Screencasts of Installing MythTV Via MythDora 4.0

peterdaly writes "MythDora 4 is a MythTV 'in-a-box' style distribution based on Fedora Core 6. With the help of a RedHat employee and author Jarod Wilson, MythDora 4 has made great strides in hardware compatibility and ease of installation. It is designed to format your hard drive and install everything needed for a fully functional MythTV System. MythPVR.com has created a three-part screencast of the installation process covering MythDora installation, configuration, and MythTV setup. If you have had problem installing MythTV in the past due to hardware compatibility issues, it might be time to give it another chance."

Comments

Fedora?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Having recently fled from the barren dependency hell of Fedora, (to Feisty), I am perplexed as to why anyone wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro of any kind would choose Fedora as their base distro. Hardware detection was... OK, but there were innumerable problems with package management, configurations and yes, software availability. I mean, will the box play mp3 files? DVDs? Fedora is not a distro known for these capabilities.

Re:Fedora?

[QuantumG]

I don't disagree, but other people will. Is there any way out of packaging fragmentation lane? Exactly how egregious would RedHat's packaging have to be before people switched to debs? Alternatively, what could possibly get people to switch to rpms?

Re:Fedora?

[scribblej]

As someone who has been running MythTV on Ubuntu boxes for years now, I agree. Skip Redhat.

Installing MythTV on modern versions of Ubuntu is easy:

apt-get install mythtv-server mythtv-frontend

That's it, you're done*!

(* I assume; I run my clients and server on seperate machines and the server is still a few versions behind the Ubuntu curve)

Re:Fedora?

[Abcd1234]

Meh, the same is true of Fedora, which is what I used to build my myth front/backends. Honestly, why all the hate?

Re:Fedora?

[Loconut1389]

Package format isn't the problem really, it's just the mentality that Fedora folks have when making RPMs that they compile in every conceivable feature and thus the dependency chain is miles long. CentOS 5 seems like the best blend of hardware support and streamlined packages seen so far in the RPM based line. I switched to Fedora from CentOS to get around hardware problems, but with CentOS 5, I'm switching back again- makes life a lot easier.

Re:Fedora?

[scribblej]

Well, I'm not a hater... Fedora's package management was atrocious the last time I tried it, abotu seven years ago. To say it is now wouldn't be fair of me.

What I love about Debian and therefore Ubuntu is ... if it's not in the package manager, I probably shouldn't be running it. Redhat encourages people to download packages from third-parties(*)... which is going to be a real problem if it ever becomes widely adpoted.

(* because so few things are available as part of a distro. Last time I checked the difference was something like 16,000 packages in Debian and 1000 in Redhat?)

Re:Fedora?

[LDoggg_]

I mean, will the box play mp3 files? DVDs? Fedora is not a distro known for these capabilities.

Both distros share the same philosophy with regards to packaging patent encumbered things like mp3 and DVD decoders in the main distro and repos. It is very simple on both of these to add them in post-install.

Fiesty does make it a bit easier, but to be fair Fedora 6 was released quite a bit earlier than fiesty, let's pass judgement next week when Fedora 7 is released.

Re:Fedora?

[gregbaker]

I just did a fresh MythTV install with Feisty a few weeks ago, and that was it exactly. It automatically recognized my Hauppauge 250, and all was good.

I had to edit a couple of lines in the LIRC config for the remote, but that was all.

Re:Fedora?

[Arkaic]

While I agree that the package management still needs improvements, the obstacles you mention are hardly show stoppers. I play mp3s, dvds, and a variety of other audio/video files on my Fedora Core 6 system with no problem.

Re:Fedora?

[LDoggg_]

(* because so few things are available as part of a distro. Last time I checked the difference was something like 16,000 packages in Debian and 1000 in Redhat?)

Core & Extras (the default setup repos), in Fedora not Redhat, currently have a little over 7,000 packages.

Plenty more if you enable livna or atrpms for patent-encumbered/restricted things.

Re:Fedora?

[timmarhy]

attitudes like that are what make linux such a loser on the desktop - people don't give a shit about patents or copyright, they just want something that works.

software is not a political or social statement

Re:Fedora?

[LDoggg_]

attitudes like that are what make linux such a loser on the desktop - people don't give a shit about patents or copyright, they just want something that works.

The attitude of not wanting to get sued?
Of course people just want something that works, but it's not the responsibility of Canonical or Redhat to pay for that, especially when you're already downloading the distro for free. And it's not like it's hard to get the codecs from places that aren't big supporters of software patents.

software is not a political or social statement

Who said it was?

Re:Fedora?

[stoomart]

So what happens if you pop a DVD into a freshly installed WinXP system and try to play it? You have to buy/steal a copy of WinDVD or some other crappy dvd software. On linux, you type a few commands and you're enjoying your goodies. Stoo

Re:Fedora?

[jddj]

That's what KnoppMyth is for.

Have to say that I wasn't a fan of the look-and-feel of the KnoppMyth setup last time I looked at it (for openers, I'm in the can't-stand-KDE camp...). It -IS- great to have a fantastic bootable-CD of this project.

Ordinarily this isn't a problem - don't like what your distro provides, install something else, right?

The thing is, you go for MythDora or Knoppix to pretty much have an appliance. You change something on your own, no telling how you'll get the box like you want it next time they upgrade the distro. My feeling (and I know some will disagree) is that if you want to run one of these appliance distros, you either take the stock distro, or do something else.

Once you move out of the stock packages, you already ARE doing something else, so why not do something you'd enjoy like Etch or Fiesty?

The other thing is that if you only want to fiddle with an appliance install, you'll be way behind the current release version if KnoppMyth is any indication. So you sit and wait for your whole distro to catch up with the current action (and I'm talking current official release here, not just the nightlies).

All that said, I haven't looked at the screencasts, and I -DO- like the idea of more of these easy installs showing up - MythTV is a bear without some hand-holding.

Jarod has been a fantastic booster for MythTV and deserves a big-up for all the help he's provided over the years.

Re:Fedora?

[maven_johnson]

blah, blah, Ubuntu, blah, not Fedora, blah... Just shut up and enjoy your distribution.

Re:Fedora?

[jridley]

I tried building my myth box on ubuntu last weekend. Ubuntu and myth were trivial, but I spent a good 6 hours and read about a dozen howtos and couldn't get lirc running my pvr150 remote and blaster. Even if everything else is working perfectly, it's a no-go without lirc. This happens to me every time; everything except for one dumb thing works and I'm SOL.

Re:Fedora?

[caseih]

What a silly statement. In the case of either distribution, it's a matter of having a good repository. Ubuntu is not somehow magically free from dependency hell. It's just that Ubuntu happens to have very good and very extensive repositories. Likewise, Fedora has a large number of third-party repository that covers a wide range of software needs, including MythTV. The only time I've ever really gotten into dependency hell was some years ago with Debian itself. Honestly there are lots of arguments you could make against Fedora, but this is just not one of them.

If you want a legitimate criticism, and one that's been answered in Fedora 7, adding third-party repositories has never been trivial for Fedora newbies.

But to think that one distro is magically better as far as dependency problems is concerned, is absurd.

Re:Fedora?

[Kabal`]

WinDVD? Why when windows media player will play them.

Re:Fedora?

[CastrTroy]

Really, so that installs and configures and sets up the databases for MySQL? Does that set up all your channels, the XML TV feed and all the other stuff that is required. After messing around with MythTV for a few hours and getting no where, I found SageTV and bought that. I've been happy ever since. I'm using the windows version right now, but they do have a Linux version, and if it works even half as good as the windows version, then it beats MythTV hands down. Especially on the ease of setup issues.

Re:Fedora?

[robgig1088]

It wont play them until you install a DVD decoder. Pain in the rear if you ask me....

Re:Fedora?

[msevior]

As someone who runs both Ubuntu and FC6 distros, I think you have it backwards...

For FC6 just install the livna rpm's like this:

# rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
# rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY

and enjoy the benefits of all the grey packages delivered via yum. Personally, I like the Fedora approach of giving totally free products a boost.

The main benefit of Fedora over over Ubuntu is the actively maintained Fedora Extra's. These are generally updated as soon as the upstream maintainers make a release as opposed to waiting 6 months for the next Ubuntu upgrade.

Anyway now that the standard Ubuntu troll is out of the way, all this is moot. The point is that THIS FC6-based distro has all the grey packages available on a nice easy to use ISO.

Re:Fedora?

[Kadin2048]

You might try Knoppmyth; it's a Debian semi-equivalent to MythDora. I have a PVR-150 and I'm in the process of getting it set up with the remote. It's not quite out-of-the-box ready, you still need to do some tweaking for the PVR-150s receiver and blaster, but it's not too bad (or so I've heard).

They have some decent support forums too, although unfortunately they're not open to the public (you have to register even to read, for reasons I don't quite get -- bandwidth, maybe). There should be a HOWTO in there on setting up the PVR-150's remote on the latest version.

Alternately, you could just get a StreamZap remote. For $30 it works straight out of the box, plug in and restart, no screwing around at all. I have that on my other MythTV box (that PVR-150 didn't come with a remote) and if I can't get the Hauppauge remote working in two or three hours I'm just going to buy another one. My sanity is worth it, and MythTV is the sort of thing that will drive you up a wall if you let it.

Re:Fedora?

[weighn]

...sets up the databases for MySQL...set up all your channels...XML TV feed I set up MythTV last weekend on Ubuntu 7.04. This article is a bit dated but helped with everything you mention. Although, in Australia we have limited support for XMLTV (that I can find).

Re:Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

This took me some time myself. Everything else was fairly smooth, but getting my remote to work (which for me was more just for fun since I'm sitting two feet from my desk and watching on my monitor) left me baffled.

You add the remote control's table (lircd.conf) to the appropriate places and your module is loaded but when you start myth or irw you don't get a response.
I'm pretty sure I had to manually add a line for lirc_i2c to /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

If you haven't found this then it's your best bet. You've probably covered most of what's on that page but there may be a few things you can double check from there to help you get it all fixed up.

Re:Fedora?

[heinousjay]

Who said it was?

Lord Stallman, for one.

Re:Fedora?

[cerberusss]

Having recently fled from the barren dependency hell of Fedora

Dependency hell? Do you use yum?

Re:Fedora?

[rinkjustice]

How about Fedora even having an up-to-date version of firefox? Nope. The latest Fedora comes with firefox 1.5 preinstalled (everyone else is up to 2.0.0.3), and it's not a matter of simply upgrading from what I've read.

Instead of figuring it out, I took it as a sign that Fedora still has a ton of issues and switched to Kubuntu Feisty.

Re:Fedora?

[zCyl]

I spent a good 6 hours and read about a dozen howtos and couldn't get lirc running my pvr150 remote and blaster.

I feel your pain. This happened to me as well for a time, and it's compounded by the fact that some of the pvr150 boards have defective hardware. This page has what you need to set it up. If you get all that in place, and it's still not working, try a few cold boots. Sometimes the hardware to process the IR locks itself in an anomalous state, and the only cure is to completely power off.

Good luck.

Re:Fedora?

[vidarh]

I like RPM, but that is a problem. Particularly when the dependencies doesn't specify what the package need to operate, but what it need to operate in a specific way. There's plenty of cases where you can just rebuild an RPM with a Require: entry taken out and everything works fine... I'd love to see a way of specifying "recommended" dependencies, that doesn't have to be present, but that will add capabilities. It could dramatically cut dependencies for a huge number of RPMs.

Another issue, though, is that a lot of apps are prime examples of bad separation of concerns - you'll find tons of dependencies caused by compile time (i.e. via configure) decisions that could trivially have been deferred to load time with trivial plugin infrastructures, giving users much more flexibility.

I'm used to recompiling stuff, but I'd rather not have to much with the packages I install just to disable or enable features, and I'm not alone, which is a key reason why some distros err on the side of enabling almost every option and add a ton of dependencies instead.

Re:Fedora?

[montyzooooma]

I looked at Knoppmyth months ago but they didn't recognise SATA hard drives during the autamatic installation at the time. If this has changed I'd be more inclined to try it again.

Re:Fedora?

[montyzooooma]

http://www.gbpvr.com/ does most of what MythTV does but for Windows PCs. I've used it with a PVR500 twin DVB-T tuner and it's almost flawless. And it's free though obviously donations are encouraged.

Re:Fedora?

[jridley]

Another remote might be an option but I need a blaster as well since I use satellite. Besides, I *have* a remote and blaster, and they work just fine under Windows and GBPVR so I don't really want to spend money because Linux is hard to set up.
Of course, if I ever go with Linux on the desktop I'll probably have to spend money due to Linux shortcomings because it looks like there will never be good drivers for my Canon i960. You can argue that this is Canon's fault for not releasing programming info, but it still equates to stuff that doesn't work right under Linux.

Re:Fedora?

[jridley]

I've been running GBPVR for about a year now. I went to it when I couldn't get Myth running (at the time the PVR150 was barely supported). I've tried Myth 2 times since then and keep going back to GBPVR.
I just downloaded and burned MythDora; I'll try that soon, this will be the first time I've tried one of the dedicated Myth distros. Crossing my fingers.
GBPVR actually works totally find. I would just rather run Myth because it's a little more flexible, and I have some jobs that I need a 24-hour-on machine for and would like a linux box around to do them.

Re:Fedora?

[mcvos]

What I love about Debian and therefore Ubuntu is ... if it's not in the package manager, I probably shouldn't be running it.

Nonsense. Third-party stuff works fine. I'm not sure if you're talking about third party .deb files (like Cedega, which works fine) or software that doesn't come in a .deb (like firefox, which works a lot better than the crippled firefox in Ubuntu), but both are perfectly valid options for Ubuntu users.

Re:Fedora?

[Blakey Rat]

I am perplexed as to why anyone wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro of any kind would choose Fedora as their base distro.

Anybody wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro doesn't know what a "Linux distro" is and doesn't want to learn. They'll install whatever their buddy hands them. (Then, most likely, give up and go back to Windows after a few days.)

By the time you start talking about distros, much less "dependancies," you're way beyond the user friendly stage.

Re:Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Following up, this document also has pertinent information. Looking over it I remembered I had to follow its information on 'loading at boot time' about /etc/rc.local

It's far from painless (at least as far as finding the right steps) and one would think these steps would be integrated into the lirc packages directly. For whatever reason not, but with a little fiddling you'll get there.

Re:Fedora?

[LordSnooty]

After messing around with MythTV for a few hours and getting no where, if it works even half as good as the windows version, then it beats MythTV hands down.

Since you gave up after a few hours, how on Earth can you pass credible judgement on whether one is better than the other? You talk as if ease of setup is a virtue. On Slashdot. Setting up my MythTV box, even with Knoppmyth easing the process, still allowed me to learn a lot about how the program works. If I had a one-click install solution, I'd be scratching my head as soon as the first problem arose.

Different of course for your mum & dad, leave them to enjoy consumer PVRs until the OSS offerings mature a little.

Re:Fedora?

[ncc74656]

Is there any way out of packaging fragmentation lane?

Yes.

Re:Fedora?

[CastrTroy]

It's the same problem I have with Gentoo. If I can't install the product, I'm never going to get to a point where I want to use it. I think that things should be as easy to install as possible so that people who actually want to just use it with the default option can use it. 15 minutes with SageTV and I was up and running, and ready to explore the features. After 2 or 3 hours with MythTV I couldn't even get it to start up correctly. I couldn't imagine how long it would take me to get everything working the way I wanted after I managed to get it running. Things shouldn't be hard to make you learn about how they work. I don't have to know the inner workings of Linux to install Ubuntu and Mandriva. I don't have to know the inner workings of OpenOffice to install that. I shouldn't have to understand the inner workings of MythTV just to get it working. As for solving problems when they arise, SageTV has great user forums, and I've been able to solve all the problems I've run into. Which have been few and very far between.

Re:Fedora?

[yada21]

Anybody wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro doesn't know what a "Linux distro" is and doesn't want to learn.

That's nonesense. How can someone want to install a distro if they don't know what one is? A novice just wants to use one. For him the best thing is if its preinstalled - just like windows is on most machines.

Re:Fedora?

[scribblej]

I think you missed my point. I'm suggesting that the more you train an idiot user to use the package manager and never install third-party packages, the more you have trained them off bad behaviour that's likely to someday lead to a compromise of their system.

It's not that third-party packages CAN'T be installed; I never said any such thing. I said there is seldom any NEED to go there and that's a Good Thing.

Re:Fedora?

[scribblej]

Really, so that installs and configures and sets up the databases for MySQL?

Yup. (Bet you feel stupid now!)

Does that set up all your channels, the XML TV feed and all the other stuff that is required.

No, but setting up your channel list is a cinch. I can't think of any other stuff that is required.

SageTV might be great; I haven't tried it. But your criticism of MythTV is unfounded.

Re:Fedora?

[mcvos]

Alright, I'll grant you that, although I think firefox is actually one of those rare cases where you should not use the package manager, but download straight from mozilla instead. Doing that solved a lot of problems for me.

Re:Fedora?

[jridley]

Thanks. I tried Knoppmyth and it worked (99%) out of the box. All I really had to do was to write a quick perl script to change channels using the IR blaster. The driver for the blaster was in place, I just had to call irsend and it worked.

Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Paul Carver]

I hope we'll see some good detailed posts by people who've used both MythDora and KnoppMyth. Personally, I've only used KnoppMyth.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[biggyfred]

I am by no means an expert of any kind. In fact, I'm about as amateur as it gets. Before about a week ago, I had very little experience with linux (edgy, FC3 for about 5 mins). This is my quick take on the three:

KnoppMyth was way too over my head. I'm certain that it was my inability to grasp knoppix that was the problem. User problem to be sure, but if that counts as an issue... Knoppix did do great with lirc and my remote right out of the box, a sore spot for me with the other distros I used.

Whereas KnoppMyth felt like swimming in a ocean of misunderstanding, MythDora felt like death by a thousand cuts. It was pretty, but I kept feeling like I ran into hurdles over... and over.. and over. I used Jared's guide, but like all things, the book can only take you so far..

I ended up throwing Feisty on my HTPC and loading up a full backend/frontend/desktop. Biggest problems were my Avermedia A180 (DVB issues) and lirc. The level of user generated documentation with Ubuntu made the difference for me.

Feel free to disagree with me. I can't defend any of this with anything more than my personal experience.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[cesman]

My goal with KnoppMyth is to make it easy. Obviously, it wasn't for you. In what ways can we improve KnoppMyth to make it easier?

Regards,

Cecil

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if extras like exporting to DVD-R, webbrowsers, etc were easier to find. And, when found, install. Finding things on the forums is a pain.

Also, last time I tried, changing your zip code/postal code was broken if you put in a Canadian postal code (They go like this X0X 0X0). That was about a year ago though.

And dealing with things like two IR outputs + one IR input using different methods with LIRC would be nice. As it stands I had to compile LIRC by hand with differing module names to deal with this. I'm sure there's plenty of people with multiple Cable/Satellite boxes that have this issue.

Overall, I love Knoppmyth! I'll have to figure out if I want to risk an upgrade to the latest version or not yet.

PPS - A table showing MythTV versions included with each release of Knoppmyth would be nice, so you can easily match up custom installed frontends.

Thanks again!

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Anonymous Coward]

I found MythDora easier to install than Knoppmyth. I started with MythDora 3.2 early this year, and am now running 4.0 quite happily. I found the MythDora install more intuitive.

