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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."
Why the fuck is this in Flash. next.
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).
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
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.
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.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
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.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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,
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
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.
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
KnoppMyth is meant to be used as a set-top box, not a general purpose computer. KnoppMyth already includes MythBrowser.
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
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.
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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....
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.