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O'Reilly Builds a MythTV Box
enrico_suave writes "While the Broadcast Flag battle continues, it's still legal to put together your own HDTV PC HTPC/PVR. O'Reilly has posted part 1 in a series of articles describing the ins and outs of Building a MythTV Box" From the article: "For now, the good news is that it is still legal to put together your own home-theater PC. Parts are now cheap enough that it is no longer ridiculous to build a PC specifically to handle TV for you, much like the VCR in Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency..."
Hi,
How is Myth's firewire support for DTV cable boxes shaping up? Preferably HDTV. Is there a DTV howto yet, with tips for receivers generally and particular models particularly?
I'd consider swapping my TiVo out (given its really crappy slow performance lately, lack of digital audio or video, and monthly fees) but it's easy to use and having to go thru config hell wouldn't be worth it for me if I didn't get anything nifty in terms of features..
Bah. The broadcast flag will not make it illegal for you to build your own home-theater. How could they stop you from doing it? You just won't be able to record (or watch?) anything.
---
"Follow the links," he said.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Given the good enough performance and price ($5/month) of my Tivo, I just can't justify the time and effort. My brother-in-law (aka the King of DIY) made one and he is constantly wrenching that thing.
Systm had a video how-to of building a MythTV box. Having seen the short segment (and having assembled a PVR before it), I am surprised that the article is "Part 1."
Until then, I'm stuck with consulting the massive tome of Myth links I've collected over the years, half of which are out-of-date, or unmaintained (although the official docs are a good effort). Would be nice if O'Reilly brought their professionalism to it.
One thing I've never figured out - why aren't there more companies mass-marketting and selling these? How come say, Phillips or some other company hasn't picked this up and prettified it to sell to the end consumer who's never heard of Linux? (It's not like companies haven't taken Linux and put it inside devices to sell to the "Just Works" crowd - all that embedded stuff, for example, a lot of routers/firewall products etc.)
Looking at the article, I'd have to say it rates 5 out of 5 - truly up to O'Reilly's normal standards - well set out, doesn't talk down to users, and pretty pictures...*in colour* (man...talk about innovation...I have *never* seen a colour O'Reilly article/book...althought since this is /., I give it 5 mins before somebody finds one, in some random alternative universe somewhere).
The article fails to mention why Bill O'Reilly decided to build a MythTV box, and why I should care.
Oh wait, it was the other O'Reilly? Nevermind...
I'm currently building a MythTV system on a P4 1.5GHz. I've got it running pretty well so far in Gentoo under EvilWM. The instructions I'm trying to follow are here. They're pretty complete, and even though they don't match my setup exactly, I've only run into a couple hiccups so far. It involves using Zap2It or XMLTV to download the listings, setting up your IR remote, configuring X, and more. I highly suggest using it if you want to set up your own MythTV box.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Everyone eelse has and it worked for me.
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to m
Bill O'Reilly: Linus, haven't you... I mean... let's take it from the top here. You make a program, for lack of a better term, that enables people to use computers without paying for any software whatsoever. Isn't that considered illegal in the court system? Isn't that piracy by any modern standard?
Linus: Well, the system is an operating system that is maintained by many people. I just make the kernel. The userland is built by academics ar...
Bill O'Reilly: Wait a second! Wait a second! You are saying that academics build this, and trying to give it away for nothing, for the purpose of running commercial entities out of business?
Linus: No, that's not true at all... we build software to give it away to anyb...
Bill O'Reilly: And what's this I hear about writing software to enable pirating of television programs? You understand that we have men and women, DYING OVERSEAS, to protect our way of life, and our way of life is CAPITALISM... where's the logic in what you are doing?
Linus: Bill, I don't think it's a matter of capitalism but rath...
Bill O'Reilly: Awwww come on! COME ON! You're just... you know, you smug academics elites are all alike. You just want to take and take and take... and give away at the expense of the America pulbic! Well, I'll tell you -- we AIN'T buying it on the Factor. We ain't buying it one bit. And if you're smart, you'll wise up... next up on the Factor, some people claim that liberals eat live human fetuses. We'll investigate and show you how they're right and what you can do to stop it.
In my recent quest to build a MythTV box, I have discovered that building the system is not the difficult part. The challenge has been to get MythTV running smooth and stable.