Plus, with MythDora, you get Firefox and a real GUI on the computer... makes it easier to download patches or look for stuff that you may be lacking (like Lirc remote control files, for one). The install of Knoppmyth I tried came with the Lynx browser. Umm, yeah. That's helpful. ;)

I love my MythDora box. Sempron 2800, 1GB RAM, 200GB hard disk, Happauge PVR-150, nVidia FX5200, using the ECS motherboard SPDIF out for audio.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[cesman]

In terms of finding programs, etc. Those are all accessible via the MythTV menu. But I can see where better documentation came come in handy. A while ago, I started on a much updated pamphlet, but it is disheartening to work on something and people doesn't read it. A lot of the question I get in IRC (freenode.net #knoppmyth), are covered in the pamphlet. If only people would RTFM.... But I digress. More work is due on the pamphlet, I've just been busy with my professional life.

In terms of MythTV related issues... Those are MythTV issues and not KnoppMyth specific. Ironically, one of the areas we try and make it easier for users is in MythWeather. Your zipcode is automatically retrieved from the db and entered for you.

I don't ever recall reading or hearing about issues w/ multiple LIRC. When issues like this occur, if you want to see it fixed in a future release, you should bring it to my attention of the forum or via PM or email. The development team isn't very large. We don't have all the hardware that is out there. Even our testers may not have the hardware you have. So, if you want to see something fixed, the best way to bring it to our attention and provide details. Same thing goes if you fix an issue. Provide details and ask to test.

Thanks for the feedback.

Regards,

Cecil

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[cesman]

KnoppMyth is meant to be used as a set-top box, not a general purpose computer. KnoppMyth already includes MythBrowser.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[spisska]

I've run MythTV since 0.14 on Knoppmyth and Fedora -- starting with FC3.

When I started, Knoppmyth was way over my head -- particularly the finishing touches to get everything running properly. It was my first real hands-dirty experience with Linux and I appreciated for all I learned. I did did manage to get an ancient K6-3D system running Knoppmyth -- not well enough to put in my livingroom, but well enough to prove the concept and that it was worth the time and effort to build a new system on more capable hardware.

My second system was a P3 700 built on FC3 following Jarod Wilson's definitive guide, mainly because I felt that following the guide to transform a generic install into a MythTV appliance would teach me a lot about what the Myth components were, how they all fit together, how to make them all fit together in Linux, and what to do when something went wrong. I was right.

I built a third machine (my current master beckend/frontend) on FC4 also following Jarod's guide but this time on a P4 2.5 machine.

By this time I was ready to start adding FE capabilities, but I already knew the process of installation, knew about the components and dependencies, and no longer felt the need for yumming or smarting in kernel modules and so on. I used Knoppmyth to turn my old P3 700 former-backend into a frontend.

This setup worked well through several upgrades -- FC on the backend, Knoppmyth on the frontend with the only caveat being that both machines have to be running the same version of Myth. Upgrade one, you have to upgrade the other.

Even though this was about two years ago, the Knoppmyth install was easy and painless, and I was prepared to deal with irregularities like tweaking xorg.conf. I also really appreciated that the Knoppmyth CD would let you run a frontend off the CD -- allowing you to instantly test hardware without touching the drive.

Last weekend, I finally retired the P3. It's currently on holiday, but will soon return to service as a file server. Instead I built a new frontend on an Athlon 64 4000.

I decided to give Mythdora a whirl since I know it's been under heavy development including the involvement of Jarod. I was really impressed with how smoothly and quickly the installation went, including post-install scripts to handle things like IR hardware and binary nvidia drivers (I know, I know, but the binary driver really works better for Myth than the Free one). I went from having a pile of boxes at 4 pm to a working Mythtv system at 9:30. It might have been quicker but I had to run to the shop when I ran out of beer.

I didn't try a Knoppmyth install on this hardware, but have no doubt that it would have gone just as smoothly. Cecil deserves a lot of respect and credit for the fantastic job he has done with Knoppmyth over the years.

Of course I did have quite a bit of Myth-specific experience behind me and knew from the start to buy hardware that was rock-solid compatible -- like an nforce board, nvidia gfx card, turtle beach sound card, on-board 10/100 LAN, etc.

The point is that by last weekend I was a lot more familiar with Fedora than with Debian, so I was really happy to be able to so painlessly migrate my FE to Fedora. I have no doubt that those more familiar with Debian will be just as happy with what Cecil has done in Knoppix.

And more than anything, lot of credit is owed to the folks behind MythTV -- from Isaac Richards, the original creator, and all the key developers, to folks like Jarod, Cecil, and Dennis for enormous contributions in making Myth more accessible, to all the numerous active and helpful folks on the mailing list. They've made MythTV into a product that truly is a world-beater -- by far the most powerful, most flexible, most extensible, and downright most pleasurable media engine on the planet.

Here's looking to 0.21.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[dashslotter]

I installed knoppmyth on my first myth box about 2 years ago. At the time it was the distro. of choice for easy, automated installations. It worked well on my "lowrider" (underpowered, ancient) system. The problem that ultimately killed that box was that the automated installation program set up a small (~4gb IIRC) partition for applications by default, and gave the rest to the AV partition. I wanted to install _every_ app. that had to do with multimedia, so this became too restrictive ultimately.

For my next box (considering the first a proof of concept), I went all out an spec'd an efficient, yet capable machine (I also plan to run Astrisk (voip server) on it, a web server, etc, etc). Unfortunately for me, I bought a bad ram stick that wasn't on the vendors list. Before I figured this out, I installed many distros to try to get the hardware running.
These include:

- Simply Mepis
- Knoppmyth
- DreamLinux
- Mythdora
- Ubuntu 6

After I figured out my ram problem, I now had to choose from among these distros based on my experience installing most of them several times.
- I did not like the knoppmyth custom installer (cumbersome, ambiguous at times), so I ruled that out.
- Mythdora just wasn't for me. I've always used debian-based distros, so that bias was enough to cause me to look elsewhere.
- I remember thinking that Simply Mepis was a great out-of-the-box distro with a slick user I/F, but the community forums were mostly Portuguese (I think, Brazil, IIRC??).
- I don't remember too much about Dream linux.
- In the end, I went with Ubuntu.

Using Ubuntu meant that I had to install a few more packages than with some of the other distros (e.g. mySQL, mythserver, mythfrontend), but there was plenty of community documentation to walk me through all of that. The same is true of all of the applications that I plan to load on it someday (once it was good enough for my wife to use, I kind of moved on to other projects for a while...(ahem, ADD/ADHD, cough).....) The Ubuntu UI is also pretty wife/gf friendly, which can be a key issue in household mythtv acceptance.

My .02 based on my experience.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Ngarrang]

If only people would RTFM.... But I digress. More work is due on the pamphlet, I've just been busy with my professional life.

Cecil, you are living in a dream world. Most people don't RTFM. Even when asked. Even if it brought world peace, turned lead into gold and allowed cars to run on water.

Easy to use means not having to open the manual, that the screen tells you everything you need to know, such that a 5 year old can learn to use it. It is this very familiarity that keeps Windows on top, because it is what people know. Linux has to fight this mentality. It is a shame that so many Linux enthusiasts don't understand this.

Treat the average user like cattle, or sheep, if you prefer. Don't give them a choice. Choice is confusing. I like to call these users 12 O'Clocks because they are same people who's VCR's are forever punished to flashing 12:00

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[bouchecl]

Your experience is a lot similar to mine. I started with Knoppmyth, but Debian's way was way over my head at the time - my shell expertise was limited to ls, mv rm and cp when I started. So, I switched to Fedora, using Jarod's authoritative howto and FC3 (and Axel Thimm repository... his hard work is seldom acknowledged but essential) and never looked back. In my book, the fact that Jarod is behind MythDora is quite an endorsement, because he literally wrote the book on MythTV (and he did so before joining RH, BTW).

I'm now managing two Myth systems (mine and my dad's, who lives 250 kilometers away) with 3 backends and 5 frontends, 7 capture cards and 2 TB of storage. In the process, I learned everything I know about Linux. Fedora is a rock solid platform for MythTV and everything I want to do -- web, nfs, samba, mysql, imap, smtp, dns and general desktop use. Does it need some tweaking at time? Well, yes, but the same would apply to any distro.

As the parent said, the secret with MythTV is to select good hardware beforehand. Hauppauge capture cards are perfect, NVidia chipsets and GPUs are good, VIA and ATI... not that good.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Anonymous Coward]

I put together a MythTV box two weekends ago, and used the opportunity to try both and see if I could draw any conclusions.

Unfortunately, KnoppMyth failed to install on my NForce4 board. I probably could have fiddled around with it to make it work, but MythDora installed on the first try with no problems. The two things that weren't handled seamlessly were my wireless card (had to download the madwifi driver and follow directions from their website), and my HDHomeRun tuner. Because the HDHomeRun requires DHCP and was connected by a crossover cable to my box, I had to figure out how to enable DHCP for the correct interface, then download the HDHomeRun tools.

I am a fairly experienced linux user, with a lot of experience on SLES. It took me about a solid day to get the whole ball of wax up and running pretty well.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Remote configuration (lirc) is the scariest part for a lot of people. If you had some kind of prominent compatibility list for remotes, that would be extremely helpful. That's mainly what keeps me from Myth...that I have to format my system and install another OS just to see if my Snapstream Firefly remote will work.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has to fight this mentality.

Absolutely. And the way to fight it is to make great software that is flexible and configurable and does great stuff, but requires reading the manual. Give people a reason to work just a bit for it, and some of them will. Those are the people who will help push the project forward with their bug reports, and perhaps even patches, those are the people who will add value.

Open source projects gain little to no benefit from masses of pure leeches who contribute nothing, because they can't be bothered to put a little effort into making stuff work. Note that this isn't an issue of elitism -- what's required is not technical expertise, it's simply the willingness to invest the time and try to learn. Most mailing lists will patiently answer endless trivial questions, as long as there's evidence that the questioner is really trying.

