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Not a stretch at all. My MythTV box does all of this, except for the last (HD) bullet - only because I don't have an HD card.

My wife and kid use it all the time, with no difficulty. All of our home videos and digital pix are mounted via NFS and we watch them through MythTV. Ditto with our mp3s - thousands of songs on random getting played through the stereo via Myth.

It's one of the best things I've ever built. Check out Jarod's guide for building a FC3-based MythTV system. The guide is helpful even if you're not a fan of Fedora Core.

Not if you're doing HDTV. Check Jarod Wilson's howto for mythtv hardware recommendations.It even says in the MythTV Hardware docs: You'll need a faster processor for HDTV.

The hardware reports that I've read say that the AMD64 has some advantages over Intel's offerings, although they don't explicitly say that it's good for a mythtv box. The fact that AMD64's often run faster and cooler than Intel's chips seems to me to be useful, especially given if you're building a single box to do capture and playback, because it means a quieter machine.

The caveat to all this is the mythtv code hasn't been optimized for 64-bit processors yet, so it's required a lot of extra effort to get running. Check the mailing lists, there are several threads about that issue.

I just converted my old Dell P3-800 to a MythTV backend server. There are two components to the MythTV setup. You can run the backend, which handles all the scheduling, recording and media management, requiring you to setup a frontend system somewhere, that can be a Mac (works great on my ibook, streamed live television on my 802.11g) or PC, or even XBox (xbmcmythv project on SF.net).

I setup the box purely as a backend system recording with a Hauppauge PVR-150MCE capture card, and then use my XBox running XBox Media Center as the viewing end.

I particularly like the feature of auto-skipping commercials. After MythTV is done recording, it scans the recording and flags all the commercials, allowing you to skip right by them with out ever picking up the remote. I didn't have that on my last PVR. Plus, now I'm not bound by how I get my television (Antenna, Cable, Digital Cable, Sat) since the MythTV setup will work with any of those.

There is a nice packaged install out there for Fedora Core 3 users. Plus this handy walkthrough, for installing FC3 and MythTV http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

Helped me out a lot, and made life really easy.

"KnoppMyth has bugs(*), MythTV has bugs(*), the drivers have bugs(*), the hardware has bugs(*), the documentation is contradictory, the right documentation is hard to find, and the people on the mailing lists are generally unresponsive and unhelpful even when they do respond.

I did all the research, looked at all the reports of how people had done it, for months. I bought the best supported TV card (PVR 350), had a reasonably fast system (900 mhz), and used the most up-to-date versions of everything. "

I'm sorry you had such a horrible experience...

But a few points of contention... the pvr350 is NOT the most well supported card, the pvr250 is. Ironically, the hardest part of the install (dealing with the pvr350's TV out) was the easiest for you.

You've got a good point about the coherency/cohesiveness of the documentation out there. Although the best guide I've seen is jarod's fedora core mythtv guides

I can't speak for the mailing lists, but in general I try to cultivate a helpful community in the byopvr forum, I lurk/search the mailing lists and seemed pretty helpful IMHO.

What 900mhz system? is it a mini-itx EPIA board? I know recent knoppmyth builds have gotten better at supporting those boards.

Building a DVR isn't for everyone, and sometimes with some combinations of hardware and software you can fall into a crack like the above poster...

Would it be blasphemy to suggest that you consider a windoze solution, perhaps GBPVR (which is free as in beer)?

Good luck, and my condolences on your fustrating experience...

e.

Yes, MythTV can be a bit of a pain to setup, and yes, driver support for some cards is bad.

I know that I'm going to sound like a total ass for saying this, but... You need to do some research.

If you read the mythtv-users mailing list, you'll find that the PVR-250 seems to be the best supported card (unfortunately, unless you have one of the newer ones). PVR-150 support is iffy, but I have a PVR-500 and a PVR-250 (one of the first generation ones) working fine, with a driver that is listed as "testing" in ATrpms.

I have absolutely no problems setting up MythTV, in fact, it's basically copy/paste. Why?
1. I use supported hardware
2. I use ATrpms for the RPMS (on Fedora Core 3)
3. I follow Jarod Wilson's MythTV HOWTO at http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/, which the community contributes to in order to keep it up to date
4. I read the mythtv-users mailing list (and the -dev list, and ivtv and atrpms-devel as well, but most users don't need to do that).

-- Joe

The hauppauge card is excellent with MythTV. Myth seems like it was built for the hauppauge card. The best Howtos are written with the hauppauge card in mind.

I just finished setting up my MythTV box. My wireless card is sitting in a box waiting for me at home. I also considered a number of distros, but decided to stick with Fedora Core since that was what I was familiar with. Turns out there is a pretty good community around MythTV + FC.

Jarod Wilson has a guide together for MythTV + FC3 that makes things fairly painless (aside from drivers and such you may have to special configure yourself...) This site + atrpms.net made the install super painless. He's got the most common operations and pitfalls for all the major hardware combinations, and I found very little that he hadn't thought of.

Install was as simple as pulling one RPM off of atrpms.net and then doing one apt-get install command. Playing with the drivers, etc, was more of a hassle, but the mailing lists were helpful there. The MythTV documentation on mythtv.org is also indespensible.

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

The M and MII boards have well documented DMA issues There have been many attempts to contact VIA to discuss these, all have been actively ignored (we are pretty sure they are getting the messages).

What concerns me is that the problem has been fixed in windows, but Via wont even talk to linux people about it. That indicates a certain lack of interest in the linuxworld that bodes badly should problems arise with these new mobos. I would be very circumspect about picking up another mobo from them unless I was sure I wouldn't need support.

Just one jilted dudes opinion.

apple-a

the apple (cmd?) key can be seen here

http://blog.wilsonet.com/images/keyboard+symbols.j pg

apple-c = copy
apple-v = paste
etc.

pcHDTV 3000 from here

Air2PC from here or here

2. When you're ready, build a computer for MythTV. Use this guide, look here for HDTV tips, and ask questions on this mailing list. You can also search for answers on the mailing list archive.

3. You say that Myth isn't all you want. I think you're wrong. Here's what it can do:

It can record analog content from cable, satellite, and over-the-air broadcasts.

It can record digital content from over-the-air broadcasts, including HDTV.

It can record unencrypted digital content over firewire from some digital cable boxes.

Using free tools that come with MythTV, you can cut commercials and export any recording from MythTV to a number of different formats, including Divx, Xvid, VCD, SVCD, and DVD.

4. Here's what it can't do:

Myth can't record encrypted digital content from digital cable or digital satellite. Keep in mind that no PC-based solution can do this. The only possible ways to do record content from these sources in digital format are to use a black-box solution (usually) provided by the cable or satellite company or to put on your black hacker hat and crack the encryption. If you choose the former, odds are slim and none that you will be able to export the recordings.

Having tried both, from my experience, MythTv offered far more plugins, far better configurability, and far better performance. It can be harder to set up for the novice. I suggest reading up at the wiki at http://mythtv.info before attempting an install, Or follow Jared's Fedora guide.

MediaPortal, last I tried it, was crashy and very slow (took 30+ seconds to even start up on my XP 2800!), and I couldn't get it wo work at all with software encoding.

Mythtv, only because of Jarod's HOWTO:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

Another Linux-based PVR will allow you to record HD. The catch is that it only records HD over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts. So if you live in an area with HD broadcasts (at the least, most major metro areas in the U.S.), and you have an antenna, you can have an HD-capable MythTV PVR.

The card is the pcHDTV 3000, available at http://www.pchdtv.com/.

The MythTV web site is http://mythtv.org.

For info about HD and MythTV, search the MythTV mailing list archive for "hdtv" or "pcHDTV".

Finally, a step-by-step install guide for MythTV is available here.

MythTv

PVR Hardware Database

RedHat install guide

Gentoo Install Guide(I went this route)

Knoppix Myth

Yikes, are they trying to make it difficult? There's no need to compile ivtv and myth, and they send you different places for documentation. This site is a complete guide to installing Myth TV on Fedora Core 1. apt-get is used heavily, and most of the config files are available for download. I went from a clean box to a PVR in 5 hours, and that was without reading the documentation beforehand. The funny thing is, Tivo has to use a phone line the first time it runs, so it actually didn't take much longer to build a Myth box.

Myth does so much more than Tivo: dvd, dvd ripping, music, web browser, rss, weather, pictures. Maybe some people aren't interested in those things, but I sure am. But even as a PVR Myth has already surpassed Tivo. There are more options, and it's much easier to resolve conflicts (the main problem I've had with Tivo). Then you have the fact that you can do anything you want with the hardware: dual tuner cards, RAID, etc. Yeah, it's more expensive, and a BMW is more expensive than a Civic. Go figure.

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

I'll second that.

MythTV is great and it's extensible - if you want to build your own PVR and you like Linux, then you'll like MythTV. It's not necessarily cheaper than a Tivo up front, but it's more flexible and extensible if you're into that sort of hacking thing ;)

Having just completed a MythTV box that now "owns" my TV, I can say it was more complicated, cost more, and took longer than I expected. I can also say that I'm very happy with what I have and what I can do with it, and the potential to add new features and functionality.

Installing MythTV takes some time. I recommend using one of the distros/guides below. Following these, most clueful people should be able to get MythTV running.

See:

MythTV Homepage
KnoppMyth - bootable MythTV
Jarod's Fedora/MythTV Homepage
Debian MythTV howto
Gentoo MythTV howto

I'm surprised that Mythtv hasn't been mentioned here as an alternative to the DRM'd crap more than once.

What more can you ask for? linux/wireless/radio/dvd/mediaplayer-dvd-mp3 -ogg-lame-wma/weather/news/web/mysql/ripping dvd/photoalbum/DVR -pause-rewind-record/PIP/Schdeduled recording/front-end/back-end/all-in-one/

What's not to drool over?? Beats the pants off any commercial product, plus you get to build it yourself!

Many, many sites to help you get started , !

All without someone watching over what you're doing with what you've purchased......

There are also IRC channels (#mythtv and #mythtv-users on Freenode) and very active and helpful mailing lists to ask for help if you get stuck (at some point or another, you will!).

MythTV used to be a major b*tch to setup, I remember compiling the tarballs, pulling in all of the dependencies by hand, etc. It was quite painful (this was back around 0.9, when I started using it).

However, now that Jarod has put up his excellent website on setting up MythTV with Fedora Core 1, and Axel builds RPMs, it's a no-brainer. And, at least for me in the United States (California), XMLTV hasn't broken in months. And, thanks to the crack programmers, there's an option to check on the status of the last XMLTV grab (and MythTV e-mails you also).

Now of course, if your hardware deviates from the website, then you might have a problem. But, for the most part, it's still pretty easy.

-- Joe

I'll add another to the "me too" count, MythTV works fine for me. I even own one of the supposedly troublesome combos of a VIA KT400 chipset and a PVR-250, and it's working fine. We'll see how that works when I put another PVR-250 in the mix, but for now it works.

As a bonus, there's a website that has step-by-step instructions, using apt-get for everything on Fedora Core 1. You could pretty much copy/paste the directions, and have a MythTV machine up and running in less than one hour. That website would be here.

-- Joe