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MythTV + DLNA

disturbed1 — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:48:06 GMT

Recently purchased a new Panasonic 1080P plasma. The Panasonic has nice streaming features which include - Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, Napster, built in media (Picture, Video, and Audio) playback from USB devices and SD cards, along with a DLNA receiver.

The manual boasts media compatibility with AVCHD and even avi/mpeg4 + MKV!! Something I had to check out, considering our vast movie library is all backed up to MKV files.

The recordings from our Backend show up and play without an issue. I'm even presented with a nice folder list which gives the option to sort recordings, such as by Title, or Date, and some others. I only wish commercial skipping would work, but I can hit UP for a 30 sec skip, and there is multi-speed fast forward.

Was not so lucky with our Videos.
The complete list of Videos is displayed, but none are playable. Thankfully I had some free time today, and figured out and fixed the various issues.

httprequest.cpp
frame rate
audio codec

httprequest.cpp
mythtv/libs/libmythupnp/
This file handles the mime info for the various extensions. On/around line 90 I made the following change -

Code:

 // This formerly was video/x-matroska, but got changed due to #8643
    { "mkv" , "video/x-matroska"                },

Previously it read video/x-mkv and simply changed it back to read matroska. According to the commit mailing list, this change was made because some other receivers did not work properly with video/x-matroska. This only allowed a handful of videos to half-ass work. That is, most had no sound, and played entirely too fast.

frame rate
99.9% of my mkvs are created with Handbrake, and (re)muxed with mkvmerge from MKVToolnix. Handbrake supports variable frame rate encoding. Meaning that the actual frame rate may vary throughout the film (this is done to ensure sync), or the frame rate may be reported at an incorrect rate. This is easily fixed by adding the --rate 23.976 (if the frame rate is 23.976) flag to my encoding script. The previously encoded files only needed to be re-muxed with mkvmerge with the frame rate specified.
The above allowed all of my MKVs to at least display a picture, but most still had no audio :(

audio codec
We live in a townhouse, with great quiet neighbors, and we respect each other. Regular stereo sound has always suited us just fine. Even though we do have a decent receiver and a lovely hand crafted 7.1 speaker set - albeit stored in the basement. I've always re-encoded the audio track to 2 channel ogg-vorbis. The Panasonic does not support Ogg Vorbis.

Once re-encoding the audio tracks to ac3 (with aften) and remuxing with mkvmerge, the Videos play back perfectly through DLNA.

I have no plans to re-encode the audio tracks and re-mux every single movie in our collection. That's absurd.
At least from here on out, all of our newly added media files will playback through DLNA.

Up next, I'll comptemplate the removal of our living room frontend after I compare the quality of VDPAU over HDMI (Nvidia GT220) versus the Panasonic's on board renderer and scaler.

Stress Testing MythTV Backend

disturbed1 — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:14:12 GMT

My cable provider, WOW!, is starting their digital migration. Lucky for us, they've decided to listen to the customers, and are broadcasting their digital stations on Clear QAM!!!!

This digital migration means that I have to add/replace/upgrade some tuners in the backend. I'm currently running with 3 analog tuners (Asus Falcon2 x2, plus a HVR1600), and a single ATSC/QAM tuner from the digital side of the HVR1600. WOW! is doing their migration in stages, which means the analog tuners are still of some use for right now. Gives me a chance to try out something new.

While at Microcenter the other day, I decided to pick up an HDHomerun from Silicon dust. I've read more than enough about these devices to know I wanted one. MythTV integration is easy, though the scanning needs some work. Luckily WOW! has told us what channels are on what multiplex. Makes channel editing extremely easy. The HDHR (or is it MythTV?) does not pick up the names for the QAM channels. Where as the HVR1600 does.

Our backend was recently upgraded from a single core Sempron 3000+ (1.8Ghz), to a dual core E8500 (3.16Ghz x 2). Currently only 2 drives for the TV Recording storage group. Samsung 500GiB, and WD 320GiB. There's a 2TiB and a 1TiB drive for movies, music, files, and other stuff. Recorded shows rarely stay on the machine for longer than 2 days. Most of the time, we watch the shows latter the same night they were recorded. We also practice watch and delete.

The HDHR unit I bought was version 3. This thing is small. Slightly bigger than a pack of smokes. Power jack, Ethernet, and a single coax. The tuner is a dual tuner that also supports multi-rec. Means I can theoretically record 4 stations at the same time from a single HDHR. Of multi-rec only works for stations on the same multiplex. For example, WOW! has mapped Speed and Hallmark on the same multiplex (113), MSNBC and Animal Planet are on another multiplex (112). So I can record all 4 of those stations at the same time from this single unit.

Onto the testing -

I decided to queue up a few recordings to test things out. First does multi-rec actually work? Can the HDHR send 2 HD stations? 3? how about 4 HD stations at the same time. I also wanted to see if this e8500 with only 2 SATA drives could handle the data flow, along with the network topology.

For the HDHR, 2 simultamous HD streams were no problem at all. I did run into occasional collisions with 3 HD streams. This resulted in skips, and blocking on the streams. Perhaps if the HDHRs had gigabit NICs instead of 10/100. I could not test 4 HD streams. It wasn't possible with WOWs current multi-plex mapping. Though given the results of the 3 HD streams, I'd guess the results would not be acceptable. Running each tuner with an HD and SD stream (4 recordings, total of 2 SD and 2 HD) were a non issue. The e8500 and SATA drives did not even break a sweat.

Push it a little more -
HDHR - Tuner 1 - 1 SD, 1 HD
HDHR - Tuner 2 - 1 SD, 1 HD
HVR1600 - ATSC/QAM - 1 HD
No problems --- iostat reports 85+% idle

Next step -
HDHR - Tuner 1 - 1 SD, 1 HD
HDHR - Tuner 2 - 1 SD, 1 HD
HVR1600 - ATSC/QAM - 1 HD
HVR1600 - Analog - 1 SD
ASUS #1 - Analog - 1 SD

That's a total of 7 streams being recorded at once. 3 HD streams, and 4 SD streams. iostat never peaked above 40% usage (60% idle) for either HD. Top reported a load average of 0.67!!!

Even when I fired up 3 MythTV Frontends, 2 playing back an HD recordings, and the 3rd watching live TV on the last free tuner, there was not a single hiccup. iostat did hit 60% usage, and the load average went upto 0.85.

I'm truly amazed. This is quite a bit of data floating through MythTV. It's not just a testament to how stable Slackware is, but how stable MythTV actually is. Kudos to the teams involved here.

I plan on adding 2 more HDHRs, removing the 2 Asus Falcon2's, removing the WD 320GiB, and adding 2 more Samsung 500GiB drives. The Asus Falcon2's will be removed, because once WOW! completes their digital transistion, everything will be available in clear QAM. Though they will continue to broadcast 6 local stations, plus a few public access channels. The locals are already broadcast in HD, so there's no real reason to keep the Falcon2's in the loop.

MythTV, multiple IVTV cards

disturbed1 — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 20:55:45 GMT

I have a MythTV backend with 4 tuners. 2 Asus Falcon2's (PVR-150 like), and an HVR1600. The HVR1600 is a dual tuner with analog and ATSC/Clear-QAM inputs.

This setup has been running for roughly 3 years, with the same issues.
/dev/video# ordering -
Upon the rare reboot, the tuners would reorder themselves. Considering the Falcon 2's use IVTV, and the HVR1600's analog tuner uses cx18, this can cause issues with MythTV. Usually I just resolved this by quickly running mythtv-setup and re-numerating the cards. Considering this PC only has to be rebooted 1 or 2 times a year, it's a non issue.