;)
[rant mode ON]
I think that it's a terrific project, I just wish that there was a little more consensus and standards between all these different components for the project. MythTV's compile reference system is Debian. The drivers for the HD-3000 are Red Hat/Fedora. Knoppmyth, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mandriva, all seem to have their little quirks - can't we all just get along?
[rant mode OFF]
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
For those impatient, there is KnoppMyth - a Knoppix based Live CD that runs MythTV. Link here It looks good, but it doesn't run so well on my P3 450 Mhz. ;-)
I hate to be the barer of bad news... however more and more cable companies, at least here in the US are moving towards having most, if not all of their digital offerings encrypted.
Buying a QAM demodulator is easy, getting it to decode an encrypted cable network is not, and such cards that are capable of this sort of work on cable are... really non existent.
While such a PVR is nice, if you want HD programming, you are effectively limiting yourself to OTA ATSC stuff, which as we know is pretty feeble and will remain that way, just as OTA analog tv was feeble, as an encouragement to have you spend a few bucks a month for more channels through your local cable company.
Don't even get me started on the subject of QPSK (the modulation method used for digital satellite television).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
So far, the guy has video working, but his audio stutters and he doesn't have a remote. The article doesn't even mention which MythTV distribution he uses (or if he's rolling his own from the packages). In short, this article should have been titled "Here's Some Stuff I Thought Would Make a Low Noise Box (and I Was Even Wrong About That) That I Could Slap a Couple of Tuner Cards Into and Watch TV With (and Maybe Someday I Will Be Able To, But Until Then, I'm Keeping My Tivo Plugged In)".
This has got to be one of the most disappointing articles I've seen on the subject. You'd do better sticking with the MythTV FAQ's.
That is all.
1)Uses less power than most PC solutions.
2)Cheaper. I got it for $250 with lifetime subscription. Admittedly, the MSRP is much higher. But it still isn't as much as putting together a system, even if you get one of the $200 Dells to start it.
3)It just works. No messing with drivers, LIRC, etc.
Now, some of your points for DIY just don't hold.
You can purchase PVRs with lifetime subscriptions. You can't rely on Zap2It to always give you free listings for MythTV!My ReplayTV 5040 still has Commercial Advance. Newer models don't, but they have "Show|Nav." You press a single button & it skips the commercials.Ditto most PVRs. You can network them & pull content onto a computer or you can drop in a larger harddrive or two.Both ReplayTV and Tivo have this.ReplayTVs store images. You can upload video. It is space-inefficient, but you can upload audio encoded as video with whatever moving images you want.This is a good point. But I think the bottom-line is that features may become illegal (which could take them out of the project's trunk). You can also prevent firmware upgrades on PVRs you buy.
The bottom-line is that we need to promote legislation to keep the features we want LEGAL.
Actually you don't need that hi end a processor. All the encoding is done on the card. I just built a Myth box from scratch and it cost about $600 all told. I could have kept the cost down a bit using an older processor and a cheaper case (I got a nicer case because this is in my living room).
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to m
The support is fine with MythTV itself (MythTv user myself for a long time now).
The issue of it working solely resides with your cable provider. Alot of them cripple that port.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
In other news, the Food Network shows you how to make a souffle, while it's still legal.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
A bloody brilliant string of links that spell out a shaving cream jingle. But yes, it does end in something that shouldn't be seen, not even on Slashdot.
On the plus side, the picture it's based on will, when viewed by any man questioning his heterosexuality, scare him straight for a very long time. http://bash.org/?42262
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
"For now, the good news is that it is still legal to put together your own home-theater PC"
The bad news are having a legal system that make the above sentence make sense.
Everything the parent says is true... The situation is annoying to be sure. That having been said, I don't think the "analog hole" is such a miserable hack. I have a digital set-top box, and use the S-video output into my MythTV's capture card. The resulting video is of very high quality (better than conventional analog cable and obviously much better than over-the-air). The cable companies are going to make it hard for us to get access to the raw digital signal... but a high-quality analog signal will be essentially indistinguishable. At the end of the line, your TV has to take whatever signal and turn it into something it can display. I would say that for most modern TVs you are not going to notice the difference. If you spent alot of money on an HDTV, then yes you'll have to play by the rules set by the broadcasters to get your HD signal (until computer capture cards and innovative work-arounds catch up, that is)...