Messages

46

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Version 0710 release date

« on: December 06, 2007, 06:38:54 pm »

oppss, did I misundersand what Andrew was saying about the release date? anyway, take your time guys, I understand its ready when its ready, I am just excited by the fact it can;t be too far away now, fingers crossed

47

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Version 0710 release date

« on: December 05, 2007, 01:36:50 pm »

am sooo looking forward to 0710, great to hear it could be as little as 7 days away, would love it to be out before xmas so I can get it all set up and configured. Am hoping VDR sorts out the problems i have been having with TV on 0704. good work to all those beavering behind the scenes to get this out

48

Users / Re: UK DVB and SKY TV

« on: October 04, 2007, 01:29:17 am »

I can definitely understand how hard it is to put exact times scales on these sort of projects. 

After more reading around the forum it seams that for us in the uk vdr is defintely the way to go, common consensus seems to suggest it is a lot better for freeview and there seem to plenty of people wanting to get vdr running

It is really good to hear you are going to release this back to the community and after reading previous posts you have made it seems you have been working on this for a while so starting from scratch on this seems pointless and a wait of a month or so is not to bad at all although I am pretty addicted to UI2 with alpha blending, is this going to be a long way off?

When this is released to us all will it be just handled by one of those updates like linuxmce asked me if it could do a week or so ago?

I am also interested to read that the people who are developing linucmce want to make developing the GUI easier so people can customize and make use of more exciting eyecandy features, this sounds a cool feature but it is quite a way off from what I can make out although linucmce being merged with kde sounds promising and may make this process quicker than I first thought.

49

Users / Re: UK DVB and SKY TV

« on: October 02, 2007, 12:00:24 pm »

Hi Andrew thanks for the link 

so it defintely sounds as though for the UK and freeview, vdr is the way to go,
I assume it handles standard analog channels like mythtv through an analog card aswell though?

It also seems to be very efficient from your figures - do you think throwing in analogue channels into the mix will have a bad impact on this?

I have so far been impressed with the quality of the picture I am getting through freeview using a nova t500 and it currently is better than the picture i get from my sky + box using a gold plated s-vid cable into a pvr150 although I have not tried playing with this yet.

if you could get all the possible channels in the uk all over freeview that would make this setup perfect, but it looks like to keep the other half happy the sky channels will be needed

you mention releasing to the forum your vdr integration, it sounds as though you are currently working on this - but I was wondering if it is a hard job to get linuxmce and vdr to play together or does mythtv get upset?

Matt

50

Users / Re: UK DVB and SKY TV

« on: October 02, 2007, 01:36:39 am »

thanks for the very helpful reply,

I now understand how the mux thing with the 3 DVB tuners works and thats really cool, sounds like it gives you endless flexibility over what you watch and record + when + where, just a pitty we don't get more channels on freeview although it doesn't sound as though the freeview system will be capable of handling as many channels as sky/virgin can provide at least until analogue tv is switched off - i read somewhere.

it seems that to obtain the same power with all the channels possible on sky/cable  would be quite difficult without alot of equipment and high monthly costs. looks like a combination of  a couple of pvr 150's and 2 or 3 t500 is the way to go to have plenty of flexibilty with all the channels we can get in the uk both through freeview and sky/cable.

There are probably going to be times when more than 2 channels are needed to be watched/recored over sky/cable that aren't available on freeview but I think it going to be a matter of seeing how it goes and expanding in the futures if needs be.



Im interested to hear you are planning to provide a service/product using linuxmce, that was exactly my thought when I happened across linuxmce and watched the video about a month ago. are you going for something along the lines of the fiire stuff?

There don't seem to be many people in the uk interesed in this project yet, but as soon as I could see what it was capable of I knew after my winmce  experience and wanting a way to not only be able to view tv/sky in any room but to access my mp3s and movies as well that this was the direction to go in.

I am enjoying the project of building my setup and find it funny when friends see what I am doing and look at me in disbelief at what is currently possible, I am pretty sure that when I have it all up and working as I want they will all want one too.

currently there is nowhere for them to buy from and I can't really see the average user getting it setup and maintained without help so as it sounds like you are proposing, this sort of thing would have to be professionaly installed and maintained for people.