Most cards that use the ivtv driver have a tendency to not correctly register. Usually a cold boot, 30-60 seconds with no power to clear the card's registers will clear this. Your dmesg will have plenty of these if you have the same problem -

Code:

[ 3735.092084] wm8775 5-001b: chip found @ 0x36 (ivtv i2c driver #1)
[ 3735.095036] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 000 to register R23
[ 3735.097982] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 000 to register R7
[ 3735.100929] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 021 to register R11
[ 3735.103875] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 102 to register R12
[ 3735.106823] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 000 to register R13
[ 3735.109771] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 1d4 to register R14
[ 3735.112719] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 1d4 to register R15
[ 3735.115666] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 1bf to register R16
[ 3735.118613] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 185 to register R17
[ 3735.121561] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 0a2 to register R18
[ 3735.124508] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 005 to register R19
[ 3735.127455] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 07a to register R20
[ 3735.130402] wm8775 5-001b: I2C: cannot write 102 to register R21

The various forums, mailing lists, and wikis are full of hints to fix the /dev/video# remunerating using udev rules. I've read these over the years, and honestly it just makes my head hurt. It's not exactly what I would call plain simple human logic. Sure, if I spent ~5 minutes I could easily write my own rules, but I wanted a simpler, easier to understand fix.

Most modules offer the oppurtuninity to specify options while loading. A simple modinfo $MODULE will reveal these.

Code:

modinfo cx18
--- snip ---
parm:           cx18_first_minor:Set device node number assigned to first card (int)

modinfo ivtv
--- snip ---
parm:           ivtv_first_minor:Set device node number assigned to first card (int)

Exactly what I needed to fix my /dev/video# issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by /etc/modprobe.d/cx18.conf

options cx18 cx18_first_minor=0
options ivtv ivtv_first_minor=1

The ivtv cards will always start with /dev/video1, while the HVR1600 will always be /dev/video0 and /dev/dvb/adapter0/

Onto the Asus Falcon2 errors.
Completely reading the dmesg tells us exactly what to do -

Code:

[ 3653.781175] ivtv0: Unknown card: vendor/device: [4444:0016]
[ 3653.781176] ivtv0:               subsystem vendor/device: [1043:0666]
[ 3653.781178] ivtv0:               cx23416 based
[ 3653.781179] ivtv0: Defaulting to Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 card
[ 3653.781180] ivtv0: Please mail the vendor/device and subsystem vendor/device IDs and what kind of
[ 3653.781181] ivtv0: card you have to the ivtv-devel mailinglist (www.ivtvdriver.org)
[ 3653.781182] ivtv0: Prefix your subject line with [UNKNOWN IVTV CARD].
[ 3653.781212] ivtv 0000:03:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 3653.783255] tveeprom 4-0050: Huh, no eeprom present (err=-6)?
[ 3653.783257] tveeprom 4-0050: Encountered bad packet header [d8]. Corrupt or not a Hauppauge eeprom.
[ 3653.783258] ivtv0: Invalid EEPROM
[ 3653.786144] cx25840 4-0044: cx25843-24 found @ 0x88 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 3653.795926] tuner 4-0043: chip found @ 0x86 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
[ 3653.795970] tda9887 4-0043: creating new instance
[ 3653.795971] tda9887 4-0043: tda988[5/6/7] found
[ 3653.800611] Chip ID is not zero. It is not a TEA5767
[ 3653.800655] tuner 4-0060: chip found @ 0xc0 (ivtv i2c driver #0)

But it is not an unkown card type. Searching the ivtv mailing list reveals 1,000s of these same issues. Some have no response, I'd imagine people are tired of answering the same question every couple of weeks :)

From modinfo ivtv, they list the cardtypes. By adding another ivtv option to your /etc/modprobe.d/$MODULE.conf, you can tell IVTV exactly which card you are using. My complete /etc/modprobe.d/cx18.conf

PHP Code:


			
options cx18 cx18_first_minor=0

options ivtv ivtv_first_minor=1

options ivtv cardtype=22,22

Notice the ivtv cardtype=. If I had 3 Asus Falcon2 tuners it would read
options ivtv cardtype=22,22,22

Native UT2004 from GOG.com

disturbed1 — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 03:14:15 GMT

GOG.com has some pretty decent deals on Windows only games. A couple of these games were originally released with native Linux clients.

