Finally got the Gigabyte mATX board GA-MA78GM-S2H working with Slackware 12.0. I needed to plug the SATA DVD into SATAII4 and set this to IDE mode in BIOS in order to boot and install from DVD. After install had to set back to SATA mode or writing CDs took forever.

Catalyst .run file worked with the base kernel but would not work with the 2.6.25 kernel. But, install with the base 2.6.21 (or whatever) and do not try and reinstall. Then after 2.6.25 kernel is compiled and running, fix one of the files in /lib/mod.../fglrx (firegl_public I think). See per the sarah-a-happy fix. See http://sarah-a-happy.livejournal.com/90345.html.

Then sh make.sh in the fglrx/build... directory and make_install in the fglrx directory. Worked for me.

But no sound in HDMI. This was reason for 2.6.25 kernel in the first place.
Got Alsa 1.0.16 packages and install. Xine still no sound in HDMI and poor video. Change video to xshm. Then video was smooth.

alsamixer and unmute by pressing m for the iec958 part at the end. But, I think this might be for optical.

alsamixer -c1 and unmute the iec958 (only thing that shows up).
Save with alsactl store.

Still no HDMI sound. Try aplay -l and aplay -L and see selections but how choose? aplay -D... doesn't seem to match what comes from aplay -L.

Try Audacious and one can easily choose HDMI from audio settings. Finally sound from HDMI. But how in video?

Finally in xine enter, "hw:1,0" in "device used for stereo output" and "stereo 2.0" in box for "speaker arrangement". This worked for getting HDMI sound to my TV (Vizio LCD 32"). Xine now shows DVD and plays sound.

Could not yet get sound in mplayer. Still trying. For a while it worked using sdl but this may have been while I tied up arts. Can't get HDMI sound in arts either. In mplayer I've got "hw=1.0" in the device box and it doesn't crash or flicker but I don't know what to put in the next two boxes. Changes from the defaults lead to the flickering box. Any thoughts on this?

My system
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
4800
Kingston 2Gb DDR2-800 (bios auto sets it to ~1.93V)
Seagate SATA HD 250Gb
Liteon SATA DVD

[Note: edit once to add sarah-a-happy link, and few other fixes]

Edited: 05/02/2008 at 08:33 PM by forum1793

Try VLC media player instead of mplayer and xine, it has many more options than most other media programs. I've never worked with HDMI in my life though...anyone else here have experience with it?

vsingh,

Tried VLC. Was able to choose HDMI after selecting alsa and refreshing. Upon restart of VLC this box also uses hw:1,0

But, when playing sound (mp3 or dvd) playback is jerky.

Get following error: [...]alsa audio output error: write failed (Broken pipe)

Searching on that leads to:

vlc --list -vvv --no-plugins-cache
...
[...] main vlc warning: cannot load module `/opt/vlc/lib/vlc/codec/libflacdec_plugin.so' (libFLAC.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)

But the file is there. Looks like a permission problem.

Anyway, what I really want working is Mythtv. It appeared to use mplayer. That is why I wanted mplayer working.

But, after using xine instead of mplayer in Mythtv's setup I notice Mythtv uses its own menu for sound. So that is what I need to get working. Have to drop VLC for now as its additional capability might not be worth effort to resolve this problem. Thank you for response.

Why do you need HDMI sound? Can't you just use regular sound hookups with your TV instead of HDMI?

Well, I bought a shiny new HDMI cable that is long enough to go from PC to TV. Also, when I temporarily had it closer I used a vga cable and then the regular dual male end speaker cable from PC to TV but sound was not very good. That was a while ago. Maybe it is better now with the alsa upgrades. Sound from the PC's front headset seems fine. But if I do that I have to get long audio and vga cables because the TV switches the inputs together... except maybe for the optical cable input. I would also like to be able to put sound into stereo receiver for better base and surround sound and the receiver's size inputs are different than PC. Could probably do it by buying a couple of adapters. But it would be cheaper and simpler to figure out what text I need to type into the mplayer and mythtv fields for HDMI to work. It now works in xine, audacious, and amorak using hw:1,0

OK, I got sound via HDMI in mythtv.

In the audio output device field put:

ALSA:hw:1,0

Cool. I don't play around with all this new HDMI stuff much; I just use plain old audio cables for everything.

Just before I got it working in MythTV I ordered an optical cable. It came in and sound works with the 780g over optical. Change most of the 1,0's to 0,1.

I wasn't able to use regular cables to stereo receiver as it doesn't input the minijack size. Most of its inputs are coax RCA's I think. Probably could have bought some adapters, at least for the front stereo input. I'm not sure if the 780G board outputs digital via any of its minijack outputs.

So now that is working I also got the kworld 115 tv card and will have to spend some time figuring what text to type into the various programs to get this work.

Here's a guide on the MythTV wiki all about TV cards:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Video_capture_card