466
Users / Re: Question about Mythtv
« on: May 12, 2009, 07:37:22 pm »
I think the best you are going to be able to do is set it as a bookmark in computing apps.
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467
Installation issues / Re: New Wiki: How to Select Mainboards for Your LinuxMCE System
« on: May 12, 2009, 07:00:18 pm »
Ive been looking for a good source of sample videos in various resolutions and bitrates, are the ones you used available freely somewhere?
468
Users / Re: Question about Mythtv
« on: May 11, 2009, 10:40:33 pm »
I guess it would help to define what "site" is in your question. I find that most places offering streams of tv shows require some flash plugin or Windows software to work.
469
Users / Re: OpenVPN
« on: May 11, 2009, 10:34:31 pm »
I will add my notes in progress here as well.
I do have some experience with OpenVPN as I have setup a couple VPNs with it in the past.
To start off with, these are the immediate issues i noticed (I still havent gotten it to work yet):
1) There is really no need to ask for personal information for self-signed certs. Canned info is just fine.
2) Paths in the config file may need to be absolute.
3) Config file looks for ta.key, should be looking for lmce-ta.key.
4) There is no server.crt anywhere that i can find.
I will continue working this stuff out to see how to best solve the issues.
I also have considerable experience with php and am willing to tackle the web admin stuff. Will just need to figure out exactly what the web pages need to do.
I do have some experience with OpenVPN as I have setup a couple VPNs with it in the past.
To start off with, these are the immediate issues i noticed (I still havent gotten it to work yet):
1) There is really no need to ask for personal information for self-signed certs. Canned info is just fine.
2) Paths in the config file may need to be absolute.
3) Config file looks for ta.key, should be looking for lmce-ta.key.
4) There is no server.crt anywhere that i can find.
I will continue working this stuff out to see how to best solve the issues.
I also have considerable experience with php and am willing to tackle the web admin stuff. Will just need to figure out exactly what the web pages need to do.
470
Installation issues / Re: How Much Processor Should I Budget for Commflagging?
« on: May 11, 2009, 05:49:13 pm »
Its really not something that you need to worry about since commflagging runs in a lower priority process. as long as you have enough processor power for watching your choice of media, youll be fine for commflagging. my rather underpowered core with a A64 3200+ commflags 720p dtv shows at about 22 fps for reference.
471
Developers / Re: 0810 MythTV storage groups discussion
« on: May 04, 2009, 04:38:18 pm »
I had the same thoughts as you regarding an "auto" group, which is exactly what the default group ends up being. I think it represents the option that users would most often want as well, making it the perfect place to put all the drives (since it is of course the default option if nothing else is chosen).
I think we are really talking about the same thing here, just with slightly different implementations. My solution covers points A and B perfectly (with B being the default). I didnt put any effort into option C since you seem to have that under wraps and its not a feature i personally have a need for right now anyway.
I did find that I didnt have a need for adding any custom weighting with this setup, as it chose the drive i wanted it to by default.
The only changes i made to the script were two additional lines to insert each public dir into both default and LiveTV storage groups and I have been very happy with the results over the last several days.
I think we are really talking about the same thing here, just with slightly different implementations. My solution covers points A and B perfectly (with B being the default). I didnt put any effort into option C since you seem to have that under wraps and its not a feature i personally have a need for right now anyway.
I did find that I didnt have a need for adding any custom weighting with this setup, as it chose the drive i wanted it to by default.
The only changes i made to the script were two additional lines to insert each public dir into both default and LiveTV storage groups and I have been very happy with the results over the last several days.
472
Users / Re: DVD FILE
« on: April 30, 2009, 11:40:55 pm »
Virtual cd/dvd software such as Daemon Tools or similar can also be used to simulate inserting the actual dvd into a drive.
473
Developers / 0810 MythTV storage groups discussion
« on: April 30, 2009, 11:13:08 pm »
Was working through some issues I was having with storage groups only to discover that i ended up fixing a known issue (I really need to read the release notes more often), but at least I learned alot about how the storage groups work. That said I do have some suggestions to make or at least wish to start some discussion on them while I implement them in the scripts.