Installing UT2004 and running native on Linux is pretty straight forward. You will need wine to run the GOG installer though. I accomplished this on Slackware64 multilib without any issues.

You need -
UT2004 from GOG - of course
Wine
UT2004 latest patch.
I used ut2004.megapack-english-3.run which weighs in at 202MiB.

Install GOG's UT2004 through wine. Move the installed files from your wine drive (.wine/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/Unreal Tournament 2004) to ~/ut2004.

Find your UT2004 cdkey with wine regedit. It's located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Unreal Technology/Installed Apps/UT2004. Create a new text document called CDKey with the discovered digits and place it in ~/ut2004/System.

Extract the ut2004.megapack with

Code:

sh ut2004.megapack-english-3.run --confirm --noexec --keep --nox11

Inside the extracted folder, find the directory bin/Linux/$ARCH. Place the application executables for your architecture to ~/ut2004/System.

Extract ut2004_megapack.tar.bz2.
Move this content to your ~/ut2004 directory, overwriting where necessary.

I had to place a symlink to libSDL and libopenal in the ~/ut2004/System directory

Code:

cd ~/ut2004/System
ln -s /usr/lib64/libSDL-1.2.so.0 .
ln -s /usr/lib64/libopenal.so openal.so

Adjust paths as necessary.

Cheap Keyboards and Mice

disturbed1 — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 03:05:13 GMT

The keyboards for my main PCs are quite old. Purchased sometime between 1999 and 2001. They are not the cleanest of things, some ink on the letters have worn off, and a few keys have become a little difficult to press at times. The oldest one is a Logitec multimedia keyboard, the other is a nice HP model with multimedia keys from the only OEM PC I've ever owned. They still work, they just have years of dust and dirt build up.

This got me thinking about the reason I still have these old keyboards. It's not that I haven't purchased new ones. It's that all the new ones suck. It's getting harder to find something that's not cordless. Cordless sucks - I've had a few $20 models and $60 models - they all stink. Eat batteries, lose the connection periodically, some worse than others. If it ever loses the connection, even if it's only twice a month, it's unacceptable to me. A corded keyboard and mouse never lose connection unless it's unplugged.

These newer keyboards seem to be made for children. Smaller keys, miniature backspace key, a 2x3 home/pg up/pg down layout instead of the 3x2 layout. Not sure why everything has to be made smaller and cheaper today. I'll pay a decent price for a decent keyboard. I won't pay $40 for a piece of crap that wears out after 3 months of use.

My two most recent victims were a Microsoft 3000 series keyboard, and a Kessington 6 button mouse with a wheel that rocks left and right. Great mouse. The size was nice, not some miniture thing that cramps your hand. Plenty of buttons, plus I mapped the rocking wheel to switch virtual desktops.

After 2 months of use, the left click stopped responding with every press. I put up with it because it was a $25 mouse, plus it had a great feel, and plenty of features. 4 weeks after that, left click hardly works, and right click no longer responds at all. 3 months of use for a $25 mouse is unacceptable.

The Microsoft keyboard seemed ok at first. It was a little smaller than my other 2 keyboards. The keys are slightly smaller, and not as spaced apart as my 2 old keyboards. The buttons felt a little spongy too. Figured I'd get used to it sooner or latter. After 3 weeks, the space bar quit responding on every press, one return press responds with 2-3 carriage returns, the Q key sticks now and then. Microsoft used to actually re-brand decent devices.

Off to Microcenter I went. They have these cheap keyboards and mice made by a company called Gear Head. $5 for a keyboard and $3 for the mouse. I picked up 10 of each. That's $50 in keyboards, and $30 in mice, slightly more than the cost of a keyboard and mouse from so-called higher quality manufacturers. The way I see it, considering I'm getting ~2-4 months on average out of current decent quality hardware, if I use 10 each of these el-cheapos with in a year, I'll still have spent less money on the cheap stuff.

