Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards

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david at allpowerfuldave

May 2, 2008, 9:19 PM

Post #1 of 6 (927 views)
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Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards

Hi

I am trying to get mythtv working in combination with an ATI Radeon HD
video card, without much luck. The card is an Asus Radeon PRO
2600/HTDI/256M, and I'm using the open-source radeonhd driver.
Unfortunately the driver doesn't yet support 2D or 3D acceleration. When
I try to watch tv using mythtv, the audio plays perfectly but the video
freezes, albeit with the occasional new frame every ten seconds or so.
This machine is hooked up to my TV, at a resolution of 1920x1080. I've
tried changing the video renderer in the mythtv settings, to no avail.

Has anyone else had any luck getting mythtv to work with the radeonhd
driver, or can anyone offer any other help?

Regards
David
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george_mythusers at mari1938

May 3, 2008, 5:34 AM

Post #2 of 6 (860 views)
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Re: Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards [In reply to]

David Gee wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am trying to get mythtv working in combination with an ATI Radeon HD
> video card, without much luck. The card is an Asus Radeon PRO
> 2600/HTDI/256M, and I'm using the open-source radeonhd driver.
> Unfortunately the driver doesn't yet support 2D or 3D acceleration. When
> I try to watch tv using mythtv, the audio plays perfectly but the video
> freezes, albeit with the occasional new frame every ten seconds or so.
> This machine is hooked up to my TV, at a resolution of 1920x1080. I've
> tried changing the video renderer in the mythtv settings, to no avail.
>
> Has anyone else had any luck getting mythtv to work with the radeonhd
> driver, or can anyone offer any other help?
>

I'm an Nvidia user myself, but I'm pretty sure that without 2D
acceleration you won't be able to get acceptable performance.

In the Nvidia world, we're in a similar situation with the open-source
'nv' driver that most distros provide - it's pretty much not recommended
to use this driver as the performance for displaying video just isn't
there, and we need to use Nvidia's proprietary driver.

Does your card/driver combo support OpenGL? MythTv 0.21 has added
support for OpenGL rendering that works well, from what I have heard.

Otherwise I know there are people who use the propietary ATI driver with
great success - search the wiki if you're interested.
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jay at summet

May 3, 2008, 5:55 AM

Post #3 of 6 (872 views)
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Re: Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards [In reply to]

> I am trying to get mythtv working in combination with an ATI Radeon HD
> video card, without much luck. The card is an Asus Radeon PRO
> 2600/HTDI/256M, and I'm using the open-source radeonhd driver.

I'm afraid this may not be a lot of help: Without hardware acceleration
you will need a beast of a machine to play HD content at good resolutions.

I build a MythTV box using an ATI card and could never get XVMC working
with it (My 3.2Mhz CPU was near 90-100% utilization all the time when
playing MPEG2 (HD) streams on a 1024x768 resolution display, and the
video would stutter any time any other process on the BE/FE did some work.)

My eventual solution was to buy a cheap (30$) nVidia card and use it to
replace the ATI card (also a $30 investment). The extra $30 I spent was
WELL worth it. XVMC worked as soon as I installed the nvidia restricted
drivers and my CPU usage at 1368x768 with 720p content is now around 10-20%.

Yes, I'd prefer to use all open source drivers myself, but without
hardware video/mpeg2 acceleration, mythtv at HD just doesn't work.

Jay

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genecide at comcast

May 3, 2008, 7:24 AM

Post #4 of 6 (862 views)
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Re: Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards [In reply to]

Jay Summet wrote:
>> I am trying to get mythtv working in combination with an ATI Radeon HD
>> video card, without much luck. The card is an Asus Radeon PRO
>> 2600/HTDI/256M, and I'm using the open-source radeonhd driver.
>
> I'm afraid this may not be a lot of help: Without hardware acceleration
> you will need a beast of a machine to play HD content at good resolutions.
-snip-
> I build a MythTV box using an ATI card and could never get XVMC working
> with it (My 3.2Mhz CPU was near 90-100% utilization all the time when
> playing MPEG2 (HD) streams on a 1024x768 resolution display, and the
> video would stutter any time any other process on the BE/FE did some work.)
-snip-
> Yes, I'd prefer to use all open source drivers myself, but without
> hardware video/mpeg2 acceleration, mythtv at HD just doesn't work.
>
> Jay

David,
I would check processor usage while this happens using top/htop, etc.
You can also attach an excerpt of your backend/frontend log so we can
see what is going on.
I don't use the RadeonHD driver myself, but can you check if you have Xv
support (not sure if this has been implemented in RadeonHD or if so, for
all chips)? You could also see if your chip is supported by the Radeon
driver; if it is perhaps you'd have better luck with it.

Jay,
Not to sound argumentative- just informational, but it isn't necessary
to have hardware acceleration (XvMC) to playback HD smoothly, as many on
the list have found. Not all, but many have found it to be troublesome
too. I don't use XvMC on my nVidia 5500 BE/FE combo and 1080i (on a
1680x1050x32 display) plays back with about 80% usage on a 1st gen
Athlon64 3400+ (2.4GHz). The most I use is Xv, which, I suppose you
could call a form of hardware acceleration, though afaik all it does is
have the GPU scale the video. This doesn't mean, however, that bad
drivers won't affect the playback even if you aren't using GPU
assistance. For example, my Turion64 2.2GHz laptop with a red-headed
stepchild XPress 200M has with past drivers (open and proprietary)
played back 1080i using just Xv just fine as well. The current drivers
though...gack, and XvMC isn't even available with an ATI-based card.

Cheers,
Jesse Burt
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genecide at comcast

May 4, 2008, 3:46 PM

Post #5 of 6 (839 views)
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Re: Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards [In reply to]

David Gee wrote:
> Thanks to all for the various suggestions; I tried the fglrx driver,
> both directly off the ati website and also from the freshrpms repo,
> but neither yielded an improvement in performance. I've attached the
> front and backend logs in case they're of any help, although from the
> various comments in this thread, it sounds like I may be better off
> getting an nVidia graphics card. If that's so, can anyone recommend a
> specific make and model that will work at full 1920x1080 resolution
> with mythtv?
>
> Regards
> David

David,

Below, from your backend log is almost certainly the cause of the
problem. Playing such large video back via X11 video output will, as the
third line of the excerpt I've pasted below says, be awfully slow.
Before going out and buying a new video card (even if it's cheap), I
would suggest that you see if you can get XV (not XvMC, just Xv)
working. It may be that the *radeon* driver would give you this where
RadeonHD and fglrx won't (provided it supports your chipset, of course).

2008-05-03 11:11:49.150 VideoOutputXv Error: Could not find suitable
XVideo surface.
2008-05-03 11:11:49.150 VideoOutputXv: Falling back to X11 video
output over a network socket.
*** May be very slow ***
2008-05-03 11:11:49.151 VideoOutputXv Error: XCreateImage failed:
XJ_disp(0x11b5c10) visual(0x11b5830)
XJ_depth(24) WxH(1843x1044) bpl(5529)
2008-05-03 11:11:49.151 VideoOutputXv Error: Failed to create X buffers.

In any case, good luck with whatever you choose to do.

Cheers,
Jesse

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genecide at comcast

May 4, 2008, 3:53 PM

Post #6 of 6 (835 views)
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Re: Problems with mythtv and Radeon HD video cards [In reply to]

Jesse Burt wrote:

> David,
>
> Below, from your backend log is almost certainly the cause of the

Sorry, that should read *frontend* log.

Cheers,
Jesse

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