It is a shame that so many Linux enthusiasts don't understand this.

I think it's very well understood by open source enthusiasts. It's poorly understood by their critics.

Obviously, this approach will forever relegate open source projects to niche status, barring some organization that finds commercial value in polishing stuff up and making it useful to those who won't work for it but will spend money on it. Or, of course, essentially philanthropic organizatons like Shuttleworth's Canonical.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[cesman]

I think if you were to install KnoppMyth, you'd see that is "like cattle". I personally think MythTV is easy to use. Granted, if can be difficult to install, hence my work on KnoppMyth.

When KnoppMyth was first introduced, the manual was sparse. The pamphlet now stands at about 40 pages. Now, the reason that came about is because people asked specifics and I wanted to provided a great understanding of the different parts of KnoppMyth.

Frankly, I think the attitude of not reading or not wanting to read is wrong. That is part of reason we have a monopoly in Redmond. Open your eyes and your mind....

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Tarwn]

While not quite as good as a compatibility chart, the KnoppMyth TV forums have three forums specifically for hardware comaptibility. They are called Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Tier 1 posts are things that just plain worked out of the box. Tier 2 are things that required a little bit of tweaking. Tier 3 is things that just wouldn't work.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[fodder69]

Thanks for your work on KnoppMyth. I can and have installed Myth from scratch and it works on my hd box, but KnoppMyth was easy to install and has been rock solid on my main myth box for a year and a half now even with me upgrading a few pieces here and there. Nice work.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[MMC Monster]

I just wanted to say "Thank you".

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Ngarrang]

Frankly, I think the attitude of not reading or not wanting to read is wrong. That is part of reason we have a monopoly in Redmond. Open your eyes and your mind.... Cecil, you are preaching to the choir. I am simply pointing out that you if you want wild ubiquity, then you need think like a 5-year old when designing the interface for a system. That is the sad reality of today's world.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[OldeTimeGeek]

No, people do RTFM. But only once.

Face it. Most documentation is horrible. Between the unspoken assumption that the reader has at least as much technical experience as the writer and the general inability of most documentation writers to express themselves in written communication most first-time users wishing that they'd never picked up the FM in the first place.

Good Tech Writers know that they need to write to their audience - if the users are consciously avoiding reading documentation, maybe the problem isn't with the reader...

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[cesman]

I'm by no means a technical writer. In terms of writing the pamphlet, I attempt to follow the KISS method. If there is a technical writer out there that is willing to help the project, please step up.

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[King_TJ]

Cecil,

I've been a KnoppMyth user for quite a while now, and I've been through several major upgrades as they've been released. I love the distro, overall.

I consider myself an "on again, off again" occasional Linux user. In the past, I've gone in "phases" of trying to run Linux as my primary OS on one PC or another, but I've generally settled on using an Apple Mac Pro as my primary PC these days, with a Windows XP based PC as a secondary "gaming computer". So basically, I can "get around" in most Linux distros, but I'm by no means "proficient" in writing shell scripts or coding in perl/PHP/what have you.

All of that being said, if I had to try to pin down my biggest frustration with KnoppMyth, it would probably be the "devil in the details". It's quite easy to get it installed and more or less "working", but even in the latest release, it always felt "rough around the edges". Each time I've installed one, I've had to spend hours pouring over your message forums to manually patch/fix one little detail after another, to address problems I ran into.

That's really what scares off many of my friends from trying KnoppMyth themselves. With something like Windows Media Center, they can not only get it installed easily, but it either works or it doesn't work, based on what hardware they're putting it on. They don't get all the little "surprises" over time that KnoppMyth has.

Just off the top of my head, for example, I had to:

1. Hunt down and manually apply a patch to the script that grabs movie info from the imdb, because the latest KnoppMyth, out of the box, wasn't auto-getting cover artwork or descriptions of any movies I tried to add info for.
2. Make some changes to a startup script to address a syntax error that could prevent the back-end from properly restarting. (Wasn't "critical", but looked like a good idea to patch, to avoid having to reboot the whole box in some circumstances to get it going again after the back-end was stopped.)
3. Edit a script so one of the serial ports would be "freed up" to use, if needed, because the default setup was effectively "locking" it from use.
4. Struggle and struggle to get the mythgame configuration in some sort of usable/workable state for running mame and a NES emulator. (This is one area where I've felt like KnoppMyth has "dropped the ball" to an extent. There seems to be a lot of "You'll have to figure it out yourself, since I don't really use that part of the software anyway." attitude on the forums. At one time, I did a lot of experimentation myself with recompiling source with various options enabled or disabled, and had some success. But some of this work seemed to be rendered "outdated" with newer releases of xmame and Myth too. I'd really like to see a KnoppMyth release with a sample game or two properly configured for xmame and a sample, if possible, for something like zsnes.)

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[jbr439]

How well is the Avermedia A180 working for you? I was thinking of getting one for OTA HD, so any feedback you can provide would be appreciated.

FWIW, I run one front-end and 2 back-ends on Debian/Testing.

Thanks

Jim

Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora

[Anonymous Coward]

>In terms of finding programs, etc. Those are all accessible via the MythTV menu.

Mmmmm, perhaps I wasn't clear. I mean finding the actual software to go behind those nice menu labels. Some of it requires downloading extra packages (oftentimes as simple as an apt-get, but sometimes much more difficult). Figuring out *what* to apt-get can be confusing and usually requires some forum browsing. Adding things like that into the documentation would be very nice. Also including some of the names of the scripts that can be run by hand to configure various things (Like LIRC Serial transceivers and IVTV 300 video out) in the documentation would save searching the forums.

>I don't ever recall reading or hearing about issues w/ multiple LIRC. When issues like this occur, if you want to see it fixed in a future release, you should bring it to my attention of the forum or via PM or email.

Very true. I don't want to be a bother and would rather you guys work on things that *you* care about rather than *my* things, though. :-) I think my specific situation was one where I had a blaster on an IVTV 150, a receiver through the IVTV 150, and another two blasters on serial ports (the Cable boxes for these two blasters being connected to bt878s). This means a lot of LIRCs, because the authors, at least at that time, didn't think about people needing multilple instances of it running. This is more a fault with LIRC anyways, so again, it would detract you from the excellent work on Knoppmyth. But since it can be fixed without really fixing LIRC, it is something that could be done with Knoppmyth. Makes it an even cooler piece of software!

Hmmmm... And I managed to crash knoppmyth by having too many bt878 cards running at the same time in the same machine. But I believe this is a combo of a bt878 driver issue and an issue with only having 33 Mhz of PCI bus *and* an issue of a crappy chipset, so definitely no blame on Knoppmyth for that.

If there is a way to have multiple LIRCs running with knoppmyth, I don't believe it's in the documentation. It could be buried on a forum post, but at some point you just fix it your own way rather than go through your 1000th forum post for information. :-)

The Zip / Postal Code issue is more of a "I can't find a way to change it after installation without hand-editing the database" problem.

Again, many thanks for Knoppmyth, without it I'd be stuck trying to get all that functionality working with slackware. While straight mythTV and mplayer aren't hard on slack, anything much more complicated with video is weeks of work. :-S

And thanks for saying you're working on the documentation. I know most software authors hate it, but it *has* to be done if you would like anyone else to use it!

Fedora?? Because. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

he's a RH employee. At least read the summary, if not the article!!!!! --AR

wtf, it's in flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck is this in Flash. next.

Re:wtf, it's in flash

[Zantetsuken]

Perhaps because it allows for platform independent viewing of video files on most any current browser (IE, Firefox/Netscape, Opera, Safari, etc) - making it easier for most people to view?

PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

I wanna see someone port MythTV's codecs to the PS3's Cell DSPs so I can use it as my PVR direct to my HDMI TV and 7.1 surround.

Re:PS3?

[SlashdotOgre]

If you can deal with component video (which supports 1080p) and optical (TOS-link) audio, then you can just pick up an original Xbox, mod it, and install Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and you'll be all set. There's a plugin called xbmcmythtv which is simply a MythTV frontend written in Python that's easy to configure and works with various versions of Myth. Alternatively, the Xbox Linux ports also have MythTV packages available (but make involve more work).

Re:PS3?

[CastrTroy]

How does the XBox support record TV shows? Isn't that the whole point of MythTV? I know it supports other stuff like MAME, and watching videos you may have downloaded, but if you're just going to do that, then you hardly need a special program.

Re:PS3?

[SlashdotOgre]

With the app I mentioned, xbmcmythtv, you would want a backend MythTV server (which you'd want with a PS3 anyway since it's limited to a 60-80GB HDD at the moment). If you wanted an all in one box, you can throw in a much larger HDD into your Xbox, install Linux and MythTV locally to it (which I mentioned as an alternative), and have it act as a standalone box.

Re:PS3?

[tji]

The XBox can not support playback of HD video (broadcast HD, 1080i or 720p MPEG2). So, aside from being fairly large, and fairly loud, it's too slow to do HD.. not exactly the ideal myth frontend.

The best one I have found, albeit quite a bit more expensive, is the Mac Mini. It rans a full Myth Frontend app, with full support for HD video and surround sound.

Re:PS3?

[tji]

MythTV's frontend app has already been ported to run on the PS3. MythTV doesn't have a special codec, it uses MPEG2 for most video (e.g. broadcast HD in the U.S. is MPEG2).

But, it doesn't support HD playback. The problem is not CPU power, it's video hardware. Linux runs in a VM on the PS3, which does not offer virtualized accelerated video playback, so it cannot do HD. If Sony ever improves the video support for Linux, the PS3 would make an excellent frontend.

