Notices

I've released an initial port of mythtv 0.21 on the garage site for OS2008 on the n810/n800:

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=632

It looks kind of daunting, but that's because I've got all the build dependencies up there as well.

"All" you should need to install is:
adduser (available from http://debfarm.free.fr/pool/)
libxinerama1
libxxf86vm1
mysql-common (note: if you have any problems try installing bash or "ln -s /bin/sh /bin/bash", but I think I've fixed that bug with the new packages)
libmysqlclient15off
libqt3-mt
libqt3-mt-mysql
libmyth-0.21
mythtv-common
mythtv-frontend
(and optionally mythtv-themes)

and install on the command line as root:

(please let me know if I'm missing something in this list)

This is a very preliminary port, but the menus and controls/settings are all working as far as I can tell, and so is video, although there are plenty of encoding/transcoding and playback settings to experiment with!


I do have video! It takes a few seconds to start, and for higher bitrates can be jerky and audio is sometimes absent. This is all very impressive however considering we are using no optimizations in the decoder code yet though. The on screen display and menus are also working. See my settings below.

I have tried a low-res RTJpeg transcode and it's very smooth, completely watchable.
I'm also finding that with my mpeg2 encoder card (pvr150) I can set the bitrate to 1000 and the resolution to 240x240 and watch live tv.

I have a package for mythtv-themes, however garage file size limitations won't let me upload it. Since it's arch-independent however try installing one from your local debian-multimedia/ubuntu repository.

I also have disabled all cpu optimizations at the moment, because they were giving some problems with the codesourcery compiler in the sdk, however there are ARM4LE/ARMV6 optimizations in the code base!

NOTE: For those of you with KDE installed, this version of QT 3 may conflict with the one included with KDE, however KDE will work equally well with this version, so delete the old version under /usr/local/bin/qt.

And yes I'll be setting up an apt repository in good time, meanwhile if you can't work out how to install from the packages then you definitely shouldn't be installing anything this experimental anyway.

Configuration Tips:
gazza_d posted his full configuration for playing video here

If you have a low bitrate audio (32/64):
* Turn on extra audio buffering under playback settings - otherwise audio will crackle
Otherwise if you have a high bitrate audio (>64)
* Turn off extra audio buffering under playback settings - otherwise alsa on the device has a fit

* Turn off live previews of videos in recordings
* Turn off transparent boxes - despite what it says this seems to affect playback
* Popup shading: none
* Add a custom TV playback method:
- Decoder: Standard
- Video Renderer: xvblit
- OSD Renderer: softblend
- OSD Fade: off
- Interlacing: onefield
* Run mythfrontend as root (sudo gainroot) or set mythfrontend root suid so that it can use realtime threads.
* Experiment with your recording profiles/transcoding profiles and find out what works best for you. Let us know!

Controls
You can use the D-pad for nearly all controls, including entering/exiting menus. During playback you can use the back button on the N810/N800 to exit playback, otherwise all controls are standard.

Hmm, can this connect with an existing backend (my desktop in Linux?). If so I wonder if I could find out how to have MythTV on my desktop do the encoding/transcoding/whatever and enable my n800 to watch it. (I do something similar but with Orb on Windows).

That's generally the whole point of MythTV and this port; it runs as two separate processes (Backend that does all the recording/etc and Frontend that does all the playback/interaction); as long as your backend is running the compatible version of Myth you shouldn't have any problems connecting to it, though as Yani notes it's not ideal right now due to the playback not functioning on the tablet. Still, extremely cool stuff, I've been waiting for this for a while as the other myth control/interaction attempts have been, well, not terribly handy due to differing interfaces and lack of real capabilities. The one thing that I'd really love to see this project fork/evolve into would be that instead of actually implementing video playback on the tablet, have it so that you're controlling another front end's playback capabilities. That way you can use myth's interface for scheduling recordings, browsing through your videos/recordings/etc, and have it so that when you're done you just pick a video/recording/channel to watch and have your TV suddenly jump to that... I know I know lots of code and no idea how to implement it, but it would be neat no?

Just tried this. None of the packages will install on my N800 using the applcation manager - "incompatible package"

Using dpkg -i though. libmysqlclient15off reports that it requires mysql-common, but that cannot install due to the following error...
"dpkg: serious warning: files list for package 'mysql-common' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed.)"

Now stuck....

Gaz

mysql-common is available in the files there too, you may need to drop to the command line and use dpkg -i to install stuff, I haven't tested it out with application manager.

yea - I downloaded mysql-common. It's that package which is generating the files list error, and will not install.

BTW thanks for all your efforts, we really appreciate it.

cheers

Gaz

I'm actually getting a pre-installation script error when trying to install mysql-common. I have tried turning up the debug options on dpkg, but am not getting any more details.

I have it installed on my n810 fine, it may have required adduser actually, I removed that dependency for the frontend. Try installing adduser first and see if it works then. Otherwise run again and send me the complete output of dpkg.

All that I can do already with this port.

This sounds more like something like mythtomer which is already available however.

maybe me being blind or daft, but I cannot find adduser for chinook. any pointers?