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

[William Case]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 17:57 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:26:58 -0400, William wrote:
> 
> > Hi Michael

> It's better to keep it on the public list, so other users can
> read it and possibly add comments.
> 
> > Since I have no 'Line'
> 
> Your onboard audio doeso have 'Line' (analog audio input), but it's not
> connected with your tv card.
> 
Mplayer gives me sound from both my DVD/CD drive (which RhythmBox fails
to do) and video1 for tv (which tvtime fails to do).

When using mplayer without pulseaudio, just with ALSA, mplayer does not
recognize the 'Line-in' control on gMixer or alsamixer for either CD or
TV.  Volume and mute only work with 'Master', 'PCM' and 'Front' in
mplayer.  I can mute or completely remove 'Line-in' from gMixer without
any effect on sound output.

The commands I have used to get sound are:
]$ mplayer cdda://1 
and/or,
]$ mplayer /dev/video1

I do not believe CD playing or TV are separate issues but are
intertwined.  Until the basic ALSA bug that is affecting my CD/DVD is
fixed, I'll never get to the bottom of the tvtime question.

> > the next obvious control choice I have in alsa is 'PCM'
> 
> Why? This is the "sample output volume". Unlike music players,
> tvtime doesn't output any samples.

Yes I realize that PCM controls the "sample output volume", yet every
source of sound I try, PCM seems to play one of the controlling roles.

-- 
Regards Bill
Fedora 11, Gnome 2.26.3
Evo.2.26.3, Emacs 22.3.1