Re:PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

Linux runs on the Cell's embedded Power RISC, which is not very fast running Linux apps, especially at video processing, especially compared to its lightning-fast DSPs. That's the point of running Linux on the PS3, unless it's just a geek trick. Porting the codecs to the DSPs will make a PS3 an excellent $600 HDMI PVR, with many picture-in-picture features, and even plenty of previously unseen editing features.

Sony won't be improving Linux's video support, but rather it's up to us to port apps to the parallel DSPs Sony sells us so cheap.

Re:PS3?

[tji]

> Sony won't be improving Linux's video support, but rather it's up to us to port apps to the parallel DSPs Sony sells us so cheap.

The minimal support for a decent PVR is video overlay support. Without that, the PS3 will never be a good HD video platform, no matter how fast the cell processors can crank through the video data. Rather than mess with a platform with limited support, I looked for a system I could do whatever I needed with. I ended up with the Core Duo Mac Mini. It's small, quiet, and low power. It has a built-in IR receiver. I can run much of what I want, like Myth Frontend, in Mac OS X, or I can install Linux on it. And it doesn't cost much more than the PS3.

I agree that the cell offers interesting potential. But, I disagree that this can be a decent _HD_ playback platform without accelerated video overlay.. That slow PowerPC core just won't be able to keep up with painting the video without it. But, with some slight improvements from Sony, the PS3 could be a very strong competitor.

Re:PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

But the point of the Cell architecture is that the PPC doesn't paint the video - the DSPs do that. There's no reason the DSPs can't pipeline to mix video layers into the resulting frames. In fact, their parallel architecture is very well suited to exactly that. The PPC doesn't even have to ship the frames to the framebuffer: the DMA and bus do that without any compute overhead, and practically no latency.

Your Mac might indeed serve well as a PVR at about the same price as a PS3, without a lot of effort parallelizing the DSP tasks. But the PS3 has so much parallel compute power for tasks exactly like this that it would run circles around a Mac PVR. With real benefits like recording multiple channels simultaneously, while displaying multiple channels in PiP, and switching among them without latency, for live replays and jumping. From extreme channel surfing to cheap HD video editing to reliable surveillance, the PS3 can be a cheap video nerve center for apps that the Mac HW will never support.

But of course that requires the overhead of porting the codecs to Cell DSP. But at least with these MythTV projects, there's a platform which requires only the DSP porting, by people in a large community.

Re:PS3?

[hobbesx]

In that case, why would a Myth-specific solution be necessary? If the DSP's can process video, a psuedo-video driver with access to the DSP would be available to all applications.

Re:PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

Because MythTV does everything else (or at least is a better platform with its other comprehensive features). The user features are much more than the necessary codecs.

Re:PS3?

[hobbesx]

I wanna see someone port MythTV's codecs to the PS3's Cell DSPs so I can use it as my PVR direct to my HDMI TV and 7.1 surround.

I don't have a PS3, so this is partially conjecture, but recent versions of Myth have UPNP support which would let the PS3 act as a media renderer with the new firmware update. (See this thread on the Mythtv users' list.)

The PS3 doesn't play all formats, but a custom job could be setup in Myth to transcode to MPEG2, which seems to work fine.

Re:PS3?

[dreamchaser]

That still isn't a very good reason not to offer support for any application, not just MythTV. Better to expose the DSP functionality in an easy to access manner that any application can use.

Re:PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

I don't understand what yo mean by "not to offer support for any application, not just MythTV".

Sure it would be better to write Cell DSP codecs that any app can use than just writing codecs for MythTV. AFAIK, writing those codecs for MythTV makes them available to any app, not just MythTV.

And the DSP functionality is exposed in the Cell for any app to use, if the codec code is written to use the functionality by running on the DSPs.

I don't know if it's "easy" to code for, but it's easier than other parallel DSP platforms.

In any case, the PS3 is not that great a PVR unless codecs run on its DSPs, not just its PPC. MythTV includes the bulk of PVR functions, so Cell DSP codecs are nearly all that's necessary to make the PS3 a great PVR using MythTV. Even if those codecs support only MythTV, if that's a lot easier to make than general-purpose Cell DSP codecs, then that's the way to start. Then, later, people can make those codecs more general purpose. That's how open source works. Waiting for the perfect is the enemy of getting the merely good.

Re:PS3?

[tji]

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying.. The potential of that box is pretty impressive, and I'll be first in line to buy one when it is usable. But that seems like a long way out.

I think they would have gotten a lot more users on board if they started with a point that was already usable (e.g. accelerated video overlay) and then with many people using it for that, there would be a lot more joining the effort to extend the capabilities and take advantage of the huge power of the cells. Things like scaling, deinterlacing, etc. could be done in the cell processors - working from the existing framework of an app like Myth. As it is now, the PS3 is not getting much traction with the MythTV crowd because it is seen as crippled.

The Mac may not be the ultimate PVR. But, then again, with PVR functionality, I'm not doing a lot of channel surfing.. I'm recording programs and watching them later -- skipping all comercials. So, one could make a case that power beyond that to decode an HD stream is not needed.

But, then again, the compute power of the PS3's cells could be used in the Myth structure for the CPU hog functions, like transcoding video to H.264, or doing commercial flagging on HD video streams -- tasks normally handled by the backend server.

Re:PS3?

[Doc Ruby]

The PS3 is already "usable" by developers. It runs Ubuntu 7.04/Feisty right now. There are devkits for parallel DSP development. With the latest firmware and kernel, it seems that all the PS3 hardware, including Blu-Ray, WiFi and Bluetooth, is supported. With the exception of the RSX video chip, which is a glaring omission.

But though that chip's inaccessibility means 1800GFLOPS is sitting unused in each Linux PS3, there's still 200GFLOPS available in the DSPs. That's plenty of power, much more than in any other host for the price (or close to it), and more than multiple realtime video processing requires. Porting "CPU hog functions", like transcoding and mixing multimedia streams, to the DSPs, is precisely the model the PS3 is suited to. The PPC is for complex application and HW integration logic, pre/post processing the media computation that the DSPs handle.

So go check the PS3 Linux sites, including the DSP devkits and the projects using it. The platform is available now, but it won't produce apps unless people do something with it. That's what open source, like MythTV, is all about. Do something for yourself, share it, and the community will mutually benefit from the combinations.

Fedora Myth(TV)ology

[SlashdotOgre]

For those who already have Fedora installed, there's an excellent guide available at http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php which is simple to follow and worked for me on the first try (I went with a Hauppage 150 card). Personally, I preferred installing it the software myself, so I have a better idea of where to look when something breaks. I have yum cron'ed to run nightly, and so far I haven't had the install broken by any new packages since the install (4 or so months ago).

Re:Fedora Myth(TV)ology

[Goaway]

Aah, good old Linux and lowered expectations. "Hasn't broken yet! Let's see about tomorrow!"

Re:Fedora Myth(TV)ology

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. That's MS Windows.

If Linux doesn't break today then it won't break. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Not until the hardware fails, and often not even then.

And why aren't you working? Isn't this Patch Tuesday?

Re:Fedora Myth(TV)ology

[Goaway]

I'm pretty sure the guy I was talking to was in fact running Linux when he said "I have yum cron'ed to run nightly, and so far I haven't had the install broken by any new packages since the install (4 or so months ago)."

Noob questions...

[Boap]

What hardware would be recommended to get started to get started? I assume a Tuner card in a working PC is what is needed but would additional hardware/software be needed? Why would someone want to use this instead of say TVO? How does a remote to work with this setup?

Re:Noob questions...

[jdunn14]

Well, to work with a remote you need some sort of an IR receiver. And if the machine needs to control a set-top box of some sort (direct tv for example) you may need an IR emitter as well. Coincidentally, I happen to sell such things: http://iguanaworks.net/products.psp

Yes it's a shameless plug, but when you throw up a softball like this I just have take a swing at it.

Re:Noob questions...

[pimpbott]

The Hauppague PVR-150,250, and 350 are the best game in town for tuners. Fry's sells the PVR150 for $120 if you have to get it right away, or I've seen them online for as cheap as $60 for plain box with no remote. You can do remote through your LAN I just built a MythDora 3.2 box (doh! Could have done MythDora 4.0!) and it works quite nicely on a P3/850 with an NVidia 6200 based video card with S-Video out. Just this last weekend, I rebuilt the thing with a 320GB drive instead of the tiny drive I had lying around so it wouldn't run out of space so quickly. It also sounds a lot less like a jet engine when running. More info here: www.mythtvtalk.com Check out the forums.

Re:Noob questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in the UK then the Hauppauge Nova-T digital terrestrial PCI cards work straight out of the box in Ubuntu (not sure about the newer Nova-T 500 dual tuner model). I found this guide to be spot on and the whole process was generally painless. These days I use a wiimote with the CWIID linux drivers instead of the squishy key remote that comes with the cards. I absolutely love my MythTV setup (using an XBox as a second frontend) even if the commercial detection is a little US-centric, but I always advise friends who ask about building their own to only do so if they think they'll enjoy the building and the tinkering required. If not, you may find the whole process rather frustrating.

Re:Noob questions...

[laddy]

Getting a remote to work isn't worth the trouble. I have a PVR-250 in my Myth machine and I ditched the remote for a wireless keyboard a while back. Much easier.

Re:Noob questions...

[spisska]

What hardware would be recommended to get started to get started? I assume a Tuner card in a working PC is what is needed but would additional hardware/software be needed?

Most obviously, you want a working computer. Motherboards are pretty flexible but some VIA chipsets have been known to be problematic. Nforce boards are the gold standard.

For capture, it really depends on your signal source and your plans.

Analog hardware capture cards are probably the best e.g, the Hauppage PVR 150/250/500 series. These will let you capture analog OTA transmissions and coax/S-video output from a cable or satellite STB. These cards are SD only, but can capture all stations in SD.

