need to modify the tv cabinet - heat problems

lower half is completely enclosed and contains a dvd player with the sky digibox on top - the digibox spews out alot of heat and when the glass door is shut it can not escape

top half contains just the pvr pc and is open at the back - but again with the glass door shut there is no air flow

will probably stick the set top box on top of the set, keep the dvd player down below and the pvr on the top shelf but remove the glass door

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Doh! Need to do something I should have done a long time ago... set up the ivtv module parameters to default into PAL not NTSC, composite not s-video etc etc. I've been using a shell script to set it up with test_ioctl commands.

Recorded my first show last night - 1 hour of black screen. ;-)

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Made up the VGA to RGB SCART cable at the weekend and it works a treat.

Why oh why did I waste so much time dicking around with tv-out.

Need to tweak the modelines and try running with the built in vga so I can ditch the pci nvidia mx440 and free up a pci slot for a dvb-t card maybe.

Need to wire the audio into the scart plug next. Whoops! forgot about that.

The pvr box is now on my home network as I've run cat5e from the tv end of the lounge up the aerial trunking into the loft down through the airing cupboard under the floor boards to join up with the trunking running from my son's room down into the other end of the lounge. Did someone say wireless? :-)

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Built one of these (cache) at the weekend.

Not been brave enough to plug it in yet, as I don't really want to risk trashing the onboard serial device. Need to fish out an old PC and run Linux off a CD.

Will go over it again tonight to check for mistakes.

Still waiting for my vga lead so I can build the VGA-RGB SCART cable.

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TV-OUT SUCKS!!!!!

I've just connected a 17" VGA monitor up to my PVR box and lo and behold, perfectly preserved interlaced video. It looks like the tv-out chipset (or the Linux drivers) on my mx440 destroy the interlace of the original video stream by combining the odd/even fields back into a frame before spewing it out of the s-video socket.

Therefore using the plans at http://www.nexusuk.org/projects/vga2scart I'm hacking together a cable which will plug the VGA output straight into the SCART socket on my TV using RGB and composite sync.

Parts arrived today just got to source an old vga cable, and butcher up an old SCART cable. Also ordered the parts to make a simple serial port IR transmitter to change channels on my sky digibox. Gave up on the idea of the UIRT2, as I never did get the pcb I ordered and making it up on stripboard is just too complicated.

Then maybe I'll be brave and stick on a real Linux distribution and mythtv 0.16 rather than wait for the next knoppmyth.

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I think I've finally got acceptable results.

The key is to install the 6111 nvidia drivers on top of knoppmyth, frig the glx issue by pointing the symlink in /usr/lib/tls to the other version of the file in /usr/lib, and running X at 720x576 in 24bit depth. I was running in 16 bit depth (dunno why) and bypassing myth by using mplayer showed that it was using the scale filter. Realised that this was because it was converting the colour depth and therefore destroying the interlace.

Played around with other settings, like using nvidia-settings to max the overscan and bump up the vibrance.

Now that I know what the problem was, I'll play about with a few mode modelines, including the ones that are supposed to match the PAL tv standard.

The pic is a little blurry when compared to original pic, but I guess this is to be expected when comparing a "sky digibox via rgb scart to the TV" to "sky via composite scart to a PVR250 displaying via SVIDEO on a MX440 to the TV".

...and just to keep Mark happy I'm about to update my db entry as I'm now running a PIII 700 rather than a Celeron 850.

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Have stuck the 6111 drivers on and am getting much better results. Seems to be running at full frame rate. Will bump down the resolution to a DVD compatible one as 720x576 is overkill for a 10 year old 4:3 TV, and with my celeron 850 (shall I stick in my spare PIII 700 ???) I need all the cpu cycles I can get for ad detection etc.

Was getting choppy sound so knocked the bitrate down to 128 (from 384) and it's much happier.

Still getting a comb effect on the edges during fast movement, but barely noticable.

Played with nvidia-settings, and now got the xvmc version of knoppmyth installed so hopefully some combination of these will cure the comb/fringe effect.

Set the modeline dot clock to 12.58 and that seems to have been the key as that is what is required for interlaced output, although didn't need the interlace directive as tv-out is interlaced anyway.

Nearly there now. Time to rig up the ethernet, get the listings grabbe working and bust out the soldering iron to finish of the stripboard pcb for the UIRT2 IR blaster. (never did get the pcb I ordered - he says he sent it but it never arrived - bloody Belgien postal system! - oh well it's more fun making it from scratch - NOT! )

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It's been a long time since the last update. Still struggling with the tv -out quality.

Managed to get it running at 720x576 @ 50Hz using the drivers that came with knoppmyth, however I get bars along edges on movement. I suspect it's a sync on vblank issue, but I've not had the time recently to play about.

Did find the specs for PAL and the dot clock for interlaced PAL seems to be 15.625 so will try to get a modeline that matches that.

I have been using xvidtune to check my settings once X has started, and seem to be getting different values to what I've set in XF86Config-4. I will investigate this further, but it's hard work on a blurry TV. Need to rig up ethernet to my main box and ssh in.

Need to scour the Linux video and Linux DVD mailing lists as this is not strictly a myth issue.

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hopefully I've just sorted out my msp3400 issue

as mentioned a while ago it seems to be using the v4l version by default rather than the ivtv one

locate msp3400.o

gives

/lib/modules/2.4.25-chw/kernel/drivers/media/video/msp3400.o
/lib/modules/2.4.25-chw/v4l2/msp3400.o

looking for the source

locate msp3400.c

I get

/usr/local/lib/ivtv/driver/msp3400.c

so I go into the directory and

make all

but it fails

tracked down the problem to a dead end symlink in

/lib/modules/2.4.25-chw

the build link goes nowhere

this seems to work

cd /lib/modules/2.4.25-chw
mv build build.wrong
ln -s /usr/src/kernel-headers-2.4.25-chw build

cd /usr/local/lib/ivtv/driver
make all

then

cp msp3400.o /lib/modules/2.4.25-chw/kernel/drivers/media/video/msp3400.o

then I did a modinfo msp3400 to confirm that the line

parm: standard int was displayed

apparently when this is the case then you're using the right strain of the module

then I rebooted but probably could have just unloaded the module and reloaded the new version

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I seem to have got to the bottom of my scart cable issue.

I have a switchable scart cable with svideo and 2 phono on the other end. I assumed that I could use this to take svideo from the scart on my sky digibox. I'm pretty sure that this is not possible and that the only things that output svideo are ones with svideo socket and that it's not possible to have svideo out from scart only svideo in.

Looks like the cable I bought was originally a switchable composite cable which had the composite replaced by svideo. Inside is a 3 way toggle switch, one for left audio, one for right audio, one for luminance/composite, and one for crominance, hang on that's 4!!! Looks like the crominance is not switched hence the black and white picture and interference pattern (noise on the crominance line).

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