Some Install questions, V-Sync, Raid, Ati-Drivers, TV-card, Bluray

[zogie]

Okay, it's been a while since I last posted, but I have been playing with LMCE a lot and have small list of problems I am struggling to get my head around.  Some of the problems I have a few more ideas to try, some I'm at a bit of a loss and am wondering if anyone can guide me.

My system: Core
MB:  Asus M4A77
CPU:  AMD Athlon II X2 235e
GPU:  Nvidia 9400GT
TVCard:  Leadtek DTV2000 rev J
Optics:  Liteon 4x Bluray
Storage: 1x300GB for OS, 3x1.5TB for media (Raid 5)
OS:  0810 beta Buid 23165
Display: Samsung 32"


V-sync
The first issue has been with my core/hybrid, It's connected to a samsung 32" TV via a HDMI cable, but I get a constant Vsync problem, and an overscan problem.  When going through the install process I noticed that in KDE, before LMCE is installed, the screen looks perfect, fits nicely in all the corners, and syncs properly.  When I install LMCE it doesn't fit the screen and starts loose vsync on moving images.

I have looked into this and tried a lot of things already, but I think I have narrowed it down to LMCE does not by default support my TV's native resolution of 1360 768/60.015, so on my last install I saved a copy of the xorg.conf before LMCE and will try forcing it to run.  I know this will make the orbiter the wrong size but I figure I can still check if its working or not, and create the orbiter settings after.

Just wondering if anyone else has had similar problems, and/or why the built in support (I think it's part of the Nvidia driver) for automatically setting up the monitor that works in KDE is overwritten in LMCE?


Software Raid
Found that the WebAdmin didn't work for setting up the raid on my 3 1.5TB drives.  After some googling I
found out that if I ran the command "sudo modprobe md-mod" then suddenly the mdadm commands started to work, and ovular, the web-admin raid started to work.  I decided to setup manually (just so I know how it
works), but every time I restart the computer I have to run "sudo modprobe md-mod".  I'm going to add this
to the start-up but wondered if this was done on purpose, or is there an option already somewhere to enable raid support?

Laptop Orbiter
I have "Modified" and old laptop (Dell Inspiron 5100) I was given into a tablet PC and was trying to get this to netboot as a thin client, however when it boots up it just comes up with the message "Failed to start X".  I have noticed that when the core boots the "V412" fails, am I correct in thinking this is the ATI drivers package, and if so would this mean the netboot device would be missing the ati display drivers? (It has onboard ati graphics, and yes i know i cannot use UI2AB but hey, it was free)

TV Tuner
Unfortunately my TV card is not natively supported, however I have seen on the wiki (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Leadtek_DTV2000H) there is a walk through, I have tried this once with no success and wondered if it makes any difference that I'm using the VDR software rather than Mythtv, iso am I doing the right thing by using VDR, only reason I chose it is because in the setup the description sounded better (better setup for digital signals).


BluRay
From what I gather there is no native support for this at the moment (due to some git adding over the top encryption to them) in LMCE or in fact in Linux at all.  I did however notice some work that has been done with MakeMKV to be able to stream the decrypted file to other players, has anyone played with this yet? (http://themediaviking.com/software/bluray-linux/)


All in all I'm making progress, and starting to get use to Linux commands (very daunting at first).  I have a machine put to one side that I'm going to setup as a development rig, but I wanted to get my core up and running first and get used to using the system.

[zogie]

Okay, have just been messing with the Vsync Issue.

tried the Pre-LMCE xorg.conf;  No over-scan, nice and crisp, still jumpy and not v-syncing

tried putting the native res and refresh in the webadmin; came up saying the transparency wasn't working, and when i checked the xorg.conf files was blank (/etc/X11).

Reset the Webadmin back to 1280x720, then changed the xorg.conf modeline to "Modeline "1360x768" 85.5 1360 1424 1536 1792 768 771 777 795" in refrence to some timings found on nvnews.net:  This No over-scan, nice and crisp, v-sync is better but still not quite right.

[ckerkhoff]

I have problems with the display on my TV too. My problem is that the image is just shifted to the right a little bit. To fix this I use the nice modeline calculator found here: http://www.epanorama.net/faq/vga2rgb/calc.html and with a little trial and error I found settings to shift the image enough to fit within the screen properly. Hope this helps.

[zogie]

Thanks for the link ckerkhoff, this could come in handy, but my main problem is syncing the image and jumpyness (if thats a word). 

[zogie]

Still not got anywhere with the Vsync, I think I'm going to try my spare graphics card and see if it makes any difference.

Also I have not been having any luck with the software raid, after I setup the whole raid manually I rebooted, after witch it lost any relocation that I had created a raid, even after I ran "Sudo modprobe md-mod" again.  It really seams to me like the system is trying to work but just has a switch turned off somewhere, does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks.

[zogie]

Not tried the different graphics card yet but I have been playing with the raid array.

I added the following to the xxxxxxxx
modprobe md
mdadm --assemble -s

This has enabled me to use the webadmin raid utility, so I have created the array but this has not been detected by
lMCE.  To try and get the drive noticed I have tried a hand full of ideas from the fourms, so far I have tried,
* fdisk the /dev/md1 to ext3
* cleared the PnpQueue from the sql table
* cleared the unknown devices
* removed and re-added the array
But whatever i do I cannot get LMCE to see the new drive.  Can anyone suggest anything?

Thanks

[tux-box1]

Hello.
in responce to your question

BluRay
From what I gather there is no native support for this at the moment (due to some git adding over the top encryption to them) in LinuxMCE or in fact in Linux at all.  I did however notice some work that has been done with MakeMKV to be able to stream the decrypted file to other players, has anyone played with this yet? (http://themediaviking.com/software/bluray-linux/)

Yes I've tried it, It did work once for me, and I do emphasize once. I used the information found here

Code: [Select]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD maybe you'll have better luck. 

[zogie]

Thanks tux-box, I will have a look at that.

I managed to get the Raid working, but i'm not sure what finally did it as I was expecting it to show up on the core UI, ither in manage drives or as a prompt.  I only noticed it was working when I dropeed into Kubuntu and saw a folder structure, and when I added media via the Lan It picked it up in LMCE.