Sadly, this $5 keyboard, and $3 mouse have, so far, outlasted both the Microsoft keyboard, and Kessington mouse. 6 months in, and everything still works.

These are not my pictures, but they show the models I'm talking about.
Logitech keyboard
http://media.photobucket.com/image/o.../kbd_start.jpg
HP keyboard
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/8999/48438679.jpg
Microsoft Keyboard
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/i...dmk3000_lg.jpg
Gear Head Keyboard
http://images.highspeedbackbone.net/...125-1010-a.JPG
Kessington Mouse
http://us.kensington.com/html/14459.html

So sick, so tired

disturbed1 — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:12:50 GMT

I am just so sick, and so tired of ignorance! Not sure if it's a false sense of entitlement, pure laziness or what. At first I thought it was only us Americans and our Walmart Mentality, but this seems to be a world wide epidemic!

Perhaps it's because I'm from another generation. We were not allowed to use calculators in math class. I took the SAT without one, and survived 400 level Calculus and Statical Analysis classes in college without one. There was no Google, or wikipedia for us to consult while writing our papers. We actually had to use our brains.

A few weeks ago I was helping my 11 year old nephew with some middle school math. Very basic algebraic graphing. He could not grasp the idea of doing the work with out his graphing calculator. Had no idea how to plot x/y cords on graphing paper, nothing. But he did know how to punch numbers in a machine, and let it do the work.

It's not just him, his school mates, or their teachers. I see this everyday, everywhere. People that work with money everyday have no clue how to make change without a machine computing simple arithmatic for them. God forbid there's a power failure, everything would grind to a halt because people either do not know, or forget how to break out a pad and pencil. I'm not even going to touch on them attempting to figure out how much change a $20 bill gets from a $15.90 purchase. Wonder how well they would do when the batteries die in the remote? Actually be able to cook a meal with a microwave? Would they be able to walk to the store if the car would not start? Balance their check book without internet access? I doubt it.

Then there's these forums. Some people seem to believe we are psychic.
Can't play music files
Ummm, OK. What kind of music files? On what OS? With what application? Did you try another music file? Did you try another application? Do other sounds work? I mean seriously come on. People like this need to just pack up their computer and ship it back.

Or -
I have problem A. Does anyone have a suggestion?
Sure, I've had problem A, and fixed it / worked around it by doing B.
Why would I want to do B? It should just work. I'm not going to try B because I think you are wrong, I don't won't to do it, a Google search did not turn up your answer
If you're so flipping smart, and already know, why did you bother to ask for help? Why did you ask for a suggestion, and ignore a perfectly valid solution? What, do you need me to come to your place and walk you through "This is the power button, you turn on the PC by pressing this button in."

I think it started going down hill with this whole politically correct mentality. You're not fat, you're just big boned. You're not dumb, you're special. You're not ugly, you're beautiful in my eyes.
W. T. F. ever.

You are fat, put down the damn twinky and go for a jog.

You are dumb, could be border line retarded. You might seriously think about learning a good solid trade. You'll be really happy, make a fantastic living, and people will better appreciate you. When you succeed your self esteem will sky rocket. This is better than being put into a highly demanding job which you are under qualified for because of this PC bull crap, being hated by your co-workers, and customers because you ain't got a clue. Forget college, you don't deserve my tax dollars to help you get through remedial math, and under water basket weaving.

You are ugly. Make-up and plastic surgery may help, but don't get your hopes up. Sometimes you need to learn that - You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.

Then there's the group that want everything, right now, perfect, for free, without any effort put forth at all. Seriously people. No one owes you anything! Get up off your lazy ass and do it yourself.

One that really gets on my nerves are those that equate free and open source software to automatically mean no money should change hands. Yeah, I'd like to see these people do a single days work off the clock. Let's not forget those that feel entitled (there's that word again) because they donated $0.30, and seem to think they own your ass.