I do not live in California and am unlikely to be given any consideration from a politician elected in that state. For those that do live in California please contact Mrs Feinstein and let her know that you will definitely not vote for her again if this rider gets added to the stimulus bill. Her contact info (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.WashingtonDCOffice):
Senator Dianne Feinstein United States Senate 331 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510
South Carolina may have WISP service in areas. The map linked in the article showed none. I went out and Googled for some that serve where I live. I found none for residential service. I did see a couple that stated for businesses only and looked no further into them. I did find one (www.scwireless.net) that serves an area not that far from me, but much farther than what 802.11b/g can cover.
I live in the upstate area (north west corner). The situation on the coast is much different. The company I work for has multiple location in Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Wilmington, NC. Wilmington is much like where I live because there is one telco and one cable company. Charleston is a better situation. Including the business only ISPs, we can pick from four or more (depending on location). For the exact same service AT&T charges significantly less in Charleston than the upstate.
I wish we had WISP service here. If it was reasonable it could force the other providers to improve service or lower prices or maybe even both.
Maybe I am an ISO addict, but every 6 months Ubuntu comes out with a new release and I try out the betas as well. It is nice to have them download in only a few minutes. I also keep bittorrent open so others can get them quickly as well.
If I wanted a phone line I would get AT&T with their DSL package. I do not want a phone line. I have two cell phones and my wife has two as well. We don't need any more phones. I just want fast (I take online college courses and dialup is just painful), always on, reasonably priced internet. I used to live in Charlotte, NC and internet there was much cheaper. The company I work for has 66 retail stores in two states. I see first hand that the prices for phone and internet are cheaper where there is more competition. The same thing applies here. Where I live there are only two high speed internet companies. In other cities in the state where there is competition the prices are lower. Go figure, competition is better for the customer and worse for company profits. Of course Charter has had no profits recently and is simply raising their prices rather than attempting to improve their offerings.
Cheers,
James
It must be nice to have such cheap internet. I happen to live in the only state shown with no WISP coverage. High speed internet links here are ridiculous.
I have two options:
1) AT&T (formerly BellSouth). If you have a land line you can get 768k/128k for $19.99/month, but you must have a land line which adds another $15+/month. Naked DSL is available, but the cheapest price is $34.95/month for 1.5M/256k.
2) Charter cable offers internet by itself. Their minimum advertised speed is 5M. The price is almost $60/month or $54.99 if you also have cable.
I don't need 10M+ speeds, but it is nice to have if I watch streaming video or other things requiring greater bandwidths. I do not download music and movies illegally, but I do grab iso images of Linux discs regularly. 1.5M would be slow, but meet my needs. Problem is it is $35+/month. I would love to have a WISP available. I live less than 2 miles from a mountain that could service a large city if there was a WISP. I would switch if I had the choice.
The problem with these NAS boxes is the processor is only able to push about 25mb/sec. The whole point of the rsync protocol is to trade network bandwidth for CPU. If your CPU is already taxed then what do you think rsync is going to do? Rsync will crawl on any of these SOHO NAS boxes.
Housecall is good, but the stable version is limited to 500 files to disinfect per run. The beta version does not have this problem, but it does not run well in IE7. If you use Housecall use it with Firefox (which will use the Java based verison). The new version in Firefox runs quite well. I don't think it is as fast as ClamAV, but it does disinfection which ClamAV does not.
Check out the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It records HD via component video and I think the newest firmware enables 5.1 audio. It is a hardware encoder and requires almost no CPU to record (you just save the video strem to disk). Playback on the other hand requires a very beefy system. Under Linux a 3.0GHz is about the minimum requirement. Windows users may be able to offload some of the video decoding to their graphics card.
I am currently taking an astronomy class at college and our text came with a copy of Starry Night Enthusiast software. The installer only works for Windows/Mac, but the software is java/opengl. Maybe one of these days I could try to load it under Linux. Anyway, it is rather neat software. I am just starting to explore it and some of the views it produces are incredible. Here is the website: http://www.starrynight.com/
PCI compliance is great and all, but in many smaller industries/specialized softwares PCI compliance is not enforced. I actually wrote a batch CC processing software for my employer and nowhere did PCI compliance enter the discussions. The CC processor (one of the largest in the US) nor the bank said one word about it. Some of the software that we use is industry specific. Probably in use at fewer than 2000 companies of which we are the largest. I have been pushing for PCI compliance for a while. The developer say that they are beta testing a new version that addresses my concerns. I do not hold my breath.
Shifting to the realm of possibility. We run software that is not currently PCI compliant. If a breach occurs because of that software, who is at fault? My employer or the company that developed the software? If I understand the PCI spec correctly the software developer is on thew hook not the end-user of the software. Now what about the EULA of the software? Thay all basically say that you pay for the software, but if things break you get both pieces. Does this shift the blame back to the user of the software? What about smaller shops? Mom and pop outfits that loose several hundred to a few thousand records? CC companies charge the merchant ~$49/lost card info. Do these big outfits get charged this fee as well?
