Getting MythVideo to use 16:9 aspect ratio

When I last left off, MythTV was using my 61MD10 61" HDTV in full 1280x720, but MythVideo was stretching my HDTV .avi files too wide and showing black bars on the top and bottom. As it turns out, mplayer isn't able to autodetect the 16:9 aspect ratio.

Thanks to this post, I found that I needed to supply this information in the MythVideo playback settings.

Here's my new mplayer command:

mplayer -monitoraspect 16:9 -fs -zoom -quiet -vo xv -ao esd %s

My 720p xorg.conf

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)

Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/CID"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi"
# paths to defoma fonts
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "i2c"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "Device"
Identifier "NVidia"
Driver "nv"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NV28 [GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP 4x]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "HDTV"
VendorName "InFocus"
ModelName "61MD10"
VertRefresh 30-90
HorizSync 20-150
# No clue if this is a good ModeLine to use
ModeLine "ATSC-720-59.94p" 74.176 1280 1320 1376 1650 720 722 728 750
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "HDTV Screen"
Device "NVidia"
Monitor "HDTV"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x720"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "HDTV Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

MythTV in 720p

I'm setting up my Myth box to use my new Infocus 61" 61MD10 HDTV, and having a much smoother time than I expected. I was going to get a PCHDTV3000 card to record HDTV, but later learned that it can only record over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts, not encrypted HDTV that comes over the cable lines.

Considering that our HDTV formats are still in flux, and might go towards cablecard in the next year, I'm going to just be happy with big, fuzzy regular TV recordings on a big screen. I think I'm okay with that. I decided that if I could get X working in full 720p resolution, that I could at least play HDTV recordings that I happen to find elsewhere.

So, I put in my NVidia video card with DVI output. I have a DVI->HDMI cable which I used to plug my Myth box into the tv. I was very surprised that my original xorg.conf file that the Ubuntu install created worked the first try with the DVI output!

TV playback is working great, but my HDTV playback with mplayer is stretching the videos width-wise, so I gotta look into why that's happening.

In any case, I found some good (?) Modelines here

I'll post my end xorg.conf in the next post.

Annoying myth backend problems

Occasionally I run into a problem where I can't delete a show, and the frontend hangs because of it. I restart the backend and frontend, then all systems are go. It looks like when the backend gets in this state that no shows are recorded either.

I just looked through the mythbackend logs to look for anything out of the ordinary. I found one line this morning that looked interesting:

/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.1:2005-12-01 02:58:36.786 unknown socket


There's not too much information there, so I looked for that same error across the archived logs, and found a bunch:

/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log:2005-12-01 07:57:30.304 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.1:2005-11-30 07:40:11.621 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.1:2005-12-01 02:58:36.786 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.2:2005-11-29 07:40:24.165 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.2:2005-11-30 02:55:11.343 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.3:2005-11-28 07:38:55.313 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.3:2005-11-29 02:53:19.537 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.4:2005-11-27 07:38:47.522 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.4:2005-11-28 02:49:52.655 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.5:2005-11-26 07:39:36.989 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.5:2005-11-27 02:47:05.457 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.6:2005-11-25 07:39:38.032 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.6:2005-11-26 02:43:37.770 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.7:2005-11-24 07:40:56.346 unknown socket
/var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log.7:2005-11-25 02:40:18.666 unknown socket


What's unusual is that these all happen at two times: 2:40am and 7:40pm. I'm not sure these messages have anything to do with this problem, but it's interesting nonetheless. I don't have any crontabs scheduled, but I'm wondering if this is when the backend is looking for new tv listings.

Something to look into..

Has anyone else out there had the delete problem, or any idea what these messages are?