MythTV w/ HDHomerun on 1004 TV issue & mv4 support

[JaseP]

I cannot get MythTV in LMCE 1004 to play Live (or any) TV. I am using 2 HDHomeruns (I pulled a WinTV-HVT-1600 from the system as it was unnecessarily complicated to get set up, might consider a swap/trade of 2 of these cards for a recent model HDHomerun or two). Video chipset is a GMA 3100 series, running on a 4GB RAM Duel Core Intel. Channel scanning (apparently) works. The channel list is populated. But, no TV Playback (or recording). AVI playback (Xine) works. Additionally, I am not getting any of my ripped mv4 files to play (vast majority of my rips are AVIs, just a handful of mv4s made with Handbrake). The HDHomeruns can pull up TV on any non-MD connected to the internal network (X/K/Ubuntu 10.04 systems running HDHomerun Gui-config & VLC). So the two HDHomeruns are working.

On a (somewhat) related matter, I am not getting a net-boot on the only MD that I have tried. The system is running underneath a MCV Vera (first router on the system, with the LMCE core as the second) as an inside network, with a Linksys WRT54G running off the Core (DHCP turned off, and the HDHomeruns were automatically recognized). Wireless devices attempting to connect to the core are able to access the LMCE web admin panel at 192.168.80.1.

Any ideas???

[JaseP]

OK,... I'm replying to my own thread. I have the HDHomerun issue partially solved. The QAM scan reports channels (some with conflicts) that the system if allowed to suggest channel numbers completely borks the channels against the cable Co.'s channel list. The reason is that the listings don't match is that the cable co. doesn't send actual frequency info to Schedules Direct.

So now I have channels, but of course the channel guide info is nothing like what is being displayed.

One solution is to use scte65scan ... Anyone know how???

This means that the netboot issue on the MD is a completely unrelated issue, though. I am guessing that the router is attempting to give out IP addresses. That, or I failed to properly set up the netboot MDs... Re-running the diskless MD creater is the easy solution,... so I will give that a shot first. Second solution might be to set (one or more) static IPs... I'd rather not go down that route... but I can't compromise the functionality of the MCV Vera (it is the master z-wave controller, and can be accessed remotely through their FREE service).

Anyone with ideas, or hard-and-fast solutions,... please feel free...

[JaseP]

Well, the partially working HDHomerun tuners started not working at all shortly after... I suspect that the avwizard scripts are attempting to populate the channels.conf, causing them to populate with bad info.

Any way to force the system to allow for manual channel editing???

PS: I didn't try rebuilding the diskless MD boot stuff, as my only system with an nVidia card decided it was time for the graphics card to die. At that time I learned that my home partition was over 95% full. So I will be re-partitioning that system (and buying more standard VGA cables, apparently, as well).

*******************

Follow Up: I located a channel guide on Silicon Dust's website. How does one get the virtual and actual channels and translate them to a correct channel.conf (without it being over-ridden).

[tschak909]

Are your HDHomeRun tuners in your device tree?

If you modified their information after they were set up, and did a router reload, then MythTV PlugIn has most likely overwritten the information with information from the database.

There is a mechanism for setting up manual tuner cards by selecting the MythTV Plugin from the device tree (in web admin), and selecting Manually Configure in the device data section of the instance on your device tree.

However, if you set up your tuner cards using the Setup Wizard, completely, this should not be an issue at all.

-Thom

[JaseP]

Thanks Thom,...

Yes the HDHRs are in the device tree (auto recognized by LinuxMCE, once the DHCP server was running correctly).

The problem with the devices is that the channel mappings are in total non-alignment with the actual channel frequencies. Schedules Direct doesn't maintain frequency settings for my cable carrier. I've found the listings (everything but actual frequency) from Silicon Dust. So I guess I'll have to do this manually...

I didn't see (or didn't notice) the MythTV Plugin listing in the Web Admin. Where should I be looking???  On the left side or on the top???

