MythTV 0.21: problems with playback profiles


I made notes on my upgrade from 0.20 to 0.21.  The software upgrade is clean but the runtime is somewhat broken on two of my three frontends.  These are my (raw) notes.


Upgrading to mythtv 0.21

All upgrading was done via the atrpms repository which provided the previous release (0.20) for both backends and frontends.

No serious problems on the backend.  There were some issues with getting the database updated but after I shutdown the backend, ran mythtvsetup as root and then exited the database was migrated.  I don't think I did anything other than that.

I tested the backend with a frontend setup on the same system.  Everything worked perfectly.

Next I upgraded my mythbox:
    fedora 7
    epia M-10000 board
    IguanaWorks USB IR receiver

The upgrade worked fine with yum.  However, the video was terrible when I tried to watch TV.  I tried switching from opengl to Qt for the menus (which have a much different appearance) but that didn't help.  I was using the Project Greyham theme.

Tried a different theme: MythMediaCenter.  Same problem.  The osd menu looks terrible.  The Menu Theme is set to "Default", though I don't know if that's what I had it set to previously.   I changed it to "Classic" then went through all the rest of those setup screens and after the last one MythTV died (and restarted because I'm using inittab to restart it).  This didn't change the menu.  Turns out the problem is with the playback settings (as I discovered from reading the MythTV Users list).

live tv playback is very jumpy.  This was not the case for 0.20 on this system.  Went into Setup->TV Settings->Playback:
    Playback Profiles (3/9)
        Profile: CPU+
            Moved XvMC to position 1: crashed MythTV without editing
            Edit this entry:
                Decoder: Via XvMC
                Video Renderer: xvmc-blit
                OSD Renderer: chromakey
                OSD Fade:  not set

                Primary Deinterlacer: Bob (2x)
                Fallback Deinterlacer: One field
            Tried Live TV again:  no picture
            Restarted MythTV frontend:  no picture
            Note: back button/ESC does nothing at this point.

            Restart MythTV
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: Standard XvMC
                Video Renderer: xvmc-blit
                OSD Renderer: chromakey
                OSD Fade:  not set

                Primary Deinterlacer: Bob (2x)
                Fallback Deinterlacer: One field
            Tried Live TV again:  crash

            Restart MythTV
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: Via XvMC
                Video Renderer: xvmc-blit
                OSD Renderer: chromakey
                OSD Fade:  not set

                Primary Deinterlacer: One field
                Fallback Deinterlacer: None
            Tried Live TV again:  no video
            Note: back button/ESC does nothing at this point.

        Restart MythTV
        Profile: Slim
            Tried Live TV again:  playback works, not jumpy.  Poor color,
            though not terrible.  Picture controls are enabled but
            increasing "Color" setting in playback mode doesn't appear
            to affect the color quality.
            Didn't note settings and now I've mucked them up.  *sigh*

        Restart MythTV
        Profile: CPU++
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: Standard
                Video Renderer: opengl (was xv-blit)
                OSD Renderer: opengl2 (was softblend)
                OSD Fade:  not set (was set)

                Primary Deinterlacer: None
                Fallback Deinterlacer: None
            Tried Live TV again: crash

        Restart MythTV
        Profile: High Quality
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: Standard
                Video Renderer: opengl (was xv-blit)
                OSD Renderer: opengl2 (was softblend)
                OSD Fade:  not set (was set)

                Primary Deinterlacer: None
                Fallback Deinterlacer: None
            Tried Live TV again: starts to play, but crashes on exit after
                having video freeze and audio dropping in and out

        Restart MythTV
        Profile: Slim
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: Standard XvMC (was Standard)
                Video Renderer: xv-blit
                OSD Renderer: softblend
                OSD Fade:  not set (was set)

                Primary Deinterlacer: None
                Fallback Deinterlacer: None
            Tried Live TV again: crash
            Edit entry again:
                Decoder: VIA XvMC (was Standard)
                Video Renderer: xvmc-blit
                OSD Renderer: softblend
                OSD Fade:  not set (was set)

                Primary Deinterlacer: None
                Fallback Deinterlacer: None
            Tried Live TV again: crash

    Turns out there is a bug on this problem with VIA XvMC:
        http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/4930

    I'm screwed on MythBox till this is fixed.

Next: My laptop frontend
    Fedora 7
    intel 915gm grahpics (intel X driver)
    No IR, just a keyboard and mouse

Upgrade went smoothly.  First try at LiveTV had jumpy video (smooth sound).  Obviously need to update it's playback settings too.  Escaped out of LiveTV and MythTV crashed.

Fonts were way too large with MythMediaCenter (which was the config already set).  Reduced font sizes as first setup change.  Switched to "Slim" playback without modifying it's configuration and the playback worked.  However, when exited with ESCAPE MythTV dies.  This happens every time.

I noticed mythtv themes appeared to be at their old rev:

    mythtv-themes.i386                       0.20.2-175.fc7

so I tried updating them.  But that didn't do anything;

    mjhammel(tty3)$ sudo yum install mythtv-themes
    Setting up Install Process
    Parsing package install arguments
    Nothing to do

So I tried updating the MediaCenter theme manually:

    mjhammel(tty3)$ sudo yum install mythtv-theme-MythCenter mythtv-theme-MediaCenterWeb mythtv-theme-MediaCenterOSD

This worked:

    =============================================================================
     Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
    =============================================================================
    Installing:
     mythtv-theme-MediaCenterOSD  noarch     0.17-6.at        atrpms        188 k
     mythtv-theme-MediaCenterWeb  noarch     0.17-5.at        atrpms        460 k
    Updating:
     myththemes              noarch     0.21-138         atrpms             14M

    Transaction Summary
    =============================================================================
    Install      2 Package(s)
    Update       1 Package(s)
    Remove       0 Package(s)

    Total download size: 15 M
    Is this ok [y/N]:

I managed to get the Laptop working using the Slim playback profile.  I edited the same profile on the M10K so it was an exact match and that got the M10K playing again.  Both frontends crash when exiting the internal player, whether from live TV or from playing a ripped video.