[mythtv-users] ALSA audio conflict w/ Boxee/HuluDesktop

[Andrew Gallatin]

Andrew Gallatin [gallatin at cs.duke.edu] wrote:
> I've had some luck with killing pulseaudio before mythfrontend starts
> (to prevent myth from suspending it).  Then I start boxee from a 
> terminal, and it works.  After I'm done with boxee, I need to kill
> pulseaudio again before going back to mythtv.  I just need to script
> this some..
> 
> At least for me, the trick was killing pulse before myth starts.  I
> use fluxbox and login via GDM on MythDora 12.23.  When I login, gdm
> leaves a pulseaudio deamon running (as gdm) that I have to kill via
> sudo pkill -9 pulseaudio in the fluxbox startup script. (the --kill
> option doesn't work, since the daemon is running as gdm).

I finally got around to scripting it, and I realized that when I start
Boxee from Mythfrontend, chaos ensues with the remote control.  I use
irxevent.  It seems like mythfrontend gets all the remote key presses,
and Boxee gets none (I'd tested before w/a keyboard/mouse).  I'll bet
Boxee is talking directly to lirc or something.  Rather than figure
this out, it seemed easier to just kill mythfrontend from the launch
script, and then re-start it when Boxee exits.

The appended script seems to work for me.  I start it via the
button definition here, which I added to mainmenu.xml, after
copying it to ~/.mythtv/

 <button>
   <type>TV_WATCH_RECORDINGS</type>
   <text>Launch Boxee</text>
   <action>EXEC /home/mythtv/run_boxee.sh</action>
 </button>


I set the TV to 720p for Boxee, since I'm mostly watching stuff like
the daily show, and my ion struggles with software scaling if I leave
it in 1080p.

Drew

#!/bin/sh

pkill -TERM mythfrontend
pulseaudio --start
xrandr -s 1280x720 -r 66
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/mythtv/ubuntu-libs /opt/boxee/Boxee 
pulseaudio --kill
xrandr -s 1920x1080 -r 51
pkill -9 pulseaudio
exec mythfrontend