In response to the following:
"One last change is in the "Default" storage group - it no longer points to the drive with most space. This was changed because eventually it would throw mythweb for a loop once the paths changed. I will look into a better way to defaultly record to the drive with most space, most likely using recording profiles."
It is my understanding that MythTV will always choose the device with the most amount of free space, given that all other weights are equal, and that all dirs are in the same storage group. thus the easy solution for the above problem is to simply put all public/tv_shows/[device] dirs into the "default" storage group. I have tested this out on my setup and it works perfectly.
This information was gleaned from http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Storage_Groups#Storage_directories and http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Storage_Groups_Weighting
It would probably also make sense to add the same set of dirs to the LiveTV storage group so that Myth can manage them properly as well.
One additional change I made to my system was to give the system drive an artifically high weight so that it will only ever be used if everything else is full, but this is just because i have a very small system drive in my test rig (17 gig). Its a very easy thing to do as it is just a single line that lives in mythconverg.settings and would be exactly the same for every install so could be included in the install if this is something that the average user would want.
Overall I am very impressed with the way MythTV has implemented these storage groups, it is way more flexible than I initially thought possible and the weighting system is very well designed.
I would like to see some discussion on this from developers and users alike.
In response to the following:
"One last change is in the "Default" storage group - it no longer points to the drive with most space. This was changed because eventually it would throw mythweb for a loop once the paths changed. I will look into a better way to defaultly record to the drive with most space, most likely using recording profiles."
It is my understanding that MythTV will always choose the device with the most amount of free space, given that all other weights are equal, and that all dirs are in the same storage group. thus the easy solution for the above problem is to simply put all public/tv_shows/[device] dirs into the "default" storage group. I have tested this out on my setup and it works perfectly.
This information was gleaned from http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Storage_Groups#Storage_directories and http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Storage_Groups_Weighting
It would probably also make sense to add the same set of dirs to the LiveTV storage group so that Myth can manage them properly as well.
One additional change I made to my system was to give the system drive an artifically high weight so that it will only ever be used if everything else is full, but this is just because i have a very small system drive in my test rig (17 gig). Its a very easy thing to do as it is just a single line that lives in mythconverg.settings and would be exactly the same for every install so could be included in the install if this is something that the average user would want.
Overall I am very impressed with the way MythTV has implemented these storage groups, it is way more flexible than I initially thought possible and the weighting system is very well designed.
I would like to see some discussion on this from developers and users alike.
474
Users / Re: Paid Development in Open Source
« on: April 29, 2009, 09:07:48 pm »
dale_k, you seem to be basing your arguments on an assumption that hardware manufacturers are paid directly to support one platform or another, which is rarely the case (ie microsoft does not pay a hardware manufacturer to write drivers for windows). each platform has an associated developement cost for them to support it, and they base their decisions on what platforms have the market penetration to make their time worthwhile (as in number of units sold in that market segment). so it is a matter of market penetration, not direct monetary compensation.
I think sponsored open source developement provdes a great way to get around this limitation even for hardware drivers, but it takes copperation from the manufacturers. for other general software like LinuxMCE it is a proven model that works well in the real world.
I think sponsored open source developement provdes a great way to get around this limitation even for hardware drivers, but it takes copperation from the manufacturers. for other general software like LinuxMCE it is a proven model that works well in the real world.
475
Users / Re: A few getting started questions
« on: April 18, 2009, 06:52:32 pm »
I use two of those routers in my config, both running dd-wrt. once you disable the router type features (dhcp, etc) they work great as an access point/switch. dd-wrt has an option to connect the wan port to the switch ports so that you essentially have a 5 port switch when there is no need for a wan port, open-wrt probably has this option as well. i know its only one extra port, but it may make a big difference for your setup.
476
Users / Re: Fiire Chief: some info
« on: April 17, 2009, 07:20:19 pm »
The dev efforts will be documented here:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7917.0
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7917.0
477
Users / Re: repopulate video files from HDD
« on: April 15, 2009, 08:27:00 pm »
Why would you be adding non-tv video files to mythtv? By default the mythtv as shipped with LMCE doesnt even have a "videos" selection in "media library". Do you instead mean to say you have placed the video files within the proper LMCE directory? If that is the case, go to the admin website, Files and Media, Media Files Sync, find your folder and click "resynchronize".
478
Users / Re: SOLVED - My /MythTvDailyFillDB.sh seems to be 'stuck'
« on: April 15, 2009, 07:06:28 pm »
Sorry to dig up an old topic, but I have some info to add to this.
I finally got annoyed enough with having to run mythfilldatabase manually that i dug around in the scripts to see what was going on. As far as I can tell, its from a bug in one of the scripts that causes it to mistakenly believe that an initial database fill is still running.
in /usr/pluto/bin/MythTvCommon.sh is function WaitUntilMythTvInitialRunXMinutesOld starting at line 149:
I finally got annoyed enough with having to run mythfilldatabase manually that i dug around in the scripts to see what was going on. As far as I can tell, its from a bug in one of the scripts that causes it to mistakenly believe that an initial database fill is still running.
in /usr/pluto/bin/MythTvCommon.sh is function WaitUntilMythTvInitialRunXMinutesOld starting at line 149:
Code: [Select]
function WaitUntilMythTvInitialRunXMinutesOld {
STARTTIME=`date +%s`
if [ -r $FILLDBINITRUN -a -s $FILLDBINITRUN ] ; then
STARTTIME=$(cat $FILLDBINITRUN)
fi
This checks for a lockfile containing a timestamp left by the initial db fill script i assume, but what i dont understand is why it doesnt simply return control to the fill database script and let it continue if the lockfile isnt there. So I added a couple additional lines to do just that:Code: [Select]
function WaitUntilMythTvInitialRunXMinutesOld {
STARTTIME=`date +%s`
if [ -r $FILLDBINITRUN -a -s $FILLDBINITRUN ] ; then
STARTTIME=$(cat $FILLDBINITRUN)
else
return
fi
So far it seems to do as it should, but I also have not given it much testing. I dont know what will happen if the initial db fill is still running.
479
It is important to understand as well that some of the points you bring up are completely out of the control of LMCE as the blame lies with proprietary hardware and software vendors. This is the case for BluRay at least, and probably the satellite cards you speak of (since you didnt specify).
Microsoft has the power in the industry to bend these vendors to their will, which can also include ensuring that they play as difficult as possible with non-microsoft platforms.
To address one of your specific problems: the screen tearing. Simply switch from alpha blended to overlay and it will go away. Yeah you wont have transparent menus, but video will be flawless. The reason for this problem isnt a cpu horsepower one, but that of timing. Theres several threads here where people are looking into why it happens, but it also appears to be something with the way Linux itself or the (vendor supplied) graphics drivers do things.
Microsoft has the power in the industry to bend these vendors to their will, which can also include ensuring that they play as difficult as possible with non-microsoft platforms.
To address one of your specific problems: the screen tearing. Simply switch from alpha blended to overlay and it will go away. Yeah you wont have transparent menus, but video will be flawless. The reason for this problem isnt a cpu horsepower one, but that of timing. Theres several threads here where people are looking into why it happens, but it also appears to be something with the way Linux itself or the (vendor supplied) graphics drivers do things.
480
Users / Re: HDHomeRun IR receiver
« on: April 14, 2009, 07:02:55 pm »
As a followup, I have resolved this problem.
It turns out changes werent being saved to the device template so an invalid lirc command line was being generated.
The error message given in the web interface when saving changes was very misleading too, and should be considered a bug. The error message "Please enter a description!" was being given for an empty device data comment field. I feel this is a bug since:
1) The error message did not accurately describe the field with the problem.
2) The comment field should not be required in the first place.
Should I file this as a bug report somewhere?
It turns out changes werent being saved to the device template so an invalid lirc command line was being generated.
The error message given in the web interface when saving changes was very misleading too, and should be considered a bug. The error message "Please enter a description!" was being given for an empty device data comment field. I feel this is a bug since:
1) The error message did not accurately describe the field with the problem.
2) The comment field should not be required in the first place.
Should I file this as a bug report somewhere?