I accidentally fixed my “fonts are too small” problem. While reading the MythTV development notes, there was mention of everything being designed for a 100dpi screen resolution. As it turns out, my Xorg config was defaulting to 75dpi, so I forced it with the DisplaySize option. Since my video card uses 640×480 for it’s NTSC output, I had to modify the recommended settings to use:
DisplaySize 162 121 # 100 DPI @ 640×480
I was surprised to discover that this solved my font size issues. I had so totally given up on the font size problem I didn’t even list it was a problem in the prior MythTV blog entry. :) I was actually expecting fonts to get even smaller, but I guess this changes how font selection is done, and as a result, everything appears sane now. Neato!
Also yesterday, in the hopes of reducing the effects of the “crappy audio” problem, and allowing multiple programs to have the soundcard open, I figured out how to get ALSA working natively within MythTV. In the MythTV configurations, the sound device should be “ALSA:default” instead of “/dev/dsp”, and the mixer should be “default” instead of “/dev/mixer”. The start of this was gleaned from the link I mentioned earlier. Mixer settings were found through trial and error. Strangely, MythMusic had a separate playback configuration, so I had to change that to “ALSA:default” as well.
Now that ALSA is being used, the audio choppiness has not returned. I can still get desync’d A/V, but I think that’s entirely due to disk latency issues, or something like that. Usually when it happens, if I pause or restart playback, it goes away. Also, since multiple programs can open the ALSA device and play sounds at the same time (thank you ALSA dmix), I can start looking at how to add a tool to play “button press notification” sounds. I’ll initial probably use something like “ircat” piped to a reader just to get a proof-of-concept. Then I’ll find some hooks in mythfrontend to attach it to instead. Eventually, I was a themeable visual notification. I should probably join the dev list to make sure other folks aren’t already working on this.
I’ve also found mention of “show type priority bumping”, where “New Episode” can trigger a bump in the priority of a recording. This may be a good step towards recording new Stargates at high priority, but reruns at very low priority. In the priority adjusting tool, I can see the third row for this kind of priority bump, but I can’t find the UI elements to adjust it.
© 2005, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
MythTV Fonts
Finally, fonts that don’t give you migranes! Since I set up MythTV, the fonts have been almost impossible to read. While blundering around teh interwebs this morning, I found a blog entry about fixing the fonts in MythTV. I can actually read the fonts…
Trackback by Anthology of Interest — December 4, 2005 @ 11:29 am
Awesome… I was just having the same font problem and that fixed it perfectly.
Thank you!
Comment by Anonymous — January 5, 2006 @ 5:23 am
You just saved me so much hassle. Thank you. If you ever need resources contact me.
Comment by RichardBronosky — January 20, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
This was exactly the tip I needed. Many thanks!
Comment by Saint Aardvark — September 15, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
Thank’s so much – its a bit sad that in 2010 its still an issue.
Do you know if there is a ticket open on this in the mythtv “trac”‘er?
Comment by Greg — February 4, 2010 @ 5:46 am