Hi all,

While I'm waiting for my two PVR500's to come in, I've been trying to get my HD5000 to work. Trying, of course, means I've not had any luck...

I'm plugged into my basic cable line (Comcast), and during mythtv-setup, doing a channel scan adds five channels, e.g., WTVS-HD (561) and WDIV-HD (41). This is using the "cable" scan which gets me the QAM stations. So I'm assuming everything's okay up to this point and the card probably works. I have video sources and so on all set up, and I've also configured everything in the front end as well.

So here's the potentially stupid question: *must I* be connected to an HDTV of some sort to see the card output? On my 1080x800 monitor (max!) when I try to watch TV, the screen justs turns black for several seconds, and then MythTV either crashes or just returns to the main screen. Should I be able to see the signal on my monitor? If so, will it be oversized, scaled, panned, or just not work and do what I said it's doing? In the long run, this is just going to be my back end, and I don't have a HDTV yet for testing on. I just assumed I could scale down for testing, now.

Okay, assuming it's NOT a stupid question and that it SHOULD work on my monitor, what may be wrong? Should I try to connect to an old UHF antenna somewhere and avoid QAM? I'd hate to do that, since it looks like QAM works well enough to at least ID the stations...

THANKS.

You don't need an HDTV to view HD content. If MythTV is crashing, you need to investigate the MythTV logs.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Hi, balthisar.

Just wanted to drop a note and say that I

• have Comcast
• have an HD-5000
• am able to tune QAM channels and display them on a remote frontend connected to a non-HD television

so it definitely works with R5A26. (Looks like you and I are in the same area, too, based on the channel numbers and station IDs ) If the FRONTEND is crashing, then your video card driver may not support the feed that you are getting from the backend (it will be pumping a 1920x1080 MPEG2 stream if you are tuned to an HD channel). If the BACKEND is crashing, then you may have set the initial channel to a bad channel (go back to mythtv-setup and change it under 4. Input Connections) or you may have a permissions problem.

If you are still stuck, post the relevant log (frontend or backend; relevant portions only, please) so that someone can help you further.

Good luck!

Thank you both!

Is there a proper mythfrontend.log somewhere? Searching here I was able to find that .xsession-errors had some log data, but obviously a frontend log would provide more data. Here's the fresh .xsession-errors from my attempt to "Watch TV" right now:


So... it looks like it can't access the ringbuffer, which is obviously needed for live TV. Interesting to see that it's attempting to access it via IP rather than direct file access -- I supposed that's what'll make my frontend work later. Just in case, then, a quick check indicates that /cache/cache is owned by mythtv.mythtv. A quick search for the UDP bind error doesn't find anything on this site -- still, it's suspicious, and I'm guess somehow relevant, since it precedes the "remote" request for the cache.

Here's the backend from the same period:


My channel setup? That suddenly shocks me, since I'd though it was okay. Maybe I screwed it up between last night and today as I continued to goof with it. Last night, for example, the backend didn't complain about PIDs as I did an experimental manual record. Here's a C&P'd extract from last night's backend.log where I attempted to blindly record for five minutes -- it looks okay, right? (I've not actually tried watching it yet to see if anything's there.)

Well... a clean install with static IP addressing seems to have done the trick! Instead of using the loopback address and DHCP, I used a static address and used the static address in mythtv-setup, and I have a picture.

So... thanks for the pointers. I really made me focus and get to the problem. Sound is next!

Now I'm at risk of hijacking my own thread and going off topic, but I'm already here (plus akulcsar seems to be in my area and know the answer to this.

I've autodetected the following channel connected to my Comcast basic cable line using QAM:

According to Comcast, these channels don't exist at these channel numbers. But I'm not using an antenna and got them with a QAM search, so I'm satisfied that Comcast is proving them -- right?

Now if I look at antennaweb.org, I get the following:


Hmmm... the subchannels are identical to channels above! Again, since these other channels weren't found, I'm still convinced I'm getting these via QAM over the cable, and that Comcast simply isn't providing all of them. I conjecture, then, that Comcast is just "being cool" and providing the QAM for people without set top boxes, and if I subscribed to digital cable WITH A BOX I'd not use the QAM channels... am I missing something here?

Thanks for your patience!

Don't hijack, create a new thread. You don't want me whipping out my Air Marshall issued handgun.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Well, to avoid being pistol whipped, I've followed this up with another thread that explains how I rectified this disparity. It's righ here. I got my listings fixed, but I'm still curious as to what's going on...