TV Strikes Back

There is actually one other reason I wanted to move the SBLive into the server. I hate to leave a project unfinished, and so, the battle for computerized TV is on again…

The one major missing piece when I last left off was the TV tuner card, and a quick trip solved that. So, does it work? Well, sort of…

Challenge #1: Dealing With Drivers

It turns out that there are umpteen gazillion different versions available of the drivers needed for the TV tuner card, and which one will be stable for you depends on exactly which specific model of the card you have (there are apparently many different variants which still go by the same product name), which firmware files you use with it, which kernel you’re using, the phase of the moon, how much goat’s blood you have on hand and probably numerous other factors. The first version I grabbed worked in that I could get a picture, but the audio and the video would drift apart. Another version produced a video stream where the sound stuttered and the video ran too quickly to catch up. Yet another one had smooth audio and video that didn’t drift apart, but the sound lagged slightly behind the video. Fortunately, I finally found the Magic Combination of driver and firmware for my system that produced a smooth, properly synced video.

Challenge #2: The Need For Speed

And then when I went to view recorded video under MythTV, it played back all choppy and stuttering. However, it’s no longer the ivtv driver’s fault this time, as it’s simply a case of the processor not being fast enough to decode and display the video stream at full speed. I knew I should have gone for the PVR-350 with hardware playback support, but no, I was impatient and wanted to be able to grab a PVR-250 locally instead of having to mail-order the better one…

Fortunately there’s only minor choppiness to the playback, so a bit of optimization might be all that’s needed. I haven’t had much luck fiddling with bit depths, resolutions, and compile options so far, so I may just have to reduce the recording bitrate a little and live with slightly lower quality. Files at least play back just fine under ‘mplayer’, so there’s always that option, it just won’t have the Myth-specific features like commercial-skipping.

And eventually this system will inherit a faster processor through the hand-me-down chain, and then it won’t matter so much. Though there’s HDTV in the future to think about, too…

Challenge #3: The Lazy Man’s Dream

It would also be nice if I could get it working seamlessly through the TV, so I can just sink back in the easy chair and manipulate everything from there. That’s *almost* working, as I can display it on the TV and I even have an S-Video-to-composite adapter so the PVR and the DVD player don’t have to fight over the single S-Video input, but I still have the problem where the picture turns to black-and-white after a little while. Unfortunately I’ve run out of spare video cards to test, so a new one may be the only solution.

Sound through the TV was at least much easier. Moved the regular speakers to the SBLive, hooked the SB16 to the TV’s inputs, told MythTV to use the SB16, and done.

And, of course, nothing today is perfect without a remote control. The tuner card actually came with a remote that was easy to set up and works fairly well with MythTV so this is almost finished, but of course, there are a couple lingering problems. MythTV is still just another X application and some of the controls depend on having window focus active, so if focus is shifted away for some reason (e.g., I want to check my mail), some controls within MythTV no longer work properly with the remote until focus is switched back. Other people have been having trouble with this too though, so hopefully a fix or workaround is forthcoming.

Otherwise though, everything pretty much works. I can browse TV listings, mark programs, they’ll automatically be recorded in the background, and for now I can play them back with ‘mplayer’ on the monitor. Now it’s simply a matter of polishing off all these minor nuisances…