You talk about using vdr instead of mythtv, is this because mythtv isn't capable of the same flexibility with the 3 x t500 you explained? are there other advantages of using it?
I have seen the package mentioned in other posts but have initialy gone with mythtv as its already built in but am wondering if for UK situations vdr would be better,

am going away to do some more research on all this, thanks again for the reply.

matt

51

Users / Re: Changing or adding pics in place of flickr pics

« on: October 01, 2007, 10:01:24 pm »

 
thanks for posting these instructions, this is almost what i wanted to do,

I was wondering though, can I just add my photos to the flickr directory and then them appear intermingled with the flickr ones? might give it a go a see what happens

52

Users / UK DVB and SKY TV

« on: October 01, 2007, 06:49:45 pm »

Hi,

I am a uk user of linuxmce and want to get a good range of tv channels setup on my system. I have got setup up my core/hybryd and 4 MDs after quite a few problems.

my inital plan was to have 2 pvr150's to allow me to input my skyplus box and also a secondary normal sky box - hopefully allowing 2 different users 2 watch 2 different programs on sky. I also wanted to make use of a dvb cart I have, a Nova T500.

totallymaxed you mention "we have Core's with 3 x T500 twin tuner cards which here in the UK means we can cover all the UK MUX's without any restrictions to live viewing/recording"

when it says without restrictions how do you mean, I sort of understand that each t500 has 2 tuners, 3 cards each with 2 tuners is 6 tuners all together - it sounds like it is  then suggested that with 3 x t500 you can pretty much have as many people watching as many different channels as you like (well as many as network and core power can handle) is this the case?

I am also wondering how to get the channels guides setup uk for UK channels, both DVB and satalite  I have read a few posts about how zap2it has now finished and schedules direct is now used - can this be used in the UK or do I have to use a different service? I am especially confused over how to get the SKY listings working- justcan't get my head around howthis will work.

was also wondering about HD broadcasts, are they planned in the UK and if so does anyone know when they will be implemented

 on the nova t500 I have setup I do get channels but with out any planner which is why i am asking about this in the uk. Currently I am experiencing a time delay between changing channel in DVB, will having the planner setup correctly sort this out or is it a problem with a badly aligned ariel or just "thats how long it take to change channel"


I am also understanding that with the nova t500 I will be able to watch 2 different channels in 2 different rooms, currently I can only get one running on one MD, if I try and start a second MD,  mythtv comes up with a message about how all the inputs are currently in use and you can only watched recorded programs - am I missing somehting here becaus surely i have the other tuner still to use.

I also have setup a pvr150 to input my sky with, which works fine on the core/hybryd, but if I try the chnnel on an MD I just get a blank screen, then If I leave it for 10 mins by the time I come back the channel has started, I don;t understand where the delay is coming from, the picture and sound appear straight away on the core/hybryd?

thanks in advance on any info anyone can provide especially those from the uk and sorry about all the seperate questions, totallymaxed you seem to know what you are doing when it comes to mythtv in the UK would it be possible to elaborate just a little.


matt

53

Installation issues / Re: 2nd MD fails

« on: September 25, 2007, 02:37:55 pm »

these problems turned out to be mainly due to a dodgy router, once a new one was fitted I did a fresh install to be on the safe side and things now seem to be working correctly.

one other part of the problem is that a tv that one of the MDs I have is to plug in to doesn;t seem to detect the svideo output from the graphics card. i have tried on other tvs and the MD box works fine its just the tv i want to use that wont detect the output and change the tv over to a\v mode.
the tv works fine with a dvd player and if I connect a vcr the tv detects the vcr and if I plug the svideo from the MD into the VCR I can then get the MD screen on the tv but I would prefer not to.
the main part of this problem is I have lost the remote and the buttons on the front don't give the option to change to AV mode so for now I am  a bit stuck untill I can find a remote.

just a bit strange that the tv can't detect the input from the MDs nvidia graphics card - anyone have any idea why this might be?

J
 

54

Users / Re: Face Recognition Features

« on: September 24, 2007, 01:50:25 pm »

sounds interesting, what does it do/how would it work?

55

Users / Re: Did not run A/V wizard... normal? - core

« on: September 24, 2007, 01:14:45 pm »

have just been setting up my house system and ran into problems getting MDs setup.

When i would start the MD for the first time it would find the hybryd core (which I had setup at my office on the office network), would annonce itself to the router and would start setup, sometimes this would get stuck at the stage where it is trying to setup the nvidia driver other times it would get to the point where it is starting myth tv, had some strange times where it would get to the avwizard but the mouse would disapear and would fail to complete and on one occasion it actually got through the avwizard but then wouldn't start properly.

I messed around with this for quite a while, it just didn't make sence and I couldn't get the MDs to work.