To use this card with a cable or satellite STB, you'll need an IR blaster and a working serial port. There are a number of IR blasters that can do this that work through a serial port or through USB.

For HD broadcasts you'll need a card capable of ATSC (over the air) or QAM (cable) decoding. But even QAM cards will only give you those channels that your cable provider sends without encryption. By law (in the US), they are required by the FCC to send OTA stations in the clear -- meaning NBC, FOX, ABC, PBS, CBS. But you're not likely to get access to channels like DiscoveryHD or ESPNHD even if you're paying for them. Either way, HD cards will generally only give you HD stations.

You'll want an nvidia gfx card for playback. Don't ask, don't posit, don't opine, and most of all, don't try to get an ATI card working under Linux. ATI doesn't care, their drivers are for shit, and you're asking for a headache. Any nvidia card gf4 or better will work. The gold standard is still the fx5200 series, although you'll have no problems with the 6x00 series either.

Your AC97 on-board audio will work, though I've always found it a bit noisy and lacking in definition. Turtle Beach cards offer excellent quality for the price -- particularly the Riviera, which you can get retail for around $30 or OEM for around $25.

Why would someone want to use this instead of say TVO?

Aside from the joy and satisfaction that comes from building a superior machine, it is because of the things that makes MythTV superior to devices like Tivo. I can't speak for all users, but I'll say why it's better for me.

Mythtv allows time-shifting of television in much the same way that Tivo does. It allows for recording of TV programs automatically according to user-defined rules in a much more discreet way than Tivo does. It allows remote administration of recordings and recording schedules in a way that Tivo doesn't. It allows format shifting of recorded material in a way that Tivo doesn't. And it is capable of storing and playing back just about any media in a way that Tivo most decidedly isn't.

Myth plays externally acquired videos, like your home movies or legitimately backed-up DVDs, Myth plays your music, Myth shows your photos, and Myth will do all this on as many machines as you attach to your network without asking for silly things like license keys or monthly fees.

How does a remote to work with this setup?

Like this.

Re:Noob questions...

[jedidiah]

All of your recordings being freely accessable to any machine you like in any form you like would be the key benefit. I can have a centralized recording server and any number of satellite machines. I cubuntu an pop recordings onto a DVD or external harddrive in their raw form and another Linux or Windows box will have no problem dealing with them.

I don't have to worry about special purpose desktop software that might not be supported on my platform of choice (Linux, OSX).

It also works the other way. I can attach whatever storage I like to my "Tivo" and end up with a remarkably larger number of hours of recording capacity. It can be locally attached or anywhere on the network (even on other "normal" PC's).

My current backend has 1500 hours of recording capacity and 3x that storage dedicated to ripped DVD's.

Re:Noob questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

80305 is in Boulder Colorado, where exactly is Boudler?

Re:Noob questions...

[MrNemesis]

Whilst I started out on Myth with a PVR-250 and the very early IVTV drivers, I'm now happy to recommend DVB cards for everyone that gets DVB in their area.

The IVTV drivers have only just been added to the kernel.org tree, which in the past has made setting these cards up something of a pain for people not used to patching their own kernels, or downloading external modules. The DVB stack, however, has had great support for cards for years now, at least for the ones I've used (UK DVB-T, and the Hauppauge Nova-T, Nova-T 500 and Avermedia 771 have all worked straight out of the box for me). DVB picture quality is also far superior to analogue converted to MPEG2, and there's less work for the hardware to do, since capturing a DVB stream is just a matter of dumoing the stream to disc.

Obviously, if you need to do any nasty criminal stealing activities like record from Sky or your cable box you'll probably need an analogue tuner, and the Hauppauge cards seem to be the best supported.

Obviously this might be no good for people in the US since I don't think DVB has much penetration there, but as far as I'm aware it's rolled out through most of Europe by now.

Re:Noob questions...

[Abcd1234]

Or you could go to irblaster.info and buy a superior product that comes with a nice long cord, and is small and inconspicuous. The blaster product, in particular, is very attractive and non-intrusive, and the receivers are tiny and perfectly suited for installing inside an HTPC case.

BTW, this *isn't* a shameless plug. I'm just a happy customer, having purchased two of their blasters and a receiver.

Re:Noob questions...

[bkr1_2k]

As I understand it, TiVo pretty much has all of the features you mentioned, it just requires the user to be willing to do some hacking. TiVo is an open system, it just has a lot of these features turned off by default. You can, however, turn on TiVo sharing to play from one box to another, or to your computer, and you can turn on remote administration for webmin type access. TiVo plays (as far as I know) most of the same formats that Myth supports, audio and video, and photo. I'm not sure about .ogg files but certainly many others are completely usable by TiVo with minor script editing. You can get weather on a TiVo and you can time shift and format shift your media to your heart's content, again with some script editing.

The features I see getting from a Myth box are things like mame support, karaoke (my girlfriend likes that feature) and a few others that TiVo isn't likely to support any time soon if for no other reason than lack of public interest.

Plus, I can easily set up a Myth box to also run other things and perform other functions, which would be a little more difficult with a TiVo.

Re:Noob questions...

[PitaBred]

Just north and west of Denver. But you could always use this wonderful "intarweb" thing and possibly this newfangled site called google. I hear it's useful.

Re:Noob questions...

[ekgringo]

The web site claims that the company is located in Boudler, not Boulder. While Boudler does show up in a Google search, we're not sure there's an actualy city by that name or if it's a simple misspelling.

Should tell people what Mythdora and MythTV is.

[Futurepower(R)]

As usual with open source projects, it is assumed that everyone has a considerable amount of knowledge already. They could have told people what Mythdora is and what MythTV is, for example.

This should not have been the first sentence on the first page: "The new and much improved MythDora 4.0 is finally ready. As you will see, things have improved greatly."

However, other than that it is looking excellent, for people who have a lot of background knowledge.

Re:Should tell people what Mythdora and MythTV is.

[Dionysus]

This is slashdot. Of course there is some presumption that people know what MythTV is (or at least can figure out how to find out). What's next? Complaining that there are no explanation for what Windows Vista or Linux is?

Re:Should tell people what Mythdora and MythTV is.

[PBPanther]

I agree. There is nothing on the MythDora site that says what it is. Maybe there is something if you dig deeper into the site. I have no idea what it is because I have never heard of it before.

Some options:
Start the with a 1 paragraph introduction to MythDora.
A page of screen shots (if appropriate).
Make the first question in the FAQ "What is MythDora".
An "About" menu item.

Re:Should tell people what Mythdora and MythTV is.

[tji]

Yeah, you're right.. That's the problem when the people doing everything are developers, they are so focused on the bits & bytes they become a bit myopic and need to step back and look at thing from a normal user's viewpoint. That's why software companies have marketing people, which OSS projects could benefit from.

MythTV is an open source PVR -- Think completely open version of Tivo. Slap as much disk as you want in it, add more tuners; export video to DVD, transcode to iPod video, automatically skip commercials, see listings & schedule recordings through www interface, etc...

MythDora is a Linux distribution intented to make it easy to install and setup a MythTV server.

Does Myth have Bayesian content selection yet?

[Colin Smith]

Really, with tens of channels, never mind hundreds, I've long since given up trying to find stuff worth watching, that's what computers are for.

Tivo was great, but it's no longer available in the UK and my hardware's been disassembled and the big drives recycled.

Re:Does Myth have Bayesian content selection yet?

[adrianmonk]

Really, with tens of channels, never mind hundreds, I've long since given up trying to find stuff worth watching, that's what computers are for.

I don't know if it's Bayesian or not (maybe some other machine learning technique), but there's MythCollaborative.

MythTV woes

[ArchieBunker]

I tried installing mythtv about a year ago but realized my error in judgement after searching usenet to figure out why mysql was not working. Why should I have to troubleshoot a database app to record fucking tv programs? Spend the money and hack a tivo instead.

Re:MythTV woes

[Overzeetop]

If you're already searching usenet, why not just get your programs there?

Oh, damn, right...first rule of usenet. Sorry.

ubuntu myth

[Anonymous Coward]

rm -rf /

install ubuntu

Re:ubuntu myth

[cesman]

You have obviously not spent anytime in #mythtv-user. I've seen lots of folks come in there and ask for help with install MythTV on Ubuntu.

Regards,

USB

[Anonymous Coward]

I googled this 2 years ago, but maybe things have changed in that time. But does anyone know of a good USB (or Firewire) TV turner that is supported under Linux. Or maybe a CardBus. I could just get a USB/Firewire/CardBus capture device, but I'd prefer if the channels could be changed (via software) without some type of Infrared transmitter.

It's not RPM's fault -- it's Fedora's

[Anonymous Coward]

Redhat encourages people to download packages from third-parties(*)... which is going to be a real problem if it ever becomes widely adpoted.

No, they (Fedora actually, not RedHat) do the opposite of encouraging third-parties. Historically they have done little to make sure that third-party repos get along with Core/Extras. They just sort of pretend that third-parties don't exist. The result is a mess.

Looks sweet

[stoomart]

After first using MythDora 3.2, then going through the learning curve of setting up a MythTV box from scratch on Fedora 6 with the atrpms software repo, I'm curious how well this new MythDora 4.0 works after the initial install in terms of required tweaking. I'm pulling down the torrent now and will post on how well it goes if I get a chance to install it tonight. Stoo

Card Choice; IR

[StefanJ]

- My boss ran into awful icky troubles getting the IR remote functionality to work.

I took the easy way when it came to installing a remote. I use a compact Infrared keyboard I had on hand. There is mapping between letters and arrows and various remote functions.

- You can't go wrong with a Happauge* PVR-x50. I bought a PVR-150 from a local supplier for under $80. It was way easy to set up. It doesn't have a TV out, so I bought a cheap card with an NVIDIA chipset.

I used the Fedora MythTV project procedure and had little trouble getting Myth working.

