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Home Theatre PC Guide
Greg Ridder writes "For those of you who are interested in possibly putting together a Home Theatre or Media PC, I stumbled upon an excellent guide. It discusses basic hardware requirements, four software choices (BeyondTV, SageTV, MCE2005 and MythTV), controlling your cable or satellite set-top box and much more. Based on the research that I've done in the past, this is the most comprehensive guide that I've seen to date."
You're late to go out for the evening and just as you're about to run out the door you remember that Melrose Place is going to be on that night and you just can't miss it.
Did anybody else read this waiting for the punchline???
Here.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
... popcorn recommendations?
1. Buy Mac mini
2. Install CenterStage
2. There is no step three!
On the subject of MythTV (or equivalent). I like putting together computers and tweaking linux as much as the next guy, but I was thinking the other day that I might be willing to buy a fully functional MythTV box.
I really want a MythTV, but I don't have the time right now to really play with it and search for the best hardware. I was thinking that I'd be willing to buy a computer, with linux and MythTV all installed and configured properly (to work with my local cable box even?). Having someone else take care of all the hardware and software installation details would be great.
In the end, I may just build it myself, but there are lots of people I know that don't have the time, patience, and/or knowledge to build one from scratch, but are smart enough to take advantage of such a system (and maintain it). Does anyone know of a company offering such a service? Does anyone think that this has merit as a business idea?
Looks like 2cpu.com could use another 2 CPUs...
I would rather go to walmart/ best buy and buy off the shelf home theater system. If there aren't any as described in the article, I will wait for Sony to make one. Its too much of hassle to build your own. Especially when you are dealing with different components from different manufacturers. Look at Windows Media Center OS. Any high schooler can put together a super entertainment center. Utility? Not much. Hassle? a lot.
fuvoo: watch something
our favorite windows based yet open source HTPC app, http://mediaportal.sf.net/
The article says "Hard Drive(s): This is an easy one. Buy the biggest 7200 rpm IDE drive that you can afford." which is a bad choice. While it is good to have a fast main hard drive, it might be better to invest in a nice tower case and cram it with multiple slower hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration. Since a terrabyte (5x250GB in RAID 5) is only around $500, it might be worth it to have a central media server. This lets you rip your DVDs and CDs for easy access. These hard drives don't have to be fast since you won't normally be writing a live stream to them but just using them as a slow storage. The 7200 HD would contain the OS and enough temp space to capture and play live video without a problem.
--
Want a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
Build Your Own PVR and DVBn are also good resources if you are looking to build an HTPC
This seems awfully complicated to hook your PC into your computer. I have an ATI All in wonder video card that took about 5 mins to install, cost maybe 100 dollars more and has most of the functionality that this guy's setup has.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
Plenty of punch...to the eyes.
Seriously here's another article on how to build a throne room to the content gods.
It's either actually doing this myself on a budget - and it was painful - I never seem to buy stable powersupplies, or supported hardware, and blood is surprisingly conductive.
or making it through the reading of the article
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I went to the site and up came an 'read this ad/you will be redirected' page appeared. I have no real problem with this so I waited for the next page to load, and: the ad again. Well, the article finally appeared and I read the first page, clicked 'next page' and: same ad (Vonage, I think). That was enough for me. (This never happened with archie, gopher, and ftp!)
The article is well written and conversational for the layman. Great. But he doesn't really go into the one great unknown area oput there - HDTV.
What are the best HDTV capture cards, for Over the Air or for backside-of-the-cable/satelite-box? The article only touches on this, but it will be of greater concern for the home enthusiast/hacker in the next two years.
And by the way, what packages support this? MythTV, Freevo, etc.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
There is a guide much like this already, and that has been around for some time and is still updated regularly that is Linux oriented (The Linux HTPC Howto). The information regarding how DD/DTS work and what soundcard to pick and how to get HDTV working quickly was very useful to me.
u x-htpc/http://www.linuxis.us/linux/media/howto/lin ux-htpc/>
ahref=http://www.linuxis.us/linux/media/howto/lin
I am getting a new house built and I have the option of having a subcontractor install a in-ceiling or in-wall surround sound system. They of course are trying to sell their product so they say their stuff is the greatest of course, but I can't seem to find jack about the type of speakers they use. I can either get a 7.1 or a 5.1 surround package using Proficient Audio speakers, but there aren't any reviews that I can find of that kind of speaker. I am also indecisive about getting 5.1 or 7.1 (I have been told not to go with 7.1 because it hasn't really taken off yet, but I am not an audio guy so I really can't rebut anything they say) Anyone had any experience with Proficient Audio (good or bad)... I plan on buying a PRISMIQ media hub from good ol' Thinkgeek and running MP3s and other things through my TV and hence through my surround sound set-up, but I don't want to wind up buying crappy speakers that are prone to blowing up! What say ye?
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I haven't even thought of building HTPC simply because I don't watch TV, but I was wondering if average Joe Sixpack is willing to embrace this complexity, I mean MCE is as simple as it can be, but in many cases still a bit too complicated don't you think?
Otoh average people tend to use stuff like MSN Messenger etc, I think it's a decent way of making a living: I just put together a SFF such as shuttle, MCE or linux on it and the price can be premium compared to what you get for your casual PC, the question is are 'normal' people willing to spend that extra cash for that?
With PC Theatre software, the program manages your recordings, schedule of records and ties into other medias such as videos, mp3 and CD collections and even digital cameras.
Also, when you have a PC based home theatre you usually have the output running through a highend sound system and large screen TV or project, not your 17" monitor and $12 speakers.
Beleive me, once you start using a properly configured PC based TV system, your methods of watching TV completely change.
I am curious to know why there don't seem to be many video capture cards that can handle higher quality video signals. Composite and s-video capture is easy to do with cards like the PVR-250 and so on, but I've connected my home cinema up with connections like RGB scart and component video. Is the circuitry prohibitively expensive?
I can see why the media cartels would want to limit the capture of high quality streams (if you can record the hi-def version for free, why buy the DVD?), but surely somebody's got a PC solution for capturing higher quality video?
But if copy prevention has been forced on us, in the form of HDCP etc., then surely we can now make compliant devices that can capture unencrypted DVI/HDMI video signals? That's what copy prevention is for, right? Don't allow copying of restricted media, but allow it for unrestricted media?
I'd really like to put a homebrew PC in my setup to act as a PVR, but have it record at component video quality. Are there any solutions? If so, are they any that have open source drivers?
All comments appreciated.
here
For those of you who are interested in possibly putting together a Home Theatre or Media PC but don't know how to use a search engine, I stumbled upon an excellent guide.
Here is my personal final thoughts on MythTV vs BeyondTV.
MythTV != Novice.
I could never get a season pass to work, never did record "quite right", never got the thing to run smooth, never got the parsing of the xml guides fully automated, Hardware problems with ATI AIW cards. Fix was available, but messy.
BeyondTV = Simply Works.
It worked out of the box, I could access it anywhere in the world via web and record at home, had "season pass", no messing with xml converters, scripts etc. It just works on my hardware (ATI9700 AIW)smooth and simple. I can stream out the shows all over my network and have never regretted purchasing it.
So? In the end I paid the $50.00 to get a TIVO like service on my PC via Snapstream's BeyondTV. It's not as flexible or customizable as MythTV, but for it's specific purpose it wins hands down.
Don't get me wrong, while the 4 weeks spent aggrivated with MythTV was worth it just for the fun, I'm just not enough of a Nerd to keep at it and I paid to have something that was reasonable priced, and worked.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
What do I say?
I say "Do your own damn research".
That's what I say.
I also did a comparison, and since I am too goddam busy reviewing copy machines at the moment, I will just weigh in:
Best computer for the job: an intel with a cool-running CPU and fan. Dell 400SC's, if you can find them, are whisper quiet and perfect for the job.
Best card for the job: ATI or Nvidia, yada, yada. The TV card is what you care about. Hauppauge is the rage, and they just came out with a dual-tuner card (ostensibly only for MCE, but if you believe that I've got a Mac to sell you)
Best remote for the job: Snapstream's Firefly. Yeah, $50 is pricy, but, let's admit it: we're trying to make somethings as good as Tivo and this remote is the only one that does it. Remember that awesome Tivo IR blaster? Firefly is RF, baby, and you can edit XML to set up functions.
Best software for the job: BeyondTV. I tried Sage, Myth, even GB-PVR (don't get me started...it's good and free, but man is that shit finicky - release the SOURCE!!!). Anyway, BeyondTV is incredible, bullet-proof, supports two tuners out of the box, integrates with Firefly, and I got it for $50. Almost Tivo.
Best keyboard for the job: Definitely, definitely, the BTC 9019URF. It has a built-in joystick, handles, etc., and killer range.
There you have it!
Another great and free project is Media Portal. Fully skinable, all the features of Media Center Edition, and has plugin support: http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/
Well of course I have done that and if you open up all of those links they are simply the standard sales pitch from companies selling those speakers and not actual reviews, which is what I am looking for...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I recently built a new computer-based home theater system, and in researching my options I found that a hacked X-Box or a Mac mini both present superior solutions to anything officially in the "HTPC" market. (IMHO, YMMV, yeah yeah yeah.)
I chose to go with the Mac mini solution, and will be submitting a review of the pros and cons of going the route I went (warts and all) in the near future over at modmini.com
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
While I must admit that I'm new to the whole built-it-yourself PVR box scene, I started off by buying myself a stand alone TV card, just to see what kind of quality I'd get, and also because I couldn't find a standalone box that was open enough.
I chose the Nebula DigiTV card, and I have to say, I cannot recommend it enough. 110UKP gets you a PCI card, remote and a bundle of good software that covers pretty much everything - including letting your PC become a TV server on a network. The best bit about the card though... It's got a built in Freeview decoder.
Yup, the quality of the recordings is absolutely amazing - read cable quality - and the PVR software easy to use and if you don't have any special requirements it could be the only software you need.
All in all, incredibly chuffed - especially after some lacklustre forays into more mainstream TV cards a few years ago. Now all I have to do is build another PC to put it all in.
Not to be a downer, but replay and tivo services are actually not that expensive. I have the grandfathered-in $9.95/mo service from replay and that is my lowest monthly expense. Honestly, I spend more on cola.
What I want is a $300 PC that will replace my mortgage, property taxes, and/or car insurance.
Decent movies:
netflix.com
Decent TV content:
This is obviously subjective, but there's a number of shows out right now that have some potential. Lost, Deadwood, The 4400, Battlestar Galactica, Good Eats, Simpsons, Smallville, The Office (this show is excellent) have all either proven themselves worthy to be recorded or are showing progress. The Office is probably my favorite show in years. Good Eats is a must see for any nerd that likes cooking. Smallville has had some poor episodes and some good ones, so it's hard to say if it will get better or worse. Lost is intriguing enough that I'm completely hooked, but it has the potential to get cheesy if they don't stick with what's worked so far. Finally, The 4400 seems interesting after the first 5 episodes, so hopefully it will continue to be good once they start back up again.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Or if you can manage to get away with it, wire it yourself while they're building it.
.. install a in-ceiling or in-wall surround sound system
You mean building speakers into the walls/ceilings? I would have thought that might be a bit of overkill. Remember that you don't have to have monstrously-sized speakers to have a good sound, so you could quite easily have a perfectly good not-built-in speaker set that doesn't take up much space.
I would, however, recommend taking this opportunity to have speaker cable wired into the walls/ceiling, leading to where you think you'll want to place your speakers, with banana plug sockets at the end, all ending up at where you want to have your amplifier. After this, just pick out your own better value 5.1 or 7.1 system and connect it up. If you have wires for a 7.1 setup, you can buy a flexible 5.1 speaker package initially, and upgrade later if you feel the need (your connections are already there!).
Unless you really trust your contractor, I'd recommend you pick out your own speakers.
Hope that helps.
Made specially for DVRs. Maxtor makes them. This site sells them.
http://www.weaknees.com/
Me myself,
;)
I just have Myth on my linux box. pvr250 and dxr3. I just use myth to schedule and record everything. Since I rarely watch television when it's actually on... it's the only way I catch the shows I like.
It's not something everybody is going to want to dump money into and for the investment cost was minimal.
The set top unit I'm going to eventually build will replace all of this. It will come in at around 500 for all the parts I have to purchase. Most everything else is taken from my various dead laptops.
My strategy has been to wait for deals on things and slowly gather pieces and occassionally I get some decent hardware free from my friends. ie, this is dead, you can have it
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I hate sites that feel they need to paginate their content. Give me the whole fscking article, so that I don't have to stop reading when the server get b0rked by Slashdot!
www.wavefront-av.com
I managed to get to page 7...so it's cached at least to that page in coral...
h tml
http://www.2cpu.com.nyud.net:8090/articles/113_1.
After you've seen every Simpsons and Seinfeld episode umpteen times you REALLY get sick of TV.
Good Eats gets annoying fast. It is too cutesy-poo, just like the "Myth Busters" show.
1: mp3s aren't surround sound. Nor is most music, really.
2: it's pointless to have the main speakers built into the wall, though a subwoofer would be pretty cool if you don't have any neighbours and your family doesn't play much Jenga. Ask them if they'll just do that and let you sort the other speakers out.
3: I can't tell the difference between 4.1 and 5.1, so I suspect 7.1 would be pointless for me - you should probably try it yourself, get 7.1 PC speakers and a mid-range soundcard and see if you think it's worth it.
How about an RSS aggregator that watches hundreds of feeds and shows me the posts I'd like based on a voting system?
Or even better make the RSS display a screensaver feature. Why? Because I've been looking for a RSS screensaver for about a year now. I'd like to have my own on screen news crawl (huge feature) or even a slick screensaver that did something fancy with showing the feed contents.
like, don't use this stuff in a commercial product...
Get your Unix fortune now!
500MHz is not what you would want to build a a HTPC with. Its possbile, people do it, but since your going to be spending good money on a hardware TV Tuner then please at least buy something like a AMD 1600 >. I use a 1GHz which gets the job done but then I also like to do emulation etc. I need a faster cpu. 500MHz unless your dirt poor and have no money isn't the best cpu to start with.
And second I'll point this part out. "This will depend on whether or not you're an "audiophile". If you don't have a surround sound speaker package setup, than almost anything will do."
At a minimum buy something like the cheap chaintech Via Envy which will give you very good audio quality and more importantly SPDIF out. Are you really going to go through all of the trouble of buying hardware and setting it up only to use some shitty realtek card that causes hiss when you playback music or TV shows? That applies even if right now your not doing surround sound.
I'm not being snobby here either. These are basic things any decent HTPC guide will tell you.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Speaking of MythTV - one help option is the mailing list - which I find to be stuffed full of people more than willing to yell at newbies asking questions. The general feeling on the list is that if you can't contribute a patch - don't bother bringing it up. Anyone else get that feeling?
Get 7.1. Its not an audio issue or about it not taking off yet. The added cost should be pretty minimal and there will be more movies coming out that use it. You really notice it in things like the beginning of Gladiator when arrows sound like their whizzing over your head.
As far as Proficient Audio, never heard of em. You should try to get a listening test before you make a decision since speakers are pretty much subjective past a certain base level of quality.
Make sure that you don't hear crackles, that the speakers don't sound too bright(it sounds good at first but get annoying over time) and that the woofers are at least 6 inches in diameter and have reasonably heavy magnets. Under 6 inches and you run the risk of getting weak bass response or blown speakers. Light magnets are almost always a sign of low quality speakers. Finally, don't get specialty speaker wire.
I am familiar with Boston Acoustics inwall speakers and they are decent quality, or at least were decent quality 10 years ago.
I say don't look for advice on home theater audio on Slashdot, go to avsforum.com.
And yeah, go with 7.1. It's worth it. No, not much is encoded for it, but Dolby PLIIx (and the DTS equivalent) can both get GREAT 7.1 sound out of 5.1 source material.
Have the subcontractor just run the wires, then put in your own speakers later. In which case, it wouldn't hurt to run wires for 7.1 even though you probably will only use 5.1.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I know, old debate.
But, I'm curently collecting parts for a HTPC and I was going to go with my most familiar distro unless I can find a SlackedMyTH or a GenTV or a FOXCore or a KnnopPictureInPicture or HDebian TV, etc...
Anyone know if there's a distro the just reuquires 'emerge mythtv' or 'yum install mythtv' or 'apt-get install mythtv'? Is the answer, all of them (other commenst suggest not)?
.\.\att Clare
Modern TV dating styles:
:)
TiVo Style = Someone sets you up with more than you need and you reject them as you get to know them...
ReplayTV's Zones = "on-line" dating, you select first based on the details.
HTPC with windows = "not tonight dear I'm rebooting to load a new driver".
Linux HTPC = you gotta use your connections and put in some work but the result's can warm the heart of even the coolest penguin
It's not really easy or cost effective to capture component video in (I think the last time I saw it quoted was $30k). Too much processing required and too much data / sec.
:
Component video out to your TV from an HTPC is easy (well, besides tweaking it to fit just right).
The best ways of getting high def content into the box are
1. An off the air HD tuner card (HD3000 from pchdtv.com or the Air2PC card)
2. A slim chance of firewire output from a high def digital cable box.
3. Rip your own DVDs. This makes sense if you want to setup up something like every Baby Einstein video on demand (I do).
4. I heard once that someone downloaded high def tv shows from teh Intarweb.
Has anyone ever gotten a good quality picture using the S-Video out on an ATI card? I find the picture to be lacking in colour richness. I have tinkered with all the settings I could find, but I can't get a decent loking picture out to my TV.
This is the one thing that has annoyed my about HTPCs. I just use mine to capture the video (which does an excellent job). If I want to watch it on my TV, I burn the program to DVD.
I just built a media centre PC using XPMCE2005 and had zero problems! For $575 CDN, I purchased a cheap Asrock MB, ATI 9550, Sempron2400, Haup 250, 160 Gb HD, 512 MB PC2700, remote oem, and a DVDROM. Case is black, desktop style, and fits in my rack. All items were on sale mind you, but deals were not hard to find. The system works like a charm! Ripped all my CD's to the HD, and pumped the sound to my 5.1 setup. I am never going back! I even get a guide with basic non-digital cable!
For cable TV, the best solution is to just use the Firewire port out of the cable box. I have a motorola DCT-6200 and it sends all the broadcast HD channels out of the firewire port unencrypted (and I think law required it to stay that way). Whats also nice, is that the channel of the cable box can also be changed via the FireWire link, so no IR blaster required.
Runs linux, hackable, expandable, reasonable cost....
Anyone?
My company at www.scronline.com builds the box for you. If you're close enough we will even bring it to your home, set it up, and show you the basics of how to use it. These are custom built boxes, and we do more than just these, but this seemed like a good time to plug my company. :)
Depending on the situation, we will use either linux or windows for the OS, but we do tend to lean towards windows for this particular application.
Have them run as much wire as possible because it is a bear once the drywall is up. I didn't buy my house new, so I had to run all my own cable and I did so by pulling up the baseboard, notching the drywall behind the baseboard, and renailing the baseboard back up. What you might even want to consider is weather or not there is more than one location where you would possibly put your TV, if so, I would run wire to the places where the speakers would have to be for the other TV location and have them come out where the other TV location would be. Also have them put a couple Cat-5 runs and extra coax taps to the places where the TV could be.
Does anyone know, with some or all of these products, if there's a way to display and navigate a jukebox-like menu of movies, assuming one has imported one's DVD collection to a gigantic hard drive? I can play movies one at a time with PowerDVD, and I have PVR capability through BeyondTV. But these functions aren't integrated and it feels But I'd love to have an integrated, scrollable menu of standalone movies (in typical DVD format - .VOB and .IFO files) . . .
I'm new to SlashDot so I apologize if this isn't the ideal forum in which to ask. Any insight would be appreciated!
Sorry about the poor performance folks. Our box is a single dual 1.13GHz Tualatin box with 2GB of memory. It's been through Slashdots before, but this one seems to be the worst one yet. :-)
I've just finished some Apache Tuning and things should be slightly better now. Thanks.
Go to the TiVo website, click on "buy Tivo", click on "Web specials". Purchase the refurbished 40 hour unit for $149. Subscribe to the TiVo service. Send in your rebate form. One month later TiVo sends you a check for $100. You own a genuine TiVo for $49. Why bother to try to build your own?
I was thinking of making them mini-itx based to keep down cost (and noise).
Looks like I should get this going sooner rather than later...sounds like I just missed a sale :(
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
I'm sill trying to figure why this is excellent.
I have a hush with an el cheapo DVB-S card in it and it gives me a PVR that uses 10% CPU (50% when recording 4 channels and watching a fifth);
OK lets break this down:
- hush = no fans! heat pipe cooled VIA EPIA M 10000 CPU with 512 Mb RAM and puny 40 Gb HD, and with unichrome driver you get accelerated MPEG2
- VDR software for recording (does not require MySQL which is why I chose it instead of MythTV)
- vdrxine plugin
- vdradmin web administration interface
- plugins ad nauseum including burn to DVD
LIRC used to work before i "upgraded" to FC3 it was a real joe six pack machine. Point remote, pause live TV.
I am working on something better based on ubuntu.
Stay tuned
realkiwi
I'm still waiting for a manufacturer to make a HTPC case with a built-in infrared receiver.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
My setup is as follow:
1- P4-2.4ghz on Asus P4C800 Deluxe mobo
2- 4x 250gb Hard disk (2 on ata-100 and 2 on ata- 133. 3 of those drive are in a stripe set.
3- 2x Osprey-210 capture card
4- 1x Audigy-2 soundcard
I use VirtualDVR to schedule my show and use Virtualdub for capture. With this setup I can capture 2 show at the same time (each capture card use only about 16% of CPU each at 720x480 29.97 fps with 187kb/48khz sound compressed with Huffyuv).
With this setup I can capture in barely compress editable avi (I use Huffyuv for compression). I then cut out the publicity spot (cleanly since it's frame by frame editable)and then either convert them to divx or to dvd. With the disk space I have I can capture about +/- 20 hours of huffyuv compressed video.
I tried MythTV and BeyondTV but I wasn't satisfied with either. I wasn't impressed by the mpeg2 capture card out there and I tried quite a few before finding the Osprey-210. I even bought the Hauppauge PVR-350 and didn't like the quality of it's encoding.
Remember... A boomerang IS NOT the best way to deliver a bomb.
If you have widely spaced speakers, the center speaker helps improve the illusion that the actors on screen are speaking.
On a PC setup, the fronts are closer together, and so the center speaker becomes less important. But for a standard size living room, a center speaker is almost a given.
Rear surround speakers (as opposed to the standard left and right surround speakers) are not so important, but DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX DVDs do make use of them. Even if you shy away from such mindless thrills as "Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars", the two advanced surround formats--Dolby Prologic IIx and DTS Neo:6 can use the rear speaker(s) to good effect. Both of those surround formats, incidentally work reasonably well with stereo music.
Consider that if you decide to upgrade to a 6.1 or 7.1 surround system later, installing the extra two rear speakers will either involve snaking unsightly speaker wires under rugs, along walls, and so on, (ruining whatever aesthetic advantage the original installation may have had) or hacking through drywall and playing around with fish tape.
Best to at least wire for a 7.1 setup.
I didn't really need a PVR since Babylon 5 is done and Star Trek is ending. . .but I did *want* to build one. A main requirement was something to play my MP3 catalog (all 100% ripped from my own personal collection, FYI). We have two small children and keeping all the CDs in order and undamaged is a challenge.
Anyway, I put together my box in a Shuttle ST62K using Fedora Core in a couple weekends using the the excellent help from www.wilsonet.com. I would only have a few hours/day, if that, after the kids were in bed which broke up my train of thought certainly, but in any case I agree that MythTV is not a plug-and-play task. I knew that going in and, as has been expressed above, was looking forward to the technical challenges. FUN!
In the end I'm very happy. It's not 100% perfect nor as seamless as a real Tivo but I wouldn't have been happy with a Tivo anyway. I have all my CDs available through the stereo and can record TV when I want to with picture quality that's actually better than through my cable box!?!
If anyone's interested, my problems are (a) an annoying hum from the Shuttle case. This should be alleviated by suspending the hard-disk in the case instead of rigidly mounting it. Check out http://www.silentpcreview.com/article139-page6.htm l
for a writeup on this; (b) I need to attach a small/quiet fan in back of the (closed) shelf where the case is sitting due to heat. My wife won't let me leave the PC next to the TV and I don't want to leave the door open because of the 10 little 6 year old fingers and 10 smaller 2 year old fingers running around our house; and (c) the X GUI screen size (and thus MythTV config screens) are too large for the TV and run off the edges. I've fiddled with this a bit but haven't solved it.
When Comcast is offering a two-tuner HD capable PVR for $10/month. None of the homebrew solutions offered are nearly as capable. I'd like to build a PVR myself, but it would just be for fun. And I'd still need the cable box to tune the channels anyway. These solutions proposed assume you don't need a cable box, which is not the case in my area.
And next year, supposedly, Comcast will be offering the Tivo software.
Trek is going off the air, the StarGates' quality is slipping, ScreenSavers now sux. The only thing worth watching is Galactica, and that is repeated so many times' I've yet to miss an episode.
DVRs are cool and all, but until there is content worth recording, downloading or streaming, it'd be a waste of money and time...
True friends are hard to come by... I need more money. - Calvin
...which makes the X225 chip, though I do not currently benefit from its popularity or suffer it it is shunned.
You could've hired me.
I stumbled upon this list when looking for frontend choices for my HTPC. Pretty comprehensive - HTPCNEWS
"It was impossible to make MythTV just record every Thursday at 9pm. That's basic functionality in my book. Sorely lacking."
You have the source code don't you? Seems like it would be easy enough to add it.
A myth TV box could be uses for so much more, security, home automation, and a telephone interface using Asterisk. The sad thing is you could not legally include the DVD functions and or Game emulator functions.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The MythTV weather module is definitely one of my favorite additions. When you live in Canada, if you don't like the weather you simply have to wait five minutes and it will change
Oh, my god! It's been exactly like that in all the places I've lived!
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Beyond TV and it's associated Media program can record off a PVR 350, but can't play back through the 350's TV Out function, and has only a semi-complete and unsupported interface to the MediaMVP (which is the next best thing to a hacked XBox for a front end and somewhat cheaper). Sage can fully utilize the PVR 350, but does not have any support for the MediaMVP. GBPVR (www.gbpvr.com) supports all the stuff I use, although configuring it is more difficult than the other two programs. Which probably isn't too surprising given that the other two are in the $60 - $100 range while GBPVR is donationware.
:-)
MythTV currently doesn't run on Windows - not that I would consider that a knock
"I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all."
They buy Windows media center. I was commenting on it being impossible which it is not. Now if it was a closed source program it would be practically impossible.
Actually I think the latest version of MythTV has that feature now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sorry, but any "Tivo replacement" has to have at least some basic/adequate support for this, and Myth just doesn't - or I haven't come across a wonderful external tuner FAQ yet. Either way, I'm sticking with Tivo.
... why doesn't everybody just buy a Chevy F250 with a crew cab?
That would be a Ford F250. I'm just sayin', you know?
No, it's not opensource-yadda-yadda. Yes, I paid for my license. Yes, I'm loving the hell out of it for a general-purpose video-and-music playback machine for my living room. No, I'm not using it as a PVR, so I can't speak to that aspect of it. So... YMMV and all that. I just wanted to offer up another option.
I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker.
What are you smoking? Myth has support for using ANY external app as a channel changer. Combined with lirc and an IR transmitter you can control anything out there. My capture cards are all connected to external tuners via svideo (execept for my one OTA HD card).
Instead of asking what I'm smoking, how about educating me, and either explaining how, or better, pointing me to a resource that explains how to interface to an arbitrary external device?
Noise Matters! Especially in the lounge. And double-especially if you will be leaving it on 24x7 or watching DVDs or playing some gentle music.
Here's my recommendation (from experience folks - I have done this and been very happy with the results):
Option 1
A quiet PC built around a fanless VIA EPIA mobo, plus external power supply + quiet (and large) Samsung or seagate HDD and quiet Samsung DVD.
Option 2
A diskless, fanless PC booting from a flash card, plus a quiet optical drive. This is the MythTV front end. Then put a large, cheap PC elsewhere in the house. That is the server. Front end plays recordings and live TV delivered from the server.
I use option 1, and put it in an HTPC case so it looks just right beside the amp.
A measure of success is that the S.O asked me to get more disk space because we record so much stuff (kids programs mainly). I've just added another 400G :-). We went away for 2 weeks and came back to every episode of ER, CSI*, and The Magic School Bus you could ever want.
Why bother with analog capturing and coding nowadays? One should focus on receiving digital TV (MPEG-2 for the time) and store it untranscoded on HD. Modern videocards usually have support for the heaviest part of decoding (yuv->rgb) so we have no hard requirements on CPU. For heavier formats like H.264 etc. we may need specialized hw too keep noise down.
I've been thinking about building a MythTV box for the last two years. Most of the articles I have read mention the Hauppage TV tuner for the terrestrial channels (BBC1,2, ITV, Ch4) or a PVR (or whatever they're called) card for the free digital channels (BBC3, ITV2, etc.). However, I have not seen anyone discussing the control of an NTL or Sky set-top box through MythTV. How do you get it to record Stargate* on Sky One, then change the channel to the Sci-Fi channel and record repeats of the Twilight Zone*?
* Insert your favourite show here
I'm quite surprised that there wasn't much mention of mini-ITX. I didn't read the article word for word, but I can't recall any references to it. Mini-ITX is a HUGE benefit in my opinion, because it has the Svideo out and RCA output right on board. With that said, all you really need is a case, memory, hard-drive, and a PVR card to have the whole thing in a box. I must say the MII series VIA boards are damn slick. Especially with the built in PCMCIA slot. The article kept referring to multiple cards and "expensive cases". I found a Travla C158 that wasn't a huge beast, but also had everything I was looking for - including a power supply. The case was like $130 USD. Good article. But for those who are serious about building a DVR in a small/slick/feature-packed box, you really need to check out mini-ITX.
www.ralford.net
I have been told not to go with 7.1 because it hasn't really taken off yet, but I am not an audio guy...
Then you probably won't hear much difference. Wire for 7.1 (running conduit may be a good idea), but don't buy it unless you've compared it to 5.1 and been impressed.
With FTP, you could always put ads in the MOTD, and in the directory listings.
Even if you shy away from such mindless thrills as "Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars"
You're new here arent you.
One thing the review doesn't mention is how well each product handles 16:9 format TVs (and sources). In the UK, all our new TVs are 16:9 (apart from tiny little 14" things) and most TV content is distributed in 16:9 format (apart from the fscking Formula 1 GP!). But how well do these apps cope with this? Can they really switch your TV into real 16:9 mode or do they always render the picture at 4:3 and you have to 'zoom' your telly to get rid of the black bars at the side?
If anyone has any experience of this, especially if you use BeyondTV or MythTV, then I'd really like to hear how you got on.
"I equate the grounding strap to be more of a lucky charm than utilitarian."
Was yours frosted?
The guy recommends to use the graphics card video output instead of the PVR-350 output, which might be true for HDTV, but for regular TV, the PVR-350 output will Always have Much better quality.
Keep that in mind.
What's there to explain? Buy an ifrared transmitter, and use lirc. It's not even remotely hard or complicated.
Maybe 2cpu.com is finally getting attention due to the dual core hype. I remember when they were just starting up and when I was shopping for a dual CPU machine.
"On a PC setup, the fronts are closer together, and so the center speaker becomes less important."
Yeah, you nailed it, I was referring to my PC setup. I suppose it would help in a larger room. I'm still not quite convinced about 7.1 vs 5.1 though... and I suspect that by 2006 9.1 will be all the rage in high-end surround.
What I'm really waiting for is someone to make the logical leap and put some of those speakers in the ceiling and under the floor. *That* would be surround sound.
Honestly - you guys are all talking about putting big drives in a tower, or having P4's vs encoders, blah blah blah. When you finally get your system up and running you are going to have a loud hum, a whine, lots of clicks and occasional buzzes when watching tv or movies or listening to music.
Noise makes a difference. Design for noise first. As many people have pointed out, any old PC can be a myth box. Any old grunty PC can be a MCE box. Thats easy. To have one that you want to share your living room with? Thats another matter.
Here's a test - put your P4 home PC in your living room and then watch a DVD. Notice the noise? I sure did.
Best choice I made was designing around noise first, heat second (because of reducing noise) and then CPU power/memory/HDD size third. Trust me, you wont regret it.
So what can you do...
They usually give you at least 8kV (contact) and 15kV (air) of protection from static charges.
It's certainly not impossible but it is quite difficult to fry a decently constructed chip.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Ehm, when did MythTV get MPEG2 software recording? On my system it only does MJPEG and MPEG4.
I'd be very interested in building a HTPC --I already have a spare box and TV card -- but only if it's able to route broadcast TV, Foxtel Digital (satellite), my VCR and my Xbox all to 1 output which is controlled by 1 remote.
As far as I can tell, I'd need to buy one tv card for every source I want to output, and that's just not reasonable.
Isn't there some sort of device that can combine multiple sources, all controlled by 1 remote?
I'm a bit (pleasantly) surprised to hear that you're having a good experience with WoW on the Mac Mini... I would have guessed that the mini (particularly the video card) was not up to hi-res WoW. Would you care to compare the mini's WoW performance with another system on your network, or even just an opinion on whether the mini seems able to `keep up' or not?
I'm a bit (pleasantly) surprised to hear that you're having a good experience with WoW on the Mac Mini... I would have guessed that the mini (particularly the video card)
The funny thing is, video card isn't even the bottleneck for WoW. It's the hard drive swap space.
In order to make WoW playable on the mini, it is essential that you up the RAM to 1 GB. Even at 512 MB, it pages out to the hard drive too much.
Now, a little HD swapping is less of a crushing problem on most computers, but the mini sports a high-latency 4200 RPM laptop drive. Any time the game needs to use swap space due to lack of memory, it becomes choppy and slow.
However, once you have enough memory installed, and dial down the video options to make the demands a little more modest, the game is smooth as silk on a 1280x720 widescreen.
You sometimes get a little stuttering in places like Ironforge, but I've seen that happen to brand-new Athlon towers with the latest and greatest video cards installed, so I would dismiss that as a network/server performance issue more than anything else.
The puny 32 MB ATI card actually seems to handle the video of WoW better than the el-cheapo 64 MB nVidia card they put in the G5 iMac. Also, the 1.42 GHz G4 runs the game with no problems at all.
(Heck, I've even played it in coffee shops on my iBook, and that's an even slower machine than the mini.)
Bottom line is that WoW was well-designed to work on any system which meets their box specs.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.