ETV personal video recorder

Although the answers to all of the FAQs below can be found in the documentation, this shortlist might help you overcome ETV's most famous hurdles.

• How do I use it all?
  - MySQL must be running.
  - First follow all doc/INSTALL.TXT instructions. Then start the backend, master and frontend all in a separate console.
  - Start them with --? to show commandline options.
  - Alt-h in the frontend, and h+enter in master and backend show some debugging options on the console.
  - The frontend can be controlled with the keyboard. Read doc/KEYS.TXT, and for the full explanation preferable read the manual :-)
  - With the scripts in ./utils you can import stations from xawtv, and programdata from an xmltv compatible listing (for these scripts to function the master must be running).

• SDL_AudioDelayMsec undeclared
  You did not patch SDL, or ETV uses a wrong (unpatched) copy of the SDL library. ETV needs a few special patches to SDL. Read doc/INSTALL.TXT.
• Can't find ffmpeg/avcodec.h
  This file shoud be in /usr/include/ffmpeg. If it is not there you probably build ffmpeg using "./configure" instead of "./configure --enable-shared". Read doc/INSTALL.TXT.

• I don't understand how (something) works
  First read the doc/*.TXT files. Then read the Frontend User Manual. It is a separate download in Open Office format, but there is a PDF version as well. It might be the manual is not updated for the latest ETV version, in that case just download the most recent version available.
• How do I change profiles, backends, and kill or recover recordings?
  Become the superuser.
• How do I become 'superuser'?
  Either start the frontend using the --superuser switch, or press Alt-s at any time in the frontend. If you are superuser all form & list titles will have a '+' after them to indicate the superuser-mode.
• Why doesn't my mouse work? Why can't the window be resized? Why is everything so big and ugly?
  The ETV frontend is primarily designed to be used on a television with a normal VCR remote, everything GUI related stems from that. (Except maybe for the ugly bit: I'm a programmer, not a GUI-artist. If you can do better: please show me :-)

• Why does my image flicker?
  Although you have Xv support, it seems your destination colorkey (=chromakey) does not work. The output from xvinfo should have an attribute called XV_COLORKEY. If it doesn't, you will have to use the software scaling version of the frontend (--noaccel option). Do contact me, I'd like to find out how to detect/workaround these cases.
• I keep getting 'frame dropped' warnings
  If this happens once a while, no problem. If it happens while your CPU usage is 100%, use a lower quality profile. If it happens multiple times per second and your CPU load is not that high, I'd like to know more about it.
• My video is not smooth but no frames are dropped
  Even if your CPU is nowhere near 100%, linux still has problems keeping a constant framerate due to its course (10 ms) scheduling.
  A few solutions are known to me:
  1 - Switch from a 2.4 to a 2.6 kernel, the scheduler is much better with multimedia applications. This is the cleanest solution and the reason why I will not put any effort in fixing this any other way.
  2 - Recompile your current 2.4 kernel with Hz=1000 (if you don't know what I'm talking about and can't Google for it yourself this is not for you).
  3 - Run X and/or the ETV-frontend with higher priority (nice -10).
  4 - ETV could be modified to keep the framerate constant with all sorts of tricks and handcoded delays. This would eat up 100% CPU, and a lot of my time coding, which is why I will only 'support' solution 1.
• The image is blue, I don't see any video
  Your colorkey value is wrong. Read doc/HWACCEL.TXT.
• When OSD interface elements disappear they leave blue rectangles behind
  Your colorkey value is wrong. Read doc/HWACCEL.TXT.
• My image is very 'blocky', and CPU use is high
  ETV probably is running in software scaling mode. Read doc/HWACCEL.TXT
• LiveTV only runs with a few frames per second after a reboot
  Known bug on some systems. ETV still does not initialize the videocard 100% correctly after a cold start. Consequetive uses of LiveTV run normal.

• The sound echos with LiveTV
  This might be a matter of setting up your mixer correctly (see doc/INSTALL.TXT). If this does not help your soundcard might not support full-duplex, if not this is very often a linux-driver issue and not a hardware limitation.
• I do not hear any sound at all
  This might be a matter of setting up your mixer correctly (see doc/INSTALL.TXT). But a known bug at the moment is that ETV does not initialize the TV-card sound-output with some hardware, this is being worked upon.

• What hardware do I need for ETV?
  CPU: Everything from a 800MHz Athon/Pentium onwards makes ETV at least usable with a moderate profile.
  TV: All feedback I received from users is about BT8x8 based TV-cards, but theoretically all video4linux compatible cards should work.
  Video: Your card must preferably support hardware YUV->RGB conversion and scaling, in other words XV support. For XV support to be usable by ETV chroma-key support is also needed, see doc/HWACCELL.TXT for more info. There is a software fallback mode working on any card (if your PC is fast enough).
  Sound: Any sound card will work, but you need a full-duplex one to be able to use LiveTV or record and play at the same time. ALSA (possibly in OSS compatibility mode) is your best guess to get everything working.
• Is NTSC supported?
  Not yet. The 25Hz for PAL/SECAM is hardcoded. I'd like to get it supported, but I don't have any beta-tester yet able to receive any NTSC station.
• Does ETV support hardware codecs like Hauppage PVR-250/350?
  No, it doesn't. And it is not something planned either, I have spend my money on a fast CPU instead. (But I'm not against it, so feel free to send in a patch.)
• Does ETV support DVB-t or DVB-s?
  Not yet. DBV-t is being worked on, if that is finished I will probably buy a DVB-s card and start implementing satellite support. But count on a timeframe of months, not weeks.
• Does ETV support cable-company decoders or external sat-receivers?
  Not yet. The theoretical groundwork is in place, but as I don't know anybody owning such a beast I have not implemented anything specific. If you want to beta-test it I'll implement it.