I suspected dodgy wires and had tried to make sure all the wires running to the different rooms worked as they should and replaced any that didn't. tried it all again and still the MDs wouldn't work.

took the hybrd/core and all the MDs to my office and reinstalled every thing and added the MDs and it worked!

took it all home and tried the reinstalled system and it didn't work, reininstalled it all again at home and it still didn't work - what the f&$k

much head scratching and wire testing  later I thought I should try replacing the one thing I hadn't yet considered as the problem - the hub/router and hey preto, with a new hub/router, MD's start up and run the avwizard and work just as they should, all 4 I have so far installed without a problem.

the faulty hub/router had been running the network at home with windows machines fine so you maybe in a similar situation, check your network hardware in case thats where you problem lies as linuxmce will have a problems it seems even if windows doesn't.

J

56

Installation issues / Re: 2nd MD fails

« on: September 21, 2007, 12:37:31 pm »

I was getting worried I wouldn';t be able to sort it after spending a day messing around trying things

I now have another problem though.

the AVWizard started fine when first installing on the MDs, now though I want to plug one into a tv with svid, so i will need to change the resolution using the avwizard, problem is I can't get it to run. I have tried holding down shift on start up and by clicking change resolution in the linuxmce manager but when it restarts it never gets to the wizard, it just seems to get stuck on amessage about  a helper script then flashes to a black screen and then back to the message and just does this over and over again.

It is as though it tries to go to the avwizard but then fails - what is happening here? all three boxes are showing the same behaviour!

57

Installation issues / Re: 2nd MD fails

« on: September 20, 2007, 06:19:31 pm »

it turns out there was a difference,

the 2 boxes that were failing both have a card reader that fits in the floppy bay and plugs in as a usb device - thing is this is hidden behing the slide down front and I hadn't noticed.

Seems that this may have been confusing it, once they were unplugged and removed, both boot up properly and go into the avwizard and then the MD setup as they should.

58

Installation issues / Re: 2nd MD fails

« on: September 20, 2007, 04:45:29 pm »

they are both biostar 200n SFF boxes with Nvidia AGP Geforce 6200 graphics cards (exact same model in both), AMD sempron 2300 chips and 512mb ram.
I have gone through the bios and everything looks the same on both machines. I have tried swapping the memory in the 2 machines and that doesn't seem to have any effect, I actually have a 3rd biostar 200n box and this has the same problem again and stops at exactly the same place.

for the life of me I can't work out why this is happening!!

59

Installation issues / 2nd MD fails

« on: September 20, 2007, 04:11:48 pm »

I have managed to get setup a core/hybrid and then started up a MD which booted over the network, ran the avwizard and MD setup program and everything worked fine.

I then started up my second MD, an Identicle machine to the first one, and neither the avwizard or the MD setup program run.

the page just stops after *starting bluetooth service


i also get an error after "starting nfs common utillities" on this page.

usr/pluto/bin/Config_Ops.sh 5: not found
usr/pluto/bin/Lockutils.sh 5: not found
usr/pluto/bin/Config_Ops.sh 34: syntax error: bad loop variable


i have tried ctrl+alt+F7, ctrl+alt+F2,   ctrl+alt+F12 and can only get to a login prompt.

i can login with the username root and then i can startx but i don;t know where to go now. Can i force the setups from here. I run the linuxmce program from the multimedia start menu but this fails to regenerate orbiter skin, probably because I have yet to run the setups.

How do I get around this? i am a bit stumped why 2 identicle pieces of hardware don't operate the same.

J

60

Users / Re: uk rig to replace sky+

« on: September 05, 2007, 06:39:03 pm »

for those of you still reading.

after problems with the App_Server not starting correctly with what looked like an issue with the onboard sound card I put in a spare SB live that i had lying around. disabled the on board sound and started her up.

this time Linux MCE starts up fine no problems with App_Server running fine and sound operating as it should.

so my problems is the onboard sound it looks like, but for now I will continue on with the SB live although it would be good to get rid of this again at some point so i can free up a pci clot again for hopefully a pci card that will alllow me to input my analog phone line - any suggestions?

have now also got the first MD up and running although this did initally cause me problems.

the MD kept getting stuck starting up, I tried over and over again not being able to figure out what the issue was. In the end I tried to use a new network cable and hey presto md started first time no problems. the thing is the original wire had been running a windoze box without a problem so I think this is definitely soemthing people should be aware of.

otherwise it is sortingout the s-video picture which has a continuous flickering in the middle with the picture behind that is flickering. the s-video was fine when it was going into the back of my TV so it must be a setting or something??

J