TV tuner, sound etc. -- what does this mean?

[Bill Davidsen]

William Case wrote:
> Hi Michael;
> 
> On Fri, 2009-07-31 at 07:54 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>> On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:52:00 -0400, William wrote:
>>
>>> Mplayer gives me sound from both my DVD/CD drive (which RhythmBox fails
>>> to do) and video1 for tv (which tvtime fails to do).
>> It's not accurate to say "tvtime fails", because it doesn't even try to do
>> what you think it does [apparently]. The implementation in tvtime is
>> from 2005 and can only enable an analogue audio input channel.
> 
> I have understood from the first time that you told me that tvtime does
> not mix sound  -- except for the simplest kind of volume control; that
> ALSA is, or should be supplying the mixing.
> 
> However, from a descriptive perspective, when I launch tvtime I get no
> sound.  I don't think anybody on "God's Green Earth" would misunderstand
> what I am saying. What words would you suggest I choose to express that
> meaning?
> 
> Getting mplayer working as a replacement for tvtime is not the point of
> this exercise.  There is something clearly wrong with some drivers that
> are related to ALSA.  My system's sound chips are not terribly unique.
> The whole world is going to the PCIe bus.  Having a tuner that includes
> both analogue and digital is not something that should be difficult to
> overcome.  As you point out, analogue is not being used.  As you have
> also pointed out, this is not about tvtime but about enabling one of the
> under lying chips or drivers.
> 
Enabling some chip to do what? There is no analog sound any more, you can't 
"enable" it, you would have to write your own driver.

> Perhaps you can suggest another program that should be using alsa's
> analog sound capability (or lack of that capability) and I will try to
> get that going.
> 
What you need is a program which can handle what the video driver writers choose 
to make available (because that's useful to them) and has a usable user 
interface I can give to a non-hacker. Unfortunately after almost two years of 
looking I have concluded that video is now exclusively hacker land. Application 
tell the user to do things in SQL, or to enter channel frequencies in MHz, and 
there seems to be nothing which is user friendly, where you can select analog or 
digital format (many cable systems have both), and a channel number, and have it 
work without knowing how to "install the database software of choice and create 
a user" or "build a table to frequencies in MHz and channel names" and other 
things of interest only to hackers.

TV on Linux had a brief moment of working very easily, but it seems to have 
vanished. If I'm trying to get someone to try Linux instead of Win7 I never 
mention TV capability.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot