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well, ReplayTv has some very cool networking features and auto-detec commercial skip taht tivo lacks the backbone to implement (and 3rd party apps/hax)... it's a shame it's NOT the market leader.

I think that DIY PVR is NOT for everyone... but it's really not THAT hard. How long ago did you attempt your myth/freevo build? The community/technology has come a long way since then, most likely...

I liken it back to the early days of MAME cabinet building... you had to hack keyboard matrices and solder like crazy, now you can get a ready made encoder with screw on terminals, prebuilt harness and plug and play... back in my day, we built MAME cabinets in the snow, up hill, both ways... but i digress...

Do you consider yourself proficient in linux? I think for the first timer, using linux to build a PVR can add to the learning curve (I suggest knoppmyth for folks new to linux but want to try it for their pvr setup)... there are window solutions (even commercial ones - yech ) that are brain dead simple to configure/setup/and approach tivo-esque usability without all the forthcoming messy DRM/restrictions/updates inthe middle of the night to remove features =)

*shrug* YMMV

e.

besides the pvr350 part of your setup (which has it's own quirks), did you consider checking out knoppmyth to potentially cut down on the build/install time?

*shrug* FWIW there are other "off the shelf" commercial (and free) 3rd party PVR/htpc software solutions out there... although they are on the *gasp* windows platform *ducks*... I liked SageTV... BeyondTV has been getting good reviews... and GBPVR is very full featured, FREE as in beer (not source), and is pretty cool overall. There's a lesser known HTPC solution that's open source for windoze Media Portal... I've got a growing list of PVR/HTPC links here

Also there are other linux based OSS pvr solutions besides myth/knoppmyth... like freevo, dave and dina multimedia project, and a few others I can't recall...

*shrug*

e.

Tada! KnoppMyth does that already.

Have you used knoppmyth? saves alot of time on setting up a mythtv system http://www.mysettopbox.tv/

I know you don't have Linux installed, but you might still want to look at knoppix based mythtv

I've not used it myself, but it's comparable to WIndows Media center edition without the Digital Rights management issues. if Linux sees firewire video feeds like it would a TV tuner card, MythTV would be like usig a TIVO for your HDTV.

Frankly, I find it rather difficult that they could put an entire Myth system together in little under 4 hours, especially since they seem to know little about Linux (for instance, it is practically impossible to compile MythTV in 20 minutes - it takes aaaaaggggggeeeeessss. Methinks they meant download and install rather than compile).

Probably. Knoppmyth makes it very easy to download and install. Installation can take well under an hour, although locating all of the tweaks that you need could take some time (hours, if you're unlucky).

("Tweaks", as in finding the instructions needed to get the PVR-250/350 functional under KnoppMyth, among possibly other things.)

However, once you know what to do, installing and configuring KnoppMyth from scratch could be done quite quickly (I'm guessing under an half hour).

They have: Knoppmyth at MySettopBox

I do believe it is about as plug and play as you can get.

Nah, he or she should just be directed to get a copy of Knoppmyth from http://www.mysettopbox.tv/ and follow the much briefer instructions, as well as any special case instructions by looking at the handi wiki pages that are linked to from there.

You mean like Knoppmyth?

Well as the article mentions it would have been easier to do with a distrobution that is designed for the purpose, and guess what one does exist its called knoppmyth, and can be found at http://www.mysettopbox.tv/.

With Knoppmyth and supported hardware it is quite possible to setup a mythtv system in about one half hour and not have to worry about all the configuration mentioned in the origional post.

All true; but then I don't think anybody (including the article's authors) expected the average Joe to do this.

Many devices (inlcuding the Tivo) run Linux and at some point, some guys who weren't average and may not have been called Joe, messed around with commands like that to get it working. Then they packed it all up so it all just worked when power was applied.

That's the thing - once it's working and fully debugged, you can distill it down to an ISO. Publish the exact hardware spec and then Joe Average can build his own with minimum fuss (assemble hardware, boot from CD and follow instructions).

There's a reasonable attemt at this for MythTV called KnoppMYTH:-
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

It's called development. It's just the same in the Windows and Mac worlds. Mac and Windows software doesn't write itself either - some clever people are fiddling with comamnds and abstract notions that would look just as obscure to you as the Linux stuff you saw to make Windows Media Centre et al. The only real difference, is that in the open source world, these efforts are often there for all to see.

I have to admit that for me, part of the attraction is having some facility which you can't just buy in a shop, and that I only build things I can't buy for a reasonable amount of money, or that don't exist in a Sonyfied form in Dixons.

In this increasingly sanitised and ordered world, I take comfort from the fact that not quite everything I see is meant for the average guy and does not come with a manual. Maybe it's the british male shed mentality given 21st century form !

Ok, I normally don't post, but this is just absurd.

This isn't an "off the shelf" set up like an easy to use Windows or Macintosh machine, and this certainly isn't a boot and use knoppix set up. This is a hack.

Comparing the ease of setting up a MythTV box to using a basic Macintosh or Windows install is beyond unreasonable, it's purely inane.

Of course, you could use KnoppMyth.

"And finally, after several hours of turmoil and despair, we have installed and tested our Linux device. Its far from perfect - we cannot readily work with digital TV broadcasts, for example."

It's for exactly these reasons that people use Windows and Macs... this sort of thing is far above the average Joe's understanding I'm afraid, and it really shouldn't be stuff they have to know as it's not user friendly, confusing and assumes far too much prior knowledge.

There are good reasons for having many distros. This is one of them.

you must be new here....

Perhaps you missed

I'm always sorry to hear stuff like this...
the first problem was that you tried to install Myth on a running system instead of using the all-in-one solution known as Knoppmyth. It's a Myth tv installation on a knoppix system. That installs from 1 bootable CD.

In any case, why you would install myth without a capturecard for playback only is beyond me. Just install mplayer and get it over with.

As for tv-out. Forget ALL tv-out cards. Even the ones that work are too much trouble. Go instead for external VGA to TV convertor boxes. Mine (trust brand) cost 50$ and converts video up to 1024 by 768. Without any drivers configuration or anything. Nothing can beat that.

Hardware I used. AMD duron 1000 Sound on board, AGP trident blade 3d, Capturecard miro PC TV. A freind of mine has a Hauppage, and it work without any problem.

My advice is simple. Don't try to install Myth on a full system. But use the knoppix distro that was specifically designed for it.

I hope you will give it one more go. I think it's worth it.

FYI: for a "fully" (wel mostly fully) automatic installation goto http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

With some old leftover hardware and a $150 TV card, it was ridiculously easy to set up, even though a little Linux experience did help. Sure, the commercial detection is "programmed" and prone to miss commercials or (on occasion) think that the program itself is the commercial, but when it's free and includes most, if not all of what these PVR boxes will, having that "up-to-the-second" information isn't really all that vital.

"thats some dope shit right there checkin them screenshots. All you need now is a bootable CD automatic dummy-proof setup that can turn any suitable PC into a crazy station!"

You mean like uh.. I dunno KnoppMyth (knoppix + Mythtv distro)

=)

e.

Distributed, multi-channel recordings are very nice. If you have multiple PCs, you can also do distributed TV watching (watch a recorded program on a PC other than the one which recorded it).

MythTV also has the cool feature where, if all the encoder cards on your current PC are busy recording shows (which means that you can't watch something else), MythTV will transparently use another encoder on another PC, and stream that output to your current PC. Sehr cool.

Unfortunately, MythTV can be a royal pain to install and configure. The easiest approach is to use something canned like KnoppMyth, but the current version (R4V4.1) still needs a fair amount of hacking/tweaking to work with high-quality encoding cards like the Hauppauge PVR-250 or PVR-350. Still, it's better than starting from scratch.

If you just look at a pure feature checklist, MythTV comes out on top.

If you look at usability, and user-interface, TiVo comes out on top (WAY out on top). However, Tivo just does TV.

However, you really can't just compare TiVo and MythTv, and say that "one is better". Everyone has different needs and wants. For example:

• The TiVo UI is very polished. MythTv's default UI (0.15.1) is somewhat convoluted. This is improving, but, as of today, it's no where near being close to TiVo (IMHO ;-). My mother can use TiVo. I wouldn't think of inflicting the current (default) MythTV UI upon her.

  However, lots of geeks don't care about a little UI abuse. They're used to it, and so they won't care if TiVo's UI is better. ;-)

• While many people care about MP3s, mame, etc., I don't. I just want a nice PVR. Other people will, of course, feel differently. What's important to you?

• TiVo boxes generally use up less power (oh, say around 60W, vs around 120-140W++ for a desktop). This is important if you live in an area with expensive electricity (if I left my desktop mythtv box on 24x7, without a monitor/TV, I'd be paying an extra $15-$20++ a month). Newer PCs are increasingly more and more power hungry. Yes, you can build lower-power PCs, but you're going to PAY for that privilege. Which leads to another point ...

• What's more important to you: cheap hardware or lower power bills?

• The unwashed masses out there will say, "I can just use my old PC, which uses less power!" Well, maybe. You've then got to go down the slippery path of software vs hardware MPEG encoders. The old PC will, in all probability, not have an hardware MPEG encoder, and so will have to do software MPEG encoding. However, can your old PC do software MPEG encoding in real-time? If you go the hardare MPEG encoder route, you're going to PAY to get a good encoder (the Hauppauge PVR-250 and PVR-350 are very nice ;-).

  (Then there's the matter of "fullscreen goom", which many mythtv developers seem to love, and which needs lots of CPU power. I don't understand the attraction, though. ;-)

• Building a killer mythtv box isn't cheap. In fact, it's probably the same as, or more expensive, than a TiVo with lifetime subscription.

• For that matter, building a mythtv box can be easy ... or it can be h*llish (knoppmyth works wonders, here). It all depends on the hardware you have. What hardware? Well, what worked painlessly yesterday, is hard-to-find today (or not available, except via ebay, but I try to avoid ebay). Be prepared to hunt down drivers and patches, and do some recompiling (and be prepared to do a LOT of searching through mailing list archives for your problems). Also, TV-out amongst video cards seem to vary highly in quality. Be prepared to look around.

  (Been there, done that, read the book, got the t-shirt, saw the movie.)

• Tivo boxes (don't know about directTivo) never have stuttering during playback, unlike mythtv boxes, which do occasionally. (Well, some mythtv boxes are probably stutter-free, but that goes back to my point about hardware, above.)

  (Also, strangely enough, if you increase the MPEG bitrate a bit, the stuttering seems to decrease/go away. Weird. I think I'm currently using 4000kbps, and the stuttering seems to have virtually gone away.)

Although I've dabbled in Linux off and on for several years, I'm hardly proficient. MythTV has renewed my love of Linux in a big way. The Knoppmyth distro proved to be a perfect catalyst. The install is simple and straight forward (do your research on supported hardware first!) Check out the forums at My Settop Box. It's based off Debian (all hail apt-get!). The developers did an outstanding job of setting up the bare essentials and they keep pace with stable MythTV builds. This has everything the commercial PVRs have and much much more. My dad has been a devout ReplayTV user for sometime and was blown away by the freedom MythTV provides. Since it's Linux you are free to do anything your heart desires. My 7 year old has become very proficient at pulling up his favorite Futurama episodes (yes I've taught him well), music, pictures...you name it. He's actually a better navigator than the mrs. :)

Please note however, it's still under heavy development and shouldn't be attempted if you aren't a geek who enjoys hacking config files or aspiring to learn Linux.

The only major problem I've experienced is that everyone who sees mine wants me to build them one.

Look a little harder.

Amen.
I figured that Memorial Day weekend was a good weekend to try and get this working.. I had found a handy-dandy step-by-step guide on how to install MythTV on Fedora Core here.. I figured, how hard can it be?

I was wrong, by far... I never could get LIRC to run under Fedora Core 1, let alone the two instances I need (One for my remote, and the other to control my homemade IR Transmitter to control my digital cable box).

So, I tried another alternative, that being KnoppMyth, a Knoppix disc customized for MythTV. By far, I've gotten much better results with this. I was able to get the second LIRC instance going too. I don't get the pretty gewgaws out of the box (KDE or Gnome, etc), but it does have the virtue of working.

For those considering building their own, and aren't Linux gurus, I would suggest going with the "standard" hardware in use (Nvidia video cards for TV Out+Hauppauge PVR250, or a Hauppauge PVR350).. You'll find much more help that way.

I don't know how easy it would be to find one today, but if you don't mind the added IR receiver, I happen to like my 'Surf Board' for keyboard stuff. The label on the back records it as an SK-7100, and there is support for the multimedia keys on this board for Linux, as well as Windows.

I have also used what I will call a wrist board with my laptop, as well as a couple of desktop systems, and I think it would work well as a remote for a pc based home theatre system. It is burried somewhere in storage right now, and I do not know if there is support for it in Linux, though it did come with Windows drivers, so it should work as part of a Windows based home theatre setup. Basicly it had the form of an old atari portable game system, you rested it across either wrist, it had buttons under several fingers you held the thing with, and a stylus and drawing pad you could use as a mouse, or a direct access mouse pad via your other hand.

My primary controller for my home theatre today is the Hauppauge! remote that comes with the PVR-250 board. It works well for all the gui stuff under KnoppMyth and reportedly works well with FreeVo, though I have not tested that. It does come with drivers for Windows, so that should work well also.

The only time I resort to a keyboard is when I need to do things that require text entry. That is currently less of an issue than it has been in the past. I can see it being important for someone who wants to set up passwords to restrict access to material and videos they would rather their kids not see, or listen to, but even that has been very workable via standard remotes for the past several years on digital cable systems, Sat receivers, and even some DVD and VCRs. With the V-Chip in TVs, I suspect they are controlling that via the number pad on a remote as well. Keyboards should be considered suspect in well designed home theatre systems in my opinion.

Granted that's an opinion that you may not share.

-Rusty

You obviously have not tried KnoppMyth. I set up my MythTV machine -- on a VIA EPIA ME6000 no less, a somewhat obscure board -- in a matter of about two or three hours with this. This is including installation time.

So many people insist on setting up MythTV from a clean installation all on their own, which is great and all -- you'll learn a lot about Linux in the process -- but KnoppMyth literally makes the process painless and extremely fast.

Of course, KnoppMyth is meant for machines dedicated to Myth, so I'm not discrediting everyone who tries installing it on their own.

Have you looked at the KnoppMyth LiveCD?

Just stick it in a Pentium Pro compatible PC and type setup, if you have an nvidia card or nForce motherboard run install-nvidia and add
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "TV"
to your /etc/X11/XFConfig-4... the rest is done for you.

You can even just boot right from the CD to get a frontend machine.

The CoolerMaster ATX-620 fits nicely in my audio rack. Relatively quiet, one discrete blue LED indicator, black brushed aluminum.

The breakdown:

• CoolerMaster ATX-620 $139 US
• Biostar M7V1G motherboard $69
• Athlon XP 2100 $69
• 1GB RAM $140
• PVR-250 capture card $139
• nVidia MX440 $69
• NIC $15 (no luck with the onload Rhine VT6102)
• CD/DVD driver $29

did you try a KnoppMyth install or did you roll your own MythTV install?

*shrug* if you haven't tried KnoppMyth, it might help you (if you aren't an uberLinux geek) get over the initial install/dependencies/setup hump... YMMV

e.

Just when it seems the world is going to hell in a handbasket and everything is changing.... Come to \. where any discussion topic migrates to M$ bashing. I love you guys.

Someone mentioned KnoppixMyth earlier and I went a googlin'. No such thing, but there is KnoppMyth and you can find it here.

• Shuttle SN41G2 with RAM + XP 2500 - $369
• Hauppauge PVR-250 OEM $96
• 120 Gig HD $70

KnoppMyth

Practically a linux PVR on a bootable CD...

E.

http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

I swear by KnoppMyth myself. It works straight "out of the box" with the PVR250, including the light grey remote (which should ship with all the latest versions of the PVR250). I guess there's a way to get the older black remote working also. For those interested visit the website and download the ISO (R4). Note that advanced setup didn't work for me, and there is 1 nasty bug with the station info download you need to fix (check the forum for more info).

At this point I'm a very happy MythTV user, in danger of filling up my 120G hard drive...

It's quite amazing how easy it is to get running.

Before you try it, I recommend you cruise the discussion forum to be sure your hardware is supported.

Try out KnoppMyth which is a Knoppix bootable CD customized to do just MythTV

Cecil and Dale really are doing a great job with this project. For some hardware this works 'right out of the box'. There is also an active forum on their website website

Between this site and MythTV's, it's really not bad to set up a working system fast.

Perhaps what's even better is that because knoppmyth is based on Knoppix (and thus on Debian) , it allows you to apt-get update to upgrade (most) of your software as needed. What isn't updated with an apt-get gets updated with Cecil and Dale' upgrade scripts as new versions come out (without touching your data). The only thing that I could think of that would make this cooler is for them to put together an apt repository on their own to track the project's changes.

Anyway... Do check it out.

--JP

If you only want the box for MythTV then give Knoppmyth a try.

How about KnoppMyth?

An easier path to myth installation is to use knoppmyth which (just like it sounds) uses a knoppix style boot-and-detect-everything followed by a myth installation-to-hd script.

Someone has -- it's called KnoppMyth

I had some trouble using it so went with a traditional RH 9/MythTV install, but I expect it's improved since then.