Topics

31

Users / 2 MDs in one room

« on: June 24, 2008, 06:37:47 am »

Hello,

I'm surprised that nobody has asked this before (or it might be a very stupid question), but does anyone have a clean way of running 2 Mds in the same room? Since I use my MDs also as workstations, I have the problem that there are 2 for example in my study.
I could of course create 2 rooms like "study 1" and "study 2", but I was wondering if anyone figured out a cleaner way that respects the concept of "rooms" in Linuxmce? Maybe using child/parent relationships?

Jean

32

Developers / How is Mplayer launched?

« on: June 22, 2008, 10:24:51 pm »

Hello,

where can I find the command line that launches Mplayer (from videos fro m2ts files for example)? Is it in a sh script, or somewhere in a pluto binary?
I have a problem with Mplayer not being able to seek within large mkv files, which is apparently a known proeblem, and I would like to play with the command line (there is an argument to enable large files support apparently) before trying to recompile a different mplayer binary.

Will report of course if I find anything helpfull/conclusive.

Jean

33

Users / Possible to watch HD channels on a SD capable media director?

« on: June 18, 2008, 06:00:56 pm »

Hello,

I am building some very low end media directors for secondary bedrooms. On a celeron 1.8 Ghz with a PCI Nvidia NVS 200 card (very very old) I am able to view SD TV channels in Mythtv, but HD channels are choppy, which is probably normal given the hardware.
I use the 96xx series nvidia drivers (which was a challenge in itself because the latest version simply would not work).

Since these computers are not even connected to HD capable TVs (but to computer monitors), I'm wondering if there is a way to tell MythTV to scale down the 1080p channels (which I get through HD Homerun) and send them to the MD as a 480p stream?

If that's not possible, is there a way to specify different channel listings per MD (by fumbling in some config file?), basically hide different channels on each MD. Then I could simply have the HD channels available on my high end MDs (in the living room) and on the low end MDs I could show the 480p version of the same channel (which exists for each channel), then it would just work.

Jean

PS: I gave up on using the HP T5700 thin clients to watch TV. Even after adding an Nvidia card through the PCI extension slot, video playback and low def TV was choppy. I guess the computer itself is just too slow (1 Ghz). But other than that they make a fine low cost low ($50 on ebay) power use MD for places where I need only music and external applications (web browsing, remote desktop). The Mythtv wiki says that T5720 are suitable, but I haven't gottent my hand on those yet. They are only slightly more powerfull than the T5700 too...

34

Users / General voicemail and intercom/broadcast feature

« on: June 12, 2008, 04:41:35 am »

Hello,

couldn't find the answers for the following anywhere:

1. Is there any way to retrieve voicemails left in the general house voicemail box (100) somewhere on orbiters? The orbiters show messages left for each users, which is great, but for some reaosn I don't see how to retrieve global messages. To me it would have made sense if a global message would show up in every user's box or something like that

2. Is the "broadcast to all MDs" feature in intercom supposed to be working? When I try it, I hear "this is not a valid conference number" from Asteirsk. I work a lot with Asterisk so I can dig deeper, but first I wanted to make sure that this feature is supposed to be working in 0710, since I read in an old post that it wasn't.

Thank you!

Jean

35

Developers / Trying to compile App_Server

« on: June 11, 2008, 06:08:36 am »

Hello,

I am trying to compile the App_Server binary, where I want to make a change regarding the mixer selection. I searched as much as possible in this forum but I am simply stuck.
I downloaded the source files from SVN.
Then the FAQ in this developer forum says:
"To build Applications, you should fetch it from the SVN repository, then go into Application directory and run:
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b "

So in my case, I went to /src/App_Server
And issued the command
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

Which gives me:
dpkg-parsechangelog: error: cannot open debian/changelog to find format: No such file or directory
dpkg-buildpackage: unable to determine source package is
What am I doing wrong?

Thanks. Jean.

36

Users / How to change the audio mixer used by LinuxMCE

« on: June 08, 2008, 09:48:51 pm »

Hello,

this question has been asked before in the forum but I couldn't find the answer.
My problem is the following: when playing music on my media directors, the volume up/down and mute button in the orbiter "remote" feature have no effect.

When looking from ssh in alsamixer, I can see that linuxmce is changing the volume of the "Master" mixer, however the correct mixer which has an effect on sound volume is the "PCM" mixer.

How do I tell linuxmce to use the PCM mixer instead of Master?

I changed audio.alsa_mixer_name:Master to audio.alsa_mixer_name:PCM in xine.conf but that had no effect.

Any idea which config file controls the Mixer that linuxmce uses to control volume?

Thank you!

Jean

37

Users / Anyone using HP T5720 or T5725 as SD MD?

« on: June 07, 2008, 09:03:41 pm »

Hello,

is anyone using a HP T5720 or HP T5725 thin client as a diskless media director for standard definition video on a VGA monitor?
In particular, I am wondering if MythTV frontend will run smoothely for standard definition channels?

I have been experimenting with a HP T5700 (1 Ghz CPU but inferior graphic card), and although I can play some videos smoothely, TV is not watchable (in standard definition) and will generate a load of around 6 on the box. Before spending the extra $$$ to test drive the T5720 (and possibly end up with one more useless box), I was wondering if anyone has already tried this?

How about using a T5700 with expansion slot and Nvidia graphic card?

Thank you!

Jean

38

Users / How to suspend/sleep/turn off a VGA LCD monitor

« on: June 01, 2008, 06:57:23 am »

Hello,

I have several MDs using standard 19'' LCD monitors (mostly inexpensive monitors from I-Inc or Hanns).

I am not able to find how to have the monitors automatically go into sleep mode after a certain time (where the monitor would not only turn black, but turn itself off until the mouse is moved).

The "seconds before power off" seems to have no effect in the admin, nor does "Leave Monitor on for OSD" (what is that for anyway)?

I'm sure I can find out how to do this the hard way by editing some linux config files, but the point is that this should be controlled by LinuxMCE so that it does not turn off when watching any video.

I can't half half a dozen monitors display photos all day long. It uses power and the life of my LCD screens.

I read somewhere that Linuxmce will turn off TVs but not regular monitors, I find that hard to believe.

Any ideas anyone?

Thank you!

Jean

39

Users / Disabling mythbackend on MDs that don't have tuner cards

« on: May 31, 2008, 08:40:39 pm »

Hello,

I'm trying to provide some extra information regarding an older post I found:

- mythbackend runs on every MD created in the system, even MDs that don't have tuner cards. In my case, I have a tuner card controlled my the core, but many extra MDs in the house that don't have tuner cards, and running mythbackend on them wastes resource and memory (they are thin clients)

- there is apparently no way to turn this off via the admin, even when selecting that an MD has no tuner card (please correct if I'm wrong)

- an older post suggested to disable the script /usr/pluto/bin/Restart_MythtvBackend.sh on every MD where you don't want mythbackend to be running (for example by renaming the script to something else)

- for me thsi was not enough. In addition I had to run:
update-rc.d mythbackend remove
on each MD

Hopefully this helps someone. Not sure if it would have a place in the wiki since it's kind of a hack...

Jean

40

Users / Full screen computing application?

« on: May 28, 2008, 06:32:59 am »

Hello,

is there any way to launch computing applications in full screen, without the little Linux MCE bar at the bottom that takes about 10% of the screen? The reason I'm asking is because I am using a remote desktop application, and the desktop doesn't fit in the screen because of the bar at the bottom.

Could anyone point me to possible scripts or locations in the database that are used to launch these applications, and where perhaps I could change these settings or at the very least make the bar one third of its size? Or maybe it is even possible to do it in the computing applications config section by using specific parameters?

Just to clarify, I do not need help to add my own applications, I was able to do that just fine reading the wiki. The help I'm asking for is to be able to launch these in full screen without the LinuxMce bar at the bottom.

Thank you!

Jean

41

Users / Media files attribute "viewed"/"unviewed"

« on: May 22, 2008, 08:04:11 am »

Hello,

I am a former user of XBMC + Misterhouse + Zoneminder + Asterisk, and after my third LinuxMCE install in 2 weeks (each previous time I broke something and had to reinstall) I am finally to the point where my system will become useable. I agree with a post I read somewhere that said that it takes a month to get the system fully configured and customized!
I like that Linuxmce combines all the above features in one common sense application, and I wish I had found this earlier. I have always wanted my thin clients scattered around the house to work as both media stations (videos/music/tv) and access my desktop server. I was able to install a remote desktop client into my MDs and now it does just that! Beautiful!
There is a big lack of documentation, but it can only get better with time, and I plan to contriobute a few tips to the wiki where appropriate.

Now to my question:
How does Linuxmce decide to tag a file as "viewed" Does it happen as soon as I start playback, or after 10% of the file viewed? 50%? 100%?
Also, is this setting stored per user, meaning user 1 may have "viewed" the file, while user 2 has not?
Can this be set somewhere in the web admin? I did not find it among all the attributes? (I have a directory full of viewed movies that I am bringing to LinuxMCE. Will I have to go hack the database to mark those as "viewed")

And another question: does LinuxMCE supports displaying 2 parts of a movie file as a single item? For example if I have "Bee Movie Disk 1.avi" and "Bee Movie Disk 2.avi", I would like it to be represented as one single item in the video interface, just like XBMC does. I don't think this is happening right now. Would that be a suggestion for Mantis?

Thank you in advance for your answers. More to come for sure... (Fortunately a lot of the answers are burried right in those forums, that's how I came so far in the first place)

Jean