If Best Western lost 8 million records do they get charged $400M for the loss?
1) On Linux Impress can not handle more than a few slides before using 100% CPU power. We have several digital billboards (50" Plasma Tvs) and I was tasked with making sure they had something to display. No prob I thought. I set up 3 media pc cases with Ubuntu 7.10 (i386, onboard nvidia gpu) and installed OOo. I was having some problems creating the slide shows with OOo Linux. I switched to my Windows box and was able to create a basic slide show. (1280x720 resolution maybe 10 slides) I tried running the show on my Ubuntu desktop (amd64) as well as the media pcs (Ubuntu i386) and OOo Impress would jump to 100% CPU after a few slides. In the end I used Wine and PowerPoint viewer to display the slideshow because it worked without killing the CPU. Here's hoping 2.4 fixes this bug.
2) OOo base is unable to open a new form from a button on a form. I was trying to use OOo Base as a quick proof of concept for a new HR database. It is easy enough to connect Base to a MySQL DB and create a form to modify records. The problem came when I tried to create a search page. The search was fine. I could display the results in a table, but then there is no way to select a result from the table and then open it in another form. This is not really a bug rather than a much needed feature. At this point Base is ok for only the simplest of things.
the_crowbar
I can't wait to try out OOo 2.4 to see if they have fixed these two things.
FYI, BestBuy sells the Insignia line of MP3 players. I have a NS-DV4G. It plays Ogg Vorbis files just fine and syncs with Linux (appears as a flash drive). It has a 2.2" screen and FM radio builtin. It does not have the space of the HD based players, but is cheap enough. I have seen them go for $50 or less on ebay.
I have a Canon MP600 Printer/Scanner and I can purchase refill kits for it or refilled ink. (web search will find plenty for sale. Also there is a Cartridge World close tome that sells the refilled inks) I think the Canon ink is not that expensive. I have had my printer for about 6 months and just replaced the black cartridge. I printed a couple hundred pages (almost no color) on one cartridge. The new Canon branded cartridge cost me ~$18. I have only printed a couple of pictures with the printer so the color is still almost full. I think that photo printing is going to eat the ink of any printer.
Linux support for the MP 600 is a bit spotty. Canon has a binary (x86 or amd64 with emulation) driver that can be made to work under Linux. I currently just use the Turboprint drivers (commercial ~$40 or free for the 300 DPI version). The Turboprint driver had worked quite well for me. The scanner works with cvs sane drivers.
Does Verizon sell naked DSL? Here in the sunny south we have BellSouth^H^H AT&T which will under no circumstance sell you a DSL line without a voice line to go with it. There are not any other DSL providers left. There were a couple of small time outfits, but none of them offer DSL anymore. Go competition.
Getting back on point, Verizon is not providing the DSL and voice line without getting anything. The customer at each end is paying Verizon for either DSL or voice dialtone. Verizon is getting a piece of the pie either way.
I would also vote for SmoothWall. We have been testing their Advanced Firewall product at work. We were running an old PC with Debian and some custom IPTables rules I put together. Our company size has expanded and those that work for me lack the technical skills to understand how a firewall works. SmoothWall has an easy enough web gui that I can walk someone through what to change while I'm on the road.
The product does cost money, but we also have several SonicWALL firewall appliances and the SmoothWall I feel is a better value.
I just emailed the link on their website http://www.smoothwall.net/ and they had a reseller contact me. I was able to get a 30 day eval and then they even extended that for 15 days for me.
One nice thing about their licensing is they encourage you to have another install with the same license ready as a hot swap spare in case of hardware failure.
We run some unusual configurations (57 remote sites mesh vpn setup) and their support has been very helpful.
A couple of years ago I worked for a pool management company. We maintained large community sized pools. For the chlorine we used a very strong calcium hypochlorite solution. (I think it was 12-15%, a drop would eat right through your clothes.) This had the affect of pushing the pool water to the base side. We always had to add muriatic acid to rebalance the pH.
When I was a kid my family had a pool in our backyard. The chlorine we used was tablets or powder form. Probably the trichlor, but I was too young to really know anything about the specific chemicals.
You are an ac, but I would like to prove that my post was correct.
Couple of points:
The case did come with a quiet 280 watt PSU. The only fans in the system are the PSU and the CPU cooler. The AMD stock cooler is very quiet.
The embedded video has s-video output. I don't use it because I am doing HD over DVI. The s-video adapter does cost an extra $10 though. If you have another Asus board that has onboard s-video that adapter will work.
$10 universal remote is not a problem. I bought a nice one off woot.com for $8. I also have a MCE remote I bought off ebay with receiver for $15. The case also has an internal IR Remote window to place the receiver inside the case.
The WinTV may not be the best capture card, but it is as good as the TiVO. Had you read the rest of my comment