Hi,
As I could not find a working X11 driver for my onboard TVIA Cyberpro 5005 I got a PVR-350 to use with the TV out.
It is working nicely for TV recording and playing
Now I would like to use the same TV output for playing DVDs and videos.
mplayer is trying to decode DVDs with using the pvr350 and it is way to slow. I got the X11 driver for the PVR 350 which help a lot but it is still too slow with some scenes (BTW I have to run mplayer as root or it will not display anything when run as mythtv).

Is there any way to use the PVR-350 mpeg2 decoder to help ? If so could someone post the mplayer / other player command line ?
Does the chip decode mpeg1 aswell ?

If I add another TV card based on the bt878 will the decoder be used when playing shows recorded with this card ? will it accept different resolution recordings ?

Is it possible to mirror X11 so displays happens at the same time on the PVR 350 TV-out and on the video card vga out ?

Thanks.

good luck this has been discussed at length in MANY MANY post here and elseware, and some say they have it working others say no.

I believe there is an option to mplayer to use the mpeg2 decoder, but I think you said you are using that.

and no the pvr350 only does mpeg2 nothing else.

the pvr350 will be used, but the playback will most likely be slow, as software cards don't record to mpeg2. The decoder card does not care about resolution, but only does hardware decoding on mpeg2.


I don't think this is possible, but I could be wrong on this one.

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Xsecrets

It was pretty straight. I had just to install R4V5, followed the ivtv/pvr-350 howto and then went to http://membres.lycos.fr/badzzzz/ to get the driver and instructions (copy the driver and 1 line to change in the XF86Config-4). Then you just have to change the mplayer command line to use the x11 display.

The only think is that my CPU is quite weak and is not able to decode everything without frame skip.



No, this is the option I'm looking for. I do use the option to display with the X11 driver on the pvr350 but I don't think that it uses the decoder as mplayer + X driver uses almost all available CPU cycles.



Argh I thought that with bttv cards there was software mpeg2 encoding.
What is the format in use then ? Any way to change it to mpeg2 in the mythtv settings ?

Does anyone else need to be root to use mplayer ? any way to fix this ? I may post a new thread about this one with more details (not at home now).

Thanks.

the only two options for software encoders are RTJPEG and MPEG4.

no do not need to be root to use mplayer, two things to check are the permissions on the file, and where the file is located. If the location is not in the path you will have to specify the full path, or add the location to the path.

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Xsecrets

So out of luck to play it with the pvr-350 decoder ...



I was just trying to play a DVD. The same command line would not work as mythv user but would work if I would su. I will check tonight for error messages.

well since you are trying to play dvd then you also need to check the permissions on your dvd device. that's the most likely spot for the problem.

_________________
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I found out that the problem comes from the mplayer -vo option
If I run mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device /dev/dvd -fs -quiet it works ok without being root but if I had the -vo x11 I get an Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device
Running the same command line as root works perfectly.

I don't know how to allow the mythtv user to use the x11 video out.

Hi!,
I just try to understand. it's not possible to play a DVD with PVR-350 (tv-out) without some configuration ?

Anyone can explain me in detail what should I do to play DVD in file device and I want to play .vob ? (I use R5A15.1)


Thanks

The capability to play any video that wasn't recorded from the PVR- card at reasonable frame rates on the PVR-350 tv-out is just now being added to the ivtv-0.3.* series. If I understand correctly, what is being added is code changes and additions necessary to support the X11 XV extension.

I suggest following along here:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/ivtv/devel/

Just remember, it's still a bit buggy and being worked on.

-brendan