I picked the host machine (P4 1.8 MHz HP box, with 768 MB RAM) out of the garbage. The only other thing I had to buy was a 160 GB hard drive, which Office Depot was selling for $40 after rebate.

* FYI: Pronounced "hop ogg;" it's a Native American name, not French.

Re:Card Choice; IR

[Anonymous Coward]

* FYI: Pronounced "hop ogg;" it's a Native American name, not French.

That's the single most useful item I have seen on Slashdot for a long time.

Many thanks :)

Just like.....

[Lumpy]

Knoppmyth.

I only hope that Mythdora has a better group of maintainers than knoppmyth does. the releases are incredibly far apart and honestly get's out of date quick for hardware issues.

Another thing I hope it supports out of the box is the Microsoft MCE remote and MCE keyboard. as those are hands down the best remote designed for a media center. every time I use Knoppmyth I haveto spend 1 hour hacking in support for those two devices as well as updating xmltv to the recent build and fixing the ivtv drivers with the latest updates (PVR-150 + M179 = corrupt mpeg files due to bad firmware loads. Only the recent drivers fix this.)

Re:Just like.....

[cesman]

Sorry if my personal and professional life gets in the way of making a release for you. The day you have to pay for KnoppMyth is the day you can stop bitching about releases taking too long.

Re:Just like.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved from Knoppmyth to Mythdora because Mythdora included a more recent distro of LIRC, one which supports the MCE Remote and enables the IR Blasters on the tranceiver. That's the nice thing about having more than one MythTV distro, if one doesn't work for you the other might.

Re:Just like.....

[teachinggeek]

While I don't personally use your distribution I want to thank you for making it available.

Your hard work IS appreciated.

Re:Just like.....

[XchristX]

Hey Cecil,

Forget the whiners. KnoppMyth is awesome. I just installed version R5E50 from scratch in my dedicated box. Lots of people here are talking about problems with lirc and the Hauppauge PVR remotes in from-scratch installs. I had the whole system up-and-running in an hour. My system has a Hauppauge pvr350 and pvr-150 with the pvr350 silver remote and lirc worked just fine right off the bat. It didn't work with earlier versions (I installed version R5A16 some months back and had to recompile lirc and manually config the grey remote's keystroke mapfile back then), but now it works just fine.Same with the pvr350 tv-out (which, with the earlier versions, required manual compilation of the ivtv driver and manual configuration of XFree86config file, not anymore). The whole process was easy as pie and anyone who wants to have a Linux MCE system up-and-running swiftly would be wise to use a well-established distro like KnoppMyth.

Weblink: http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

Re:Just like.....

[Techman83]

I've been playing with Knoppmyth since R5A16 and it has come a very long way since then. Like any linux distribution, choosing your hardware wisely is the only way to guarantee success. Unfortunately hardware manufacturers are not always supportive enough of oss and there aren't enough capable coders with time to burn to write drivers for every single device. If you want the bleeding edge, build it from scratch. If you want something to work out of the box, lurk the forums and research before you buy. I have done auto installs that have pretty much worked out of the box. I have a front end and back end running, both now running the recently released R5F1 and the only issues I've had were the custom tweaks I wanted for myself (LVM, nfs, autofs, different file systems, multiple drives etc etc.)

Re:Just like.....

[Tarwn]

Cecil, your time and diligence are incredibly appreciated. Your list of released versions is impressive and I have found that you actually release new versions _more_ often than I want to deal with upgrades, not less :)
There are a lot of Myth users whose lives are easier and possibly would not be using MythTV if you hadn't decided to start building and maintaining KnoppMyth. I personally appreciate your hard work a great deal, as does my wife who was initially a nonbeliever in PC-based set-top boxes ;)

Re:Just like.....

[Lumpy]

Actually I'm not suprised at his nastyness. It's is legendary in several forums.

I was also not attacking it, but being a one-man-band makes it get out of date quickly. the Mythdora guys seem to have more manpower and I hope they focus more on the rapid moving target that I know that knoppmyth tries hard to catch.

It was not an attack in knoppmyth, just a statement of it's weaknesses and pointing out that Knoppmyth was there first, so mythdora is simply a copy of knoppmyth's original work.

Hell even the ivtv guys are way behind the ball on the MCE keyboard support. it's a 3rd party patch to add it.

Bu this is slashdot, the masses follow the foaming at the mouth, and you get modded down for daring to not worship the ground of a OSS project leader.

Re:Just like.....

[Anonymous Coward]

no, dont be sorry. Just get the goddamn release out ! :D

Re:Just like.....

[ttrafford]

No patch has shown up on ivtv-devel...

Re:Just like.....

[Ignatius D'Lusional]

I think that the complaints about the MCE remote support (or lack thereof) is quite a legitimate complaint. Like many others, I'm sure, I purchased a Hauppauge tuner card that came with an MCE-ready remote. The fact that I have never been able to get it to work on KnoppMyth or RedHat+MythTV is the main reason I'm still tethererd to Microsoft XP MCE. Someone with zero Linux experience should be able to get any remote device working immediately without having to hack config files and such.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

That complaint doesn't make much sense. The web pages are made for everyone, not just Slashdot readers.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "web page" you speak of?

Overrated

[StikyPad]

I tried MythDora, but frankly I got tired of the "Swiper, no swiping!" popups every time I tried to record a show. I've heard there's a MythBusters plugin to get around them, but I don't think the walrus mustache is an acceptable tradeoff.

Re:Overrated

[CastrTroy]

That's the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in months. Made me laugh for about 5 minutes. Somebody mod this guy up.

Re:Overrated

[hal2814]

Yeah, Swiper is a little annoying but the Map UI is awesome. To get rid of the Swiper popups, follow these instructions:

1. Bridge
2. Mountains
3. Gooey Geyser

Then you're set.

So what was your favorite part of this post?

[Eerily long pause]

Me, too.

Boots' favorite part was talking about Map.

My favorite part is a big fat cop out because it's always the goal of what we set out to do (which in this case would be getting rid of the Swiper popups).

Re:Overrated

[Sax Maniac]

Indeed! Swiper should be the mascot for the project.

Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[nukem996]

I use Gentoo 2007.0, Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty, and Fedora Core 6 on a daily basis and Fedora Core 6 is rock solid. If you following the instructions at http://www.fedorafaq.org/ you can have MP3/DVD and what ever play back you want in no time. Fedora is just as easy to use as Ubuntu and personally I think the default skins look a hell of a lot sexier then Ubuntu's.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[ettlz]

It's disguised anti-Red Hatism from those who resent a company making money out of Linux. Mostly ungrateful fucks who don't realise just how much Red Hat's money puts back into the system. There are also a lot of lazy buggers out there who can't be bothered to figure out how to make it work and talk shit about yum and rpm. Add in those who don't seem to realise that Fedora eschews non-Free/possibly patented stuff by default and haven't figured out what a third-party repository is: "I can't play MP3s!" "MP3 is covered by software patents and so its inclusion in the distro is legally dubious. You just need the extra packages from (some repo)." "What's (some repo)? Where do I get that?" "Google is your friend." "Whaaat? That's crap!" "Well fuck off back to Windows, then." It's l33t to bash Red Hat and Fedora (which does look better) and sing the praises of Ubuntu's supposed ease. Lock 'em up in a small room with a clean box and a copy of FreeBSD; then see how l33t they feel after an hour or so.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[JonJ]

I really wish I had mod points right now, there's so much anti-Red Hat FUD from the Ubuntu-evangelists that it makes me sick.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who runs Ubuntu at home and admins RHEL machines at work, let me be the fair voice of reason. Ubuntu is great as a desktop but I would never run it on a server. REHL is solid as a server, but clearly not too great as a desktop. Fedora is just arse all 'round, unless you need to knock up a quick RedHat-like test box and don't have a RHEL license spare. Even then, CentOS is probably a better idea.

Fedora: pointless.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[Tarwn]

My problem with Fedora Core is the annual major version upgrades. For servers I don't care, as I rarely want to install anything except possibly security updates, but for a desktop I don't want to have to do a major version upgrade once a year, with all th pain that entails.
So basically instead of doing the major upgrade I end up putting it off...which lasts until I want to install a newer version of a piece of software and find out that for some reason the only version available on my 1 year old distro is 2+ years old, the libraries I need have only been compiled for a newer version of FC, etc.
I hate doing major version upgrades in Linux distros, something always goes haywire. So I am left with the decision of rebuilding my machine once a year, like my POC windows laptop, or go the compilation route for every install.
The most annoying thing for me was when I went to install MySQL and PHP off the disc in FC4 (I think, might have been 3). MySQL 5 had been out for a while, MySQL 4 was considered the current "stable" choice, the install used MySQL 3...

I don't want bleeding edge, but 2 major versions out of date? I found this was pretty consistent across a lot of packages offered from the installation media and online sources.

So mainly it was annoyance for me. Now I mostly use Debian and Mandriva because my level of annoyance with them is much lower (though Mandriva is starting to go the annual upgrade route, so if they fall too far behind I may have to find a replacement).

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[nukem996]

I have to agree that upgrading Fedora is a pain in the ass and they really need to fix it, but is Ubuntu any different? I know on Ubuntu you can switch the repos from an older version to a newer version but can't you do that in Fedora as well? Personally this is why I switched from Redhat 9 to Gentoo on my personal machines a long time ago, but then you run into all the problems Gentoo has. I guess each distro has it's own problems but it seems everyone loves to bash Fedora more since it seems everyone starts with it and then moves on to something else.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[PitaBred]

Naah. Fedora ain't pointless. It's a great corporate desktop to go along with the RHEL servers. Not a home-user desktop, though.

Re:Whats with the Fedora Bashing?

[Vomibra]

It's disguised anti-Red Hatism from those who resent a company making money out of Linux...

