[vox] Re: mythtv anyone?

[Alex Mandel]

> Message: 7 Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:14:17 -0700 From: Harold Lee <harold at hotelling.net> Subject: Re: [vox] mythtv anyone? To: LUGOD's general discussion mailing list <vox at lists.lugod.org> Message-ID: <46241F69.2080501 at hotelling.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Wes Hardaker wrote:
>> > Anyone in town set up a mythtv box yet?  I have a Tivo series one that
>> > I likely need to replace in the near future and I'm looking at doing a
>> > myth solution instead...  I think the software install doesn't look
>> > too bad, assuming you have the right hardware.  It's picking the
>> > hardware that looks more tricky  ;-) 
>> >
>> > Anyone done it?  Do ya like it?  Want a visitor in your livingroom for
>> > a demo?  (heh)
>> >
>> >   
> About 3 years ago I set up a MythTV box with dual-tuners. Pretty easy to 
> set up, and nice to use. I got the really cheap tuner cards with no 
> hardware encoding, which was kind of a pain. I think it was an Athlon 
> 2500+ system with 512 MB of RAM. It could record and play at some low 
> (but watchable) quality just fine. But my recommendation would be to go 
> for at least one tuner with hardware encoding to save your CPU.
> 
> Sorry - I don't have it set up anymore, or I'd be happy to demo it. I'm 
> sure MythTV has come a long way since then.
> 
> We left it running all the time, and scheduling works great. With dual 
> tuners it knows how to split jobs between tuners correctly so that you 
> can record 2 programs at once, or record one and watch live TV.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:44:46 -0700
> From: Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [vox] mythtv anyone?
> To: LUGOD's general discussion mailing list <vox at lists.lugod.org>
> Message-ID: <4624268E.6060109 at sfsu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Wes Hardaker wrote:
>> > Anyone in town set up a mythtv box yet?  I have a Tivo series one that
>> > I likely need to replace in the near future and I'm looking at doing a
>> > myth solution instead...  I think the software install doesn't look
>> > too bad, assuming you have the right hardware.  It's picking the
>> > hardware that looks more tricky  ;-) 
>> >
>> > Anyone done it?  Do ya like it?  Want a visitor in your livingroom for
>> > a demo?  (heh)
>> >
>> >   
> Although I'm not exactly "in town" I've had a myth box running for a
> while. My experience has been good when it works. Two problems I faced are:
> 
> Myth uses a backend (server) and frontend (client). If the same machine
> runs both, you are in good shape. KnoppMyth
> (http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html) is a great distro for this.
> However, if you want to run multiple frontends (say an xbox in the
> living room, your laptop, your desktop in the office, etc) mismatch in
> protocol numbers between the backend (say Knoppmyth) and the frontend
> packages (say Ubuntu or Xebian) will throw the whole thing out of sync.
> All units must follow the same protocol versions. Then there are other
> incompatibility issues. For example, my xbox runs Xebian, which uses the
> same protocol as my backend, but MythMusic won't install due to some
> broken package dependency.
> 
> My way around it has been to use Ubuntu Edgy Server for the backend and
> Ubuntu Edgy Desktop for the frontends. Needs some compiling, but works
> well once it is set up. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV
> 
> So, do your homework on the frontends you want to use and the protocol
> version it will support.
> 
> Second problem is how MythMusic (a plug-in) handles discovery of music.
> The plug-in does not rely on the backend for music. All your music must
> be on the frontend machine or be available a remote (NFS, in my case)
> mount. A bit of a pain to configure, but again, works well once it is
> set up.
> 
> In my opinion, its best to start off with KnoppMyth and one box for both
> ends and go from there. Also, get a tuner card that crunches in
> hardware. That way any slow box will work. Mine is a Hauppauge Win-PVR
> 250 (http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/products/data_pvr250.html) in a PIII
> 700MHz, and the CPU barely warms up.
> 
> As always, your mileage may vary.
> 
> cheers,
> Sameer
> 

So who wants to volunteer to give a talk about this at one of our 
meetings, maybe several in a team and a demo if we can arrange it. It 
sounds like there's lots of interest in this topic.

I'd love to hear about it, although I don't think I'll get around to it 
with my ATI all-in-wonder as 3d drivers is a big enough headache, tv 
watching was one of my original plans.

Alex