such
as ...

1. What video card and what X server are you using?

2. Whatever the answer to #1, is Myth using xv (xVideo) to diaplay motion
video? (The alternatives are enormous CPU-cycle hogs.)

3. What resolution have you specified for capture? I've just started
playing around with this, and today I'm seeing that dropping resolution to
320x240 reduces CPU use almost beyond belief. (My Cel 1.7 playing "live" TV
is down around 20% load, using a bt878 card and MPEG4 encoding.) I haven't
tested this one yet, but I'm wondering if using an aspect ratio that is not
4:3 increases the load on the frontend (decoding and displaying) process
appreciably ... I've always been puzzled as to why mythfrontend uses so
much more CPU than other decoding applications like xine.

4. How clean is the incoming signal? With every encoding process I've used
(e.g., mythbackend, vcr/avifile, ffmpeg), a noisy signal takes more CPU
time to encode than a clean one.

I'd look at these sorts of issues before doing anything drastic like
changing Linux distro.

On Friday 06 June 2003 12:59 am, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> I haven't
> tested this one yet, but I'm wondering if using an aspect ratio that is not
> 4:3 increases the load on the frontend (decoding and displaying) process
> appreciably ... I've always been puzzled as to why mythfrontend uses so
> much more CPU than other decoding applications like xine.

Hmm -- quite possibly. It _may_ be that the Xv stuff is doing at least some
of the scaling in software on your machine, but you've said you're using a
nvidia card, so I don't think it should be doing that. Still, might be on to
something, there.

Isaac

mOjO wrote:
> i would think an Athlon XP 1700 would be adequate to handle myth...
> maybe SuSe 8.2 is just too bloated or i've FUBAR'd it good... im gonna
> mess with it a little more then maybe try Gentoo, if all else fails its
> going back to WinXP [insert sinister music here] because the main
> purpose of that box is to watch DivX movies and play mp3s in my living
> room, i just thought it would also make a nice capping machine.

An Athlon XP 1700+ is more than enough if you only have one tuner, if
you tweak the recording settings, and you remove all the unused
processes/daemons in your system. I can do 320x480 Mpeg-4 livetv with
mp3 (quality 7) on my Celeron 1.1Ghz, you could try starting from that
and slowly upping resolution, or quality, until you get something
acceptable.


Pete

Pierre-Olivier Bouchard wrote:

> mOjO wrote:
>
>> i would think an Athlon XP 1700 would be adequate to handle myth...
>> maybe SuSe 8.2 is just too bloated or i've FUBAR'd it good... im
>> gonna mess with it a little more then maybe try Gentoo, if all else
>> fails its going back to WinXP [insert sinister music here] because
>> the main purpose of that box is to watch DivX movies and play mp3s in
>> my living room, i just thought it would also make a nice capping
>> machine.
>
>
> An Athlon XP 1700+ is more than enough if you only have one tuner, if
> you tweak the recording settings, and you remove all the unused
> processes/daemons in your system. I can do 320x480 Mpeg-4 livetv with
> mp3 (quality 7) on my Celeron 1.1Ghz, you could try starting from that
> and slowly upping resolution, or quality, until you get something
> acceptable.
>
hmm.. i was messing with the default codec instead of mpeg4.. what does
everyone prefer? I had just assumed the best choice was the default..
cpu usage was fine at that res (320x480) but the picture was bad and so
was the sound, other resolutions just kicked up the cpu too high...
although i noted someones comments here about a crappy tv signal getting
even worse when run through livetv and the cpu usage going up more
because of it. My signal looks fine on the tv and they ran a new line
into my cable box when i got my cable modem though so that shouldnt be
it. I went ahead and blanked that machine (probably much to the chagrin
of the kind folk that helped me get it running on Suse) and am in the
process of setting up Gentoo which has a lot fewer of those unneeded
services and i'm going to compare results (mostly im just curious about
that distro). Probably it will be better this time around, but we shall
see. Any caveats to be aware of that arent on the how-to with a Gentoo
install?

mOjO wrote:
> I went ahead and blanked that machine (probably much to the chagrin
> of the kind folk that helped me get it running on Suse) and am in the
> process of setting up Gentoo which has a lot fewer of those unneeded
> services and i'm going to compare results (mostly im just curious about
> that distro). Probably it will be better this time around, but we shall
> see. Any caveats to be aware of that arent on the how-to with a Gentoo
> install?

Try not to use the ck-sources kernel, you can't change
colour/brightness/contrast with it, I think he's using an older version
of the v4l2 patch. I can adjust contrast/etc. fine with the
gentoo-sources kernel, gs-sources should be fine too.

Also, if you're following the docs on the MythTV website, you DON'T need
KDE to run myth, I have yet to contact the maintainer of that part of
the docs... should save you a few hours of compiling ;)


Pete