I dislike Fedora due to my experience with package management on Red Hat EL (I forget which version) and Fedora Core 4-ish. Even if package management is much improved, I haven't really felt the need to try installing Fedora (Debian/Gentoo work just fine), and so my negative impressions persist.

I suspect I'm not the only one for whom this is true.

well that was useless

[jridley]

It's a 3 part video on how to click "next" a bunch of times. It shows how to set up the box if you have exactly the hardware that guy happens to have. I had that figured out a year ago, but it's been 3 tries since then and I still haven't gotten Myth working. Always it mostly works but some damn thing stops me. Last time I couldn't get LIRC working right. I don't even remember what the previous ones were.

Mythdora?

[bughouse26]

.... or I could just apt-get install mythtv 1994 called and wants its distribution back.

Computers have always been political.

[jbn-o]

People care about avoiding lawsuits and yet it looks like one of the major suppliers of MP3 players recently lost a large patent infringement lawsuit earlier this year to the tune of billions of dollars (no doubt an appeal is pending). If the patent holder isn't paid off, the patent holder has the power to create a huge hassle for lots of ordinary people who will turn to their proprietor and ask why they didn't charge enough money to pay for the requisite licensing fee (or why a loyal customer would be left to the ravages of the lawyers). Just ask Apple about Paul Heckel's ability to get an undisclosed sum from them over patents that were allegedly infringed in Hypercard (or so says Heckel and his patent lawyer). People do not benefit from living a life where they are spared the harsh reality -- the US patent system as it pertains to software -- that exists for so many others. Lashing out at people for making you aware of that reality won't help people avoid these dangers.

As for software not being political, that has never been the case. Any activity involving multiple people is political; computer software is no exception. Only the naive believe they can divorce themselves from politics. While it can be unpleasant learning that computer-related work is filled with political ugliness you were unaware of; learning that the lives of others is more harsh than you knew. But it's worth knowing so that you can better understand how things really work, behave ethically in accordance with your newfound knowledge, and sleep easier.

Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Any PWR running on a powerhog PC is totally pointless.
It should be small, quiet, consuming very little power. None of these describe PCs.

Perfect timing!

[sootman]

I've got a few nice boxes laying around that used to be for testing various Win & Lin stuff, which is now mostly done with Parallels. Glad I didn't get rid of them all yet! I last looked at Myth a year or two ago, and even with Knoppomyth, I still got stuck.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! n00b!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

This should be good

[DragonHawk]

With the parent as such a fine example, I look forward to an unbiased, unemotional discussion on the pros and cons of different Linux distributions. I'm sure it will be based entirely on objective facts, supported by careful citations, and not contain any anecdotal evidence or personal opinions.

Fedora 6 install

[DragonHawk]

For what it's worth, to install the MythTV packages on Fedora 6, the general procedure is:

yum install mythtv-suite

The above assumes you've got the ATrpms repository enabled. If you haven't, you can install FedoraFaq.org's handy repo package:

rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/yum

Try not to get caught up in the complexity. ;-)

Re:Fedora 6 install

[hawkbug]

Thank you - I'm tired of all the RedHat hating because RPM sucks by itself. YUM has been a great tool for RPM based systems for about, oh, I'd say 4 years now if I remember correctly. I've been using Fedora and CentOS without issue for about 3 years as a result. I'm very happy. I've also tried Ubuntu, but I just don't know where all the config settings are yet like I do in a RedHat based system, but I don't think Ubuntu sucks at all - in fact, I love all this linux competition - it makes the distros step their game up and get better.

Re:Fedora 6 install

[jamstar7]

Thank you - I'm tired of all the RedHat hating because RPM sucks by itself. YUM has been a great tool for RPM based systems for about, oh, I'd say 4 years now if I remember correctly. I've been using Fedora and CentOS without issue for about 3 years as a result. I'm very happy. I've also tried Ubuntu, but I just don't know where all the config settings are yet like I do in a RedHat based system, but I don't think Ubuntu sucks at all - in fact, I love all this linux competition - it makes the distros step their game up and get better.

I can deal with RPMs, having done RedHat since 3.0.3. But what really impressed the bejezuz outta me was apt-get. I liked the RPM'ed version of apt that was supported for like a minute. Yum? Meh. I like apt better.

Re:Fedora 6 install

[Anonymous Coward]

Does YUM work through an authenticating proxy yet?

Re:Fedora? - More baseless comments!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing about all of these issues with FC and frankly don't know what the problem is. I've been running it for a long time actually since before Fedora Core days. It has always been bleeding edge but yet this version of FC(6) is the most stable OS I've run in years.

The number one issue with Fedora is simply to avoid forced installations. Install the right packages and you won't have problems.

As to the issues with MP3's and other IP protected technologies most people with half a light bulb between their ears realizes that the distro is carefully maintained so as to not be encumbered with what might be illegal software. Any one with a clue in the linux community should realize why certain files aren't supported. So it is not known for these capabilities because it is specifically built not to support them - duh!!!!

All in all FC6 works damn well and ought to be the distro all others are judged against.

Dave

More capture device info

[DragonHawk]

May I also suggest:

pcHDTV HD-5500. $129 list. PCI. Coax input. Analog/digital tuner. Hardware MPEG encoder. Explicitly designed to work with Linux.

Silicondust HDHomeRun. $169 list. Stand-alone box. Ethernet attachment. Dual coax inputs. Dual analog/digital tuners. Hardware MPEG encoder. Can stream video to MythTV and other systems.

Jarod Wilson recommended these to our LUG. I got the HD-5500 and it works well.

Also, I am told that Hauppague has recently started packaging HVR-1600 cards in PVR-150 boxes, with no indication of the change. The HVR-1600 does NOT work with MythTV.

Ball boy questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes it's a shameless plug, but when you throw up a softball like this I just have take a swing at it."

You sell bats too?

In related news - XBMC for Linux developers needed

[Plug]

I decided that seeing as I didn't record much TV, I'd change to running Xbox Media Centre, and use its MythTV scripts to control another backend if ever I needed. Today, it seems they've announced a Linux port, which might be an excellent way for all the people who want a Linux media centre, but just don't like MythTV for one reason or another, to contribute.

Fluendo are also working on a media centre called Elisa, built on their GTK/Gstreamer platform.

Things are looking up overall on the Linux media centre front.

I fixed that a while ago.

[krunchyfrog]

I put a tape in the VCR, setup the time I want it to start recording, the time I want it to stop, the channel, and let the thing do its magic trick.

Re:I fixed that a while ago.

[zCyl]

I put a tape in the VCR, setup the time I want it to start recording, the time I want it to stop, the channel, and let the thing do its magic trick.

I don't put a tape in my mythtv box, I don't setup the times for it to record or the time for it to stop, and it automatically records the shows that I told it I like, while I'm off worrying about other things in my life. I'll take that over my old VCR any day. It completely changes the way you watch TV.

Re:I fixed that a while ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great for you. But my video recorder has rather limited storage and poor quality on it's tapes, it can't control the channel on my digital STB, it can't automatically record particular programs that I want it to, it can't automatically skip commercials, it can't speed up playback to reduce the time it takes me to watch a program, it can't record radio and it can't automatically convert said radio shows to MP3s ready for my MP3 player. I could go on with even more things that my MythTV box can do that a VCR can't, but I think I've made my point and yes I do use all of those features frequently.

Re:I fixed that a while ago.

[krunchyfrog]

Sorry, I forgot the and tags ;)

Re:I fixed that a while ago.

[krunchyfrog]

Sorry, I forgot the and tags ;)

Thank you Slashdot for treating non-existant tags as html!

Linux Media Center do-it-yourself

[malex]

Italian readers can read on http://www.malex.org/archives/2006/05/linux-media- center-fai-da-te/ about my experience on building my own Linux Media Center box based on Fedora Core 5 and MythTV 0.20.
All my family uses it every day, it was successfully.

LinuxMCE

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone tried LinuxMCE it looks like it might bee a cool way to go http://linuxmce.com/

Some things about mythtv

[razpones]

I use knoppmyth and i love it, but I wish some things where different, personally I don't like fluxbox too much, its too rigid, I wish it came with kde, I understand that some people want to keep the system light but I like to have easy access to hard drives and to use the desktop some times. Also much easier to update and upgrade the system that way. In the mythtv dept. one thing I don't like, and it could be my own fault for not configuring it correctly, is that programs have to be viewed soon or they will be erased automatically, there are buttons to undo this, but sometimes even when I ask the box to save the program if I don't view it it will get erased. Very small details, and i know that i can apt-get install kde and so on but it would be nice to have it as an option at install, which in knoppmyth BTW is a breeze. As for fedora, I have never really liked it. fedora core 3-4 never got my sound card right. I have not tried fedora 6 even thought I have downloaded the dvd. Instead I use Sidux and I'm very happy, any Debian derivate is easier than fedora. I would like to thank Cecil for the work he does at Knoppmyth.

Oh please.

[jotaeleemeese]

Only 10 year old kids think software has no political or social implications. Please grow up.

As for "those attitudes", what companies are doing is allowing people who "don't give a shit about patents or copyright" (your words) to install the softwae they need themselves, and then thay can take the responsibility for those actions, if any.

Given the completely mental state of copyright and patent law in the US it is only sensible that Linux distributors do not monkey around about this issue.

If you stick to free formats all works out of the box, and as soon as the respective patents expire, it will become a non issue anyway.

No, it isn't.

[jotaeleemeese]

Let me tell you were I am comming from.

I have used Linux professionally for 8 years, UNIX for 15.

I have knowledge of user interface design at post grad level.

I have tried the software and when it comes to configuration it is not intuitive. It does not follow a logic pattern and the more complicated settings are arcane to say the least.

What is necessary is to sit down and watch people installing and configuring the software, this will be enlightening.

For arcane configuration settings you need sensible defaults and on-screen help to clarify things. This reinforces the concepts and expedites configuration.