Okay 2nd time's a charm.

Upgraded successfully from r5a12 to r5a16 tonight. Only took about an hour.

Here's my config:
combined fe/be
chaintech 7nif2
Hauppauge PVR-250 (980)
onboard audio
onboard nvidia/tv out

Issues I ran into:

Had to reinstall nvidia drivers
switch to virtual console & log in as root
(pick one, there are two. I used the latest)

Had to restore my backed up nvidia twinview XF86Config-4
From virtual console:


Had to restore my backed up .nvidia-settings.rc.
nvidia-settings has never successfully written the setting for overscan out to file, so I had to hand code that both last time and this time, then set .nvidia-settings-rc to read only so it doesn't get clobbered. Unfortunately the new version of the nvidia drivers has changed the values it uses for overscan, so it wouldn't take mine. I used to have it set to 190. Trial and error revealed that 20 is the right setting with the newer drivers. I hand coded the setting, then removed write permissions from the file.

Had to restore backed up themes to /usr/share/mythtv/themes. Advise you only restore missing them directories, as standard themes may have changed/been improved since last version.
mythfrontend won't run (I don't think) if it can't find your configured theme.

Had to re-enable lirc (hauuppauge remote)
solution:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3775

also copied my backed up lircd.conf to /etc/lirc/
btw, find /path/to/lircd with:


Had to fix ivtv
solution:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4325&sid=c56189ef4d7055fde1b57aae35c3e9d0

Audio didn't work:
Solution:
Followed jacanlas's suggetions on pg 2:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4325&sid=c56189ef4d7055fde1b57aae35c3e9d0
Also there appears to be a bug in this version of the alsa drivers that prevents you from adjusting master & pcm volume:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4568&highlight=audio
I didn't follow these instructions though. My audio is kind of quiet, but I can live with it until the next version, I think.

I think that's about it. that's not necessarily the order I did things in--I solved problems in the order I encountered them. But this seems like a fairly logical order to address them in if I had to do it again.

I also recommend a reboot after each major change to ensure your change survives across reboots. I found lircd wasn't running at boot because I had done something wrong. Better to do it after each change than test it all at once.

I think the "bug" you are referring to in this version of alsa is actually just the way it works now. The MythTV documentation talks about it here:

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.2

Basically you just need to use alsamixer -V all if you are using an alsa version 1.0.6 or higher.

_________________
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Knoppmyth R5A15.1
WinTV-Radio-401
AMD XP 2000+, 256 DDR 2100
ASROCK K7VM2
GF2 440MX with TV-OUT Connected to TV
160 GB Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Live!

Okay, probably so. I just know the discussion thread was about a bug and they seemd to resolve the issue be downloading the lastest version and recompiling. I didn't really explore it further since it was working "good enough" for me.