[tschak909]

MythTV Plugin is a router plugin, and is thus a child of the DCERouter. You can find the device tree in Advanced > Configuration > Devices.

-Thom

[JaseP]

Thanks,...

I was able to turn that off, but I'm still having problems getting Live TV to work... I do a channel scan, ad the system will try to populate channels,... but Live TV ends up failing.

I noticed that the MythTV channels database does not seem to include the sub channels (i.e.: 66-12 for a QAM 256 channel). On this last run-through I didn't include a provider other than eit. Frequency info looks the same for all frequencies that share a channel (that is, not a slightly different frequency). My changes to the database didn't seem to stick, either.

Does there need to channel guide data in order to display anything, & do I need to edit the myth database with root authority to make changes stick???

Thanks...

[tschak909]

Anything launched via Orbiter has root permissions.

-Thom

[JaseP]

Ok, then that's not it...

I'm guessing I maybe have to use the wrong Schedules Direct  info with a new scan and then rebuilt everything...

Boy, I hope the cable company doesn't change the channel tables very often...

[JaseP]

OK,...

Re-did a channel scan... initially I got TV playback... Then upon exiting MythTV and re-entering (hoping to edit the channel data in the mythtv database), 2 new providers were created... Provider 2 and LMCE-Default, both of which were populated with crap data... I re-did the sourcing under Provider 2, changing it to the same data (from schedules direct and looking at cable tv) I did from MY (partially working) scan,... No dice...

How to I turn off LMCE over-writing the provider data and forcing it only to take my manual data???

[tschak909]

As I said before, there is a checkbox for this in the web admin, when you select the MythTV Plugin device from the device tree, to prevent this.

I do not know what this is off hand, as I do not have access to an LMCE system at the moment (mine was damaged after UPS shipped it to my current address), and I am in a critical care ward on death watch for my father.

-Thom

[mkbrown69]

and I am in a critical care ward on death watch for my father.

-Thom

Thom,

I think I can safely say that the LMCE communities' thoughts are with you and your loved ones.  May you cherish and celebrate the memories of the good times you've spent with your father, and I hope that those memories help bring comfort and peace to you both.  May your faith (or the Force ;-) grant you the strength, courage and peace of mind to face what comes.

Our Thoughts and best wishes are with you.  You are not alone.

/Mike

[JaseP]

...I am in a critical care ward on death watch for my father.

My deepest sympathies,... You're in my prayers...

Thanks for your help, and please ignore me in order to be with your family... You have my best wishes during this troubling time...

[JaseP]

As a follow up, I've gotten a basic channel set up working. Although channels are all in the wrong places (I'll have to remap them), and the MythTV front end sometimes reports that it can't find the server at the IP address (set at the default 192.168.80.1).

[JaseP]

Basic update...

I pretty much have to go channel to channel, in Live TV mode, hitting the "e" key to edit and change the channels'  XMLid, and station ID stuff as well as the virtual channel numbers... Then, I have to go into the MythTV setup, and get rid of the duplicate channel info that is created as a result of this process (there's no real "delete" but rather you go into the bad duplicate channel and delete every entry, including un-checking the "visible" box). The upside of this process is that you can re-map the High Def channels to the regular channel numbers (great for wife acceptance factor).

I plan on writing a tutorial for this process that is easy to follow. I'll then try to put it out on the wiki...

Note: The Mythweb portal does not accept changes to the channel database info, for some reason. This appears to be a MythTV bug, not a LinuxMCE bug. I could not even get it working by going out to the KDE desktop and running the Mythweb portal in a browser with root authority.

After I finish re-mapping channels, I'll have just one more issue before I can start rolling out LinuxMCE to the Media Directors for general family use... That is mv4 file support...

Question:
Does anyone know how to add mv4 codec support to the playback engine, or am I going to have to transcode any mv4 files to avi files???