always best.
It appears that MythTV v0.21 may be a little on the immature side still, or maybe it was just the idiot at the keyboard. Either way, it appeared to me to be too unstable to pass either my meager expectations, much less sidling up to the ol WAF.
Speaking of the Wife Acceptance Factor, I havent quite figured out how to define that yet. My thoughts would be to have her be able to use the device daily without fail. We all know thats pie in the sky, but where is the happy middle ground? Being that the device will likely end up in the game room(with the hdtv), I dont think it will be the one that gets used most(I think Ill either keep a TW DVR downstairs for now), but look at replacing it with a remote frontend in short order.
So my thoughts currently run along these lines, though I am sure they will change as she starts to use the device(ie, it will likely be downstairs at least until I get the HDTV):
1) Low learning curve(if it takes too long to explain something techincal, my wonderful wife quickly looses interest), the basics(manipulating live TV, recording, watching recordings,maintaing recordings) must be very easy. Advanced functions are, for now, exempt as for my WAF, I only need it to be as functional as the TW boxen
2) stable! It must be at least as, but preferably more, stable than the TW boxes(he thinks as he looks at the dead one)
So, I guess, in the end, thats my target for WAF, the ability to replace her TW DVR with the Myth box with no loss of functionality and little to no training(MAX: 15-30 mintues with the remote/keyboard). Any functionality provided on top of that is cake for now.
Now, on to todays news, I moved back to MythTV 0.20 after a frustrating time with 0.21. I have all the channels tuned, but I cannot seem to get any to lock right now. Thats the current issue Im working on, it looks like it may be a simple configuration issue, which make sense;-) PEBCAK. I hoping to have all that sewed up this evening and move on to more interesting stuff tomorrow, I guess we will see.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
All went smoothly
with the kernel upgrade. Im now running a custom 2.6.20.9 kernel with ivtv, nvidia, and lirc custom modules. I was finally able to finish building MythTV 0.21(from subversion). So now I have absolutely everything at the latest revisions possible, the kernel, the software, the firmware, the bios, and even the OS packages. So I think that part may finally be done.
As for MythTV, the upgrade to 0.21 went well, it upgraded the backend DB automagically and kept everything in place. The only problem was it lost the tuners to begin with, but I was able to get them back in easily. I seem to still have the problem with the digital tuner though. I can pull in the QAM signals just fine, but anything else above 100 I only get a partial lock. I have done absolutely no tuning up until this point, just trying to get everything working together at the same time, but thats done now.
My attack plan is this, in this order:
1) get the tuning complete, NTSC, QAM, ATSC soI can pick up any channel fed by TW
2) Get the recording setup properly so that I dont have to do it manually(ie, I want it to use the digital tuner if the channel is above 100)
3) Check the firewire feed and see if I can:
a) pull the data directly
or
b) use it as additional tuners
4) Complete the channel lineup and feeds(Im not yet receiving the tv listing feeds for the QAM channels)
5) Fix the steaming(though this may be a MythTV problem, I need to research)
6) Play, I want to start being able to do something with remote ;-) Im tired of using the keyboard!!!
Anyhow, thats the grand plan at this point. Im sure changes will be many and often, but for now, thats the current plan.
Off I go...
As for MythTV, the upgrade to 0.21 went well, it upgraded the backend DB automagically and kept everything in place. The only problem was it lost the tuners to begin with, but I was able to get them back in easily. I seem to still have the problem with the digital tuner though. I can pull in the QAM signals just fine, but anything else above 100 I only get a partial lock. I have done absolutely no tuning up until this point, just trying to get everything working together at the same time, but thats done now.
My attack plan is this, in this order:
1) get the tuning complete, NTSC, QAM, ATSC soI can pick up any channel fed by TW
2) Get the recording setup properly so that I dont have to do it manually(ie, I want it to use the digital tuner if the channel is above 100)
3) Check the firewire feed and see if I can:
a) pull the data directly
or
b) use it as additional tuners
4) Complete the channel lineup and feeds(Im not yet receiving the tv listing feeds for the QAM channels)
5) Fix the steaming(though this may be a MythTV problem, I need to research)
6) Play, I want to start being able to do something with remote ;-) Im tired of using the keyboard!!!
Anyhow, thats the grand plan at this point. Im sure changes will be many and often, but for now, thats the current plan.
Off I go...
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Why exactly is CompUSA closing stores
<rant>
So, I needed a firewire cable. No big deal. I figured during lunch Id just pop over to CompUSA and pick one up. Our store is one of the ones that is closing, I thought hell, maybe Ill get a good deal. So we go in, shelves are already somewhat barren, and have someone point us to the cables. So they carry two of them, a 3' Ft Shielded one and a 17' ft Shielded 6-to-6 pin cable. The 3' ft cable cost: $25!!! The 17' ft a mere 10$ more. Now, look at the prices on those links, these are almost identical cables, and I'd even venture that the ones from newegg are better! I picked one up against my better judgement and decided to look around as I am somewhat in the market for a HDTV;-) Anyhow, they have a beautiful 32" LCD on sale for ONLY $1200, WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING? No wonder this company is closing stores! I hope each and every one of their stores closes and the management team is banished to hell to make 6" crossover cables for eternity. I never did like the store before and now I am happy to say that I would have to travel to Greensboro to visit a CompUSA, and I can assure you, thats NEVER going to happen. Long story longer, went down the street a bought a nice 6' ft cable for $7, thanks Intrex!
F CompUSA!
</rant>
So, on to last nights drama;-)
Anyhow, I didnt get to play around until almost 10 last night, I found I was able to switch between tuners on the HD card just fine(but not automagically(at least not yet)). I could tune in all the channels I tuned via QAM, but all the other digital channel appeared to only give me a partial lock. At this point I wanted to start looking at my signal strength and found that it shows 0%. This is a known issue. Anyhow, the fix is to upgrade to the 2.6.20 kernel, which as I talked about earlier causes USB lockups. FARK!
However, I ditched my usb network card in favor of hacking my WAP11 into a wireless DLink client. And flashing my brand new Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 Wireless Router with Tomato firmware. This takes the USB out of the picture for now, at least until I can figure out why it is locking up on 2.6.20 and I can upgrade to the lastest kernel version. I hope to be able to hide out and do that sometime this evening!
Anyhow, that my story and Im sticking to it....updates later!
So, I needed a firewire cable. No big deal. I figured during lunch Id just pop over to CompUSA and pick one up. Our store is one of the ones that is closing, I thought hell, maybe Ill get a good deal. So we go in, shelves are already somewhat barren, and have someone point us to the cables. So they carry two of them, a 3' Ft Shielded one and a 17' ft Shielded 6-to-6 pin cable. The 3' ft cable cost: $25!!! The 17' ft a mere 10$ more. Now, look at the prices on those links, these are almost identical cables, and I'd even venture that the ones from newegg are better! I picked one up against my better judgement and decided to look around as I am somewhat in the market for a HDTV;-) Anyhow, they have a beautiful 32" LCD on sale for ONLY $1200, WTF ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING? No wonder this company is closing stores! I hope each and every one of their stores closes and the management team is banished to hell to make 6" crossover cables for eternity. I never did like the store before and now I am happy to say that I would have to travel to Greensboro to visit a CompUSA, and I can assure you, thats NEVER going to happen. Long story longer, went down the street a bought a nice 6' ft cable for $7, thanks Intrex!
F CompUSA!
</rant>
So, on to last nights drama;-)
Anyhow, I didnt get to play around until almost 10 last night, I found I was able to switch between tuners on the HD card just fine(but not automagically(at least not yet)). I could tune in all the channels I tuned via QAM, but all the other digital channel appeared to only give me a partial lock. At this point I wanted to start looking at my signal strength and found that it shows 0%. This is a known issue. Anyhow, the fix is to upgrade to the 2.6.20 kernel, which as I talked about earlier causes USB lockups. FARK!
However, I ditched my usb network card in favor of hacking my WAP11 into a wireless DLink client. And flashing my brand new Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 Wireless Router with Tomato firmware. This takes the USB out of the picture for now, at least until I can figure out why it is locking up on 2.6.20 and I can upgrade to the lastest kernel version. I hope to be able to hide out and do that sometime this evening!
Anyhow, that my story and Im sticking to it....updates later!
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The weekend was a disaster!
But only as far as MythTV goes, I got alot of yardwork done though;-) and that was nice.
Anyhow, things are moving along a bit, but slowly. I found a feature in MythTV 0.21 that I decided I had to have. These are groups, specifically the recording groups. My problem was that when I was scheduling recordings I had to manually choose which tuner to use and I already missed a couple of recordings because, for instance, I chose to tape a game in HD this weekend, but MythTV chose to tape it on one of the analog tuners. So I have 1.4 Gigs of white noise;-) So anyhow I got to looking around and found that there is a new feature(groups) in 0.21 that gives you more ability to chose how and when to tape. So thats what I worked on this weekend, I got MythTV 0.21 built, the channels populated and recordings started. I still need to do some more reading on the groups to get them to work the way I want them to, but that is only a matter of time.
I am having trouble as far as the pchdtv card, but I think its HIGHLY likely its user error;-) I havent dug into it too deeply, but apparently the card offers both ATSC and NTSC signals, but I cannot see to get them both to work. ie Once the card hits HD I cannot seem to get it to switch back to the SD, and vice-versa. I guess I am actually going to have to read something, though I havent quite reached that point yet!
As far as the OS though, I think we are reaching the final status of the OS, ie all necessary packages installed.
I pulled in all my MAME and Sega ROMs into MythGame and played PacMan last night, it rocked;-) So right now, we are basically stablizing and tweaking the OS(~80-85% complete) and tackling the new version of MythTV(<0% ;-).
Im really looking forward to next week and I have the week off. This was taken at this time to give me time to work on my MythMachine. I have been working my buns off for brownie points over the last few weeks/weekends and I have been told, I can do whatever I want next week and the honey do list will be hidden!!! Yeah, so next week, expect some serious progress as well as a few more pictures and I ll start getting up some screen shots as well.
Anyhow, things are moving along a bit, but slowly. I found a feature in MythTV 0.21 that I decided I had to have. These are groups, specifically the recording groups. My problem was that when I was scheduling recordings I had to manually choose which tuner to use and I already missed a couple of recordings because, for instance, I chose to tape a game in HD this weekend, but MythTV chose to tape it on one of the analog tuners. So I have 1.4 Gigs of white noise;-) So anyhow I got to looking around and found that there is a new feature(groups) in 0.21 that gives you more ability to chose how and when to tape. So thats what I worked on this weekend, I got MythTV 0.21 built, the channels populated and recordings started. I still need to do some more reading on the groups to get them to work the way I want them to, but that is only a matter of time.
I am having trouble as far as the pchdtv card, but I think its HIGHLY likely its user error;-) I havent dug into it too deeply, but apparently the card offers both ATSC and NTSC signals, but I cannot see to get them both to work. ie Once the card hits HD I cannot seem to get it to switch back to the SD, and vice-versa. I guess I am actually going to have to read something, though I havent quite reached that point yet!
As far as the OS though, I think we are reaching the final status of the OS, ie all necessary packages installed.
I pulled in all my MAME and Sega ROMs into MythGame and played PacMan last night, it rocked;-) So right now, we are basically stablizing and tweaking the OS(~80-85% complete) and tackling the new version of MythTV(<0% ;-).
Im really looking forward to next week and I have the week off. This was taken at this time to give me time to work on my MythMachine. I have been working my buns off for brownie points over the last few weeks/weekends and I have been told, I can do whatever I want next week and the honey do list will be hidden!!! Yeah, so next week, expect some serious progress as well as a few more pictures and I ll start getting up some screen shots as well.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
We have QAM
So I was actually tuning the QAM stuff ok, I just wasnt changing over to the HD Tuner before attempting to tune the HD/Digital channels. I ran the channel scan utility that accompanies DVB Apps and it found 375 channels. I was able to watch some of the HD Ondemand stuff around the 500 channels so I think Im pulling in everything I can. I definitely found ~23 QAM signals(WRAL,WUNC,WRDC and others). So we are making progress. I have not yet figured out how to force the tuner to change as you are navigating into the higher channel set. Just another tourist spot on the journey;-)
I also have MythWeb working, which allows you to schedule your recordings, resolve recording conflicts and view the current lineup(whats playing). It also allows you to see some stats on the Myth machine and give you an interface to MythWeather and MythNews(both of which are also working).
I also sent over 6 gigs of mp3s, that I spent the last 3 months ripping, and 9 gigs of MAME stuff, so the hard drive is getting a workout. I also want to have Sega Genesis, SNES, and possibly other emulators as well. I need to look into some wireless gaming gear;-)
I also have MythWeb working, which allows you to schedule your recordings, resolve recording conflicts and view the current lineup(whats playing). It also allows you to see some stats on the Myth machine and give you an interface to MythWeather and MythNews(both of which are also working).
I also sent over 6 gigs of mp3s, that I spent the last 3 months ripping, and 9 gigs of MAME stuff, so the hard drive is getting a workout. I also want to have Sega Genesis, SNES, and possibly other emulators as well. I need to look into some wireless gaming gear;-)
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Where are we now? You ask...
Well, we had a slight setback. I screwed up something so bad, I decided a reinstall would be quicker than trying to figure out what I had done;-)
So, reinstalled, reupgraded, repatched, reprayed, rescanned channels, more beautiful channels, and now I have sound as well!
But, it does not appear that I am pulling the QAM signal. I have just started researching that as far as the card(pchdtv), mythtv, and what my current setup is at the house(already boosted downstairs). But who knows, the signal might be too strong(hey I can hope!). I am pulling the TV listings via Zap2IT and I can schedule and record from analog, watch, pause, rewind live-tv and other various aspects.
So we are getting there....slowly. I have alot of customization to do as well, the basic setup for MythTV leaves me a little unimpressed, however, that could well be my piss-poor "TV" setup at this point.
I have the day off work today, so Ill try to get some captures of the current setup on later this evening.
Ta-ta for now....work to do!
So, reinstalled, reupgraded, repatched, reprayed, rescanned channels, more beautiful channels, and now I have sound as well!
But, it does not appear that I am pulling the QAM signal. I have just started researching that as far as the card(pchdtv), mythtv, and what my current setup is at the house(already boosted downstairs). But who knows, the signal might be too strong(hey I can hope!). I am pulling the TV listings via Zap2IT and I can schedule and record from analog, watch, pause, rewind live-tv and other various aspects.
So we are getting there....slowly. I have alot of customization to do as well, the basic setup for MythTV leaves me a little unimpressed, however, that could well be my piss-poor "TV" setup at this point.
I have the day off work today, so Ill try to get some captures of the current setup on later this evening.
Ta-ta for now....work to do!
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
I saw TV!!!!
but it was late and I was tired.
The quick rundown:
1) install Ubuntu 6.10
This only had kernel 2.6.17, and I needed at least 2.6.18 for all the functionality I wanted. So I decided to try the beta version "Feisty Fawn" of Ubuntu.
2) Install Unbuntu 7.04(Herd 5 beta)
Immediate USB lockups. Not good. Remove all USB devices, install, check everything, plugin usb, dead.
Back to 6.10
3) Install 6.10
download, build install kernel version 2.6.20.3, reboot, looks good, everything working, oh forgot the usb network adapter, plug it in, dead.
Crap.
4) Download, build, install kernel version 2.6.19.7, reboot, looks good,
everything working, usb, good, check tuners, good, all good, scan channels, nothing...
Crap.
Search search and search some more, scan more, nothing, ever!!!
Then I found this page and decided it could not hurt to check. I found I did not have two of the modules:
Conexant CX2584x audio/video decoders (CONFIG_VIDEO_CX25840)
and
Wolfson Microelectronics WM8775 (CONFIG_VIDEO_WM8775)
So Im thinking this is not a good thing. I add these modules, rebuild the kernel, reboot, startup mythtv setup, set the tuners, go to the dreaded channel scan page and viola! CHANNELS, beautiful channels, I love channels. I tuned all three tuners, though I still think I need to do some additional tuning, started up the mythtv frontend and watched some TV!! WHOOT!
alas, without sound(no speakers hooked up yet), on a 20Inch monitor, just after midnight with the alarm set for 5:45am...and that was it. I did see TV, but thats about it.
Still lots of work to do, but obvious progress was being made, I even have my wife as a witness, I did it! At least marginally;-)
More late
The quick rundown:
1) install Ubuntu 6.10
This only had kernel 2.6.17, and I needed at least 2.6.18 for all the functionality I wanted. So I decided to try the beta version "Feisty Fawn" of Ubuntu.
2) Install Unbuntu 7.04(Herd 5 beta)
Immediate USB lockups. Not good. Remove all USB devices, install, check everything, plugin usb, dead.
Back to 6.10
3) Install 6.10
download, build install kernel version 2.6.20.3, reboot, looks good, everything working, oh forgot the usb network adapter, plug it in, dead.
Crap.
4) Download, build, install kernel version 2.6.19.7, reboot, looks good,
everything working, usb, good, check tuners, good, all good, scan channels, nothing...
Crap.
Search search and search some more, scan more, nothing, ever!!!
Then I found this page and decided it could not hurt to check. I found I did not have two of the modules:
Conexant CX2584x audio/video decoders (CONFIG_VIDEO_CX25840)
and
Wolfson Microelectronics WM8775 (CONFIG_VIDEO_WM8775)
So Im thinking this is not a good thing. I add these modules, rebuild the kernel, reboot, startup mythtv setup, set the tuners, go to the dreaded channel scan page and viola! CHANNELS, beautiful channels, I love channels. I tuned all three tuners, though I still think I need to do some additional tuning, started up the mythtv frontend and watched some TV!! WHOOT!
alas, without sound(no speakers hooked up yet), on a 20Inch monitor, just after midnight with the alarm set for 5:45am...and that was it. I did see TV, but thats about it.
Still lots of work to do, but obvious progress was being made, I even have my wife as a witness, I did it! At least marginally;-)
More late
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