Placeshifter on Ubuntu

[rswoods]

Hi,

I've been using Sage more than two years with no issues. I'm running v6.6.2.218 on a win2k3 server, accessing it with an HD200, an XP client, and a Win7 Client. Everything has been running great. Maybe one of these days I'll upgrade to V7, but so far haven't gotten around to it.

My problem: I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on a Dell Vostro V13 laptop. I purchased a Placeshifter license, and installed PS on the laptop using the .deb package installer. It works OK, except that I have two issues. The first is that when PS loads, it throws an error "Failed to load XML menu file". It's trying to load using a Windows path, which obviously cannot work. How do I fix that? My temporary fix is to load the default menu, which works fine.

Second, when I click in a playing video, the screen flickers badly between the video and the controls. It's very difficult to select anything. I have read up on this a bit, but nothing has helped. If I enable 3d acceleration, it locks up the computer to the point I have to do a hard reset.

Thanks

PS... My sig is out of date...

[rswoods]

Anyone?

[drewg]

Originally Posted by rswoods

Anyone?

No idea about your first problem. The second problem (OSD screen flicker) has been reported countless times over the years. Sage shows no sign of fixing it. The linux client seems essentially unsupported.

You'd probably be better off running XBMC on your linux box, and using one of the XBMC plugin / script type things to let it see your SageTV server. I've never done this (I always just use an HDx00), but others have talked about it. There was a recent thread "one box dilemma" (or similar) where it was mentioned. I'm sure google can turn it up.

EDIT: Here is the post I was talking about above:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...133#post491133
Drew

[_Demo_]

OSD flicker happens if your video card doesn't have a real overlay plane (or working driver that expose it). In that case the only option is to use opengl mode by selecting Enable 3d acceleration.

You might need to install better drivers if you have issue with opengl mode.

_Demo_

[drewg]

Originally Posted by _Demo_

OSD flicker happens if your video card doesn't have a real overlay plane (or working driver that expose it). In that case the only option is to use opengl mode by selecting Enable 3d acceleration.

You might need to install better drivers if you have issue with opengl mode.

_Demo_

3d locks up the OP's machine. Not sure if he can get "better drivers"

I have a AMD 780 based motherboard with on-board graphics. 3d seems to work for me iff I use the ATI fglrx driver. Unfortunately, video quality with that driver is nowhere near the default video driver (tearing, etc, in all playback apps). The default driver does not work with 3d enabled. Other programs (xbmc, vlc, mplayer) work well with the default driver. So if I want to watch a video on this machine, the sage client is not really an option since I need to choose between poor video quality or a flickering OSD.

Can you do the OSD in a different way?

Drew

[_Demo_]

Originally Posted by drewg

3d locks up the OP's machine. Not sure if he can get "better drivers"

I have a AMD 780 based motherboard with on-board graphics. 3d seems to work for me iff I use the ATI fglrx driver. Unfortunately, video quality with that driver is nowhere near the default video driver (tearing, etc, in all playback apps). The default driver does not work with 3d enabled. Other programs (xbmc, vlc, mplayer) work well with the default driver. So if I want to watch a video on this machine, the sage client is not really an option since I need to choose between poor video quality or a flickering OSD.

Can you do the OSD in a different way?

Drew

If you have tearing with opengl you most likely need to enable vsync. The main issue is that mplayer/vlc mostly use XV in a way that doesn't allow blending/mixing with a complex UI plane so we can't use that option. I thought xbmc also uses opengl but it might have other rendering modes when not supported. Let us know if you are aware of other solutions for video with accelerated RGBA ui plane.

_Demo_

[drewg]

Originally Posted by _Demo_

If you have tearing with opengl you most likely need to enable vsync. The main issue is that mplayer/vlc mostly use XV in a way that doesn't allow blending/mixing with a complex UI plane so we can't use that option. I thought xbmc also uses opengl but it might have other rendering modes when not supported. Let us know if you are aware of other solutions for video with accelerated RGBA ui plane.

_Demo_

At least on this hardware, fglrx is/has always been terrible. The "Wait for Vertical Refresh" slider in Catalyst is all the way over "always on". Is that what you meant?

Drew

[_Demo_]

Originally Posted by drewg

At least on this hardware, fglrx is/has always been terrible. The "Wait for Vertical Refresh" slider in Catalyst is all the way over "always on". Is that what you meant?

Drew

It sounds like the right setting, I'm not familiar with the catalyst drivers. You might want to verify you have the latest version. There might also be issues in the driver if using multiple displays. If your other driver supports opengl I'd be curious to know the error when it fails with the placeshifter.

_Demo_

[rswoods]

Originally Posted by drewg

No idea about your first problem. The second problem (OSD screen flicker) has been reported countless times over the years. Sage shows no sign of fixing it. The linux client seems essentially unsupported.

So I've discovered... Makes me wonder why I spent $30 for a PS license. Oh well, maybe my wife will use it on her win7 laptop.

You'd probably be better off running XBMC on your linux box, and using one of the XBMC plugin / script type things to let it see your SageTV server. I've never done this (I always just use an HDx00), but others have talked about it. There was a recent thread "one box dilemma" (or similar) where it was mentioned. I'm sure google can turn it up.

EDIT: Here is the post I was talking about above:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...133#post491133
Drew

Thanks! Looks like I have some things to learn. I come from a windows background. I put ubuntu on this laptop on a whim, and like it. But I have much to learn.

[rswoods]

Originally Posted by _Demo_

OSD flicker happens if your video card doesn't have a real overlay plane (or working driver that expose it). In that case the only option is to use opengl mode by selecting Enable 3d acceleration.

You might need to install better drivers if you have issue with opengl mode.

_Demo_

As drewg noted, the machine locks up if I enable opengl. Opengl for other apps seems to work ok (cairo-dock), but if I check the box in the PS settings, I have to reboot to get the computer back. Dell used to sell this machine with ubuntu 9.04 installed, but no longer, and they don't offer linux driver downloads. I'm not sure how to go about finding a better driver.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by _Demo_

It sounds like the right setting, I'm not familiar with the catalyst drivers. You might want to verify you have the latest version. There might also be issues in the driver if using multiple displays. If your other driver supports opengl I'd be curious to know the error when it fails with the placeshifter.

_Demo_

Using the open-source drivers, the miniclient just exits after putting up the "connecting to server" window. I've attached a log of 2 attempts to start the client with 3-d enabled. (this was the same with both the "radeon" and "radeonhd" drivers)

Other gl things sort of work -- glxgears shows "3503 frames in 5.0 seconds", KDE4 "composting" (fancy effects) works.

Also, the xbmc gui works (it has been a while since I ran xbmc, so I wanted to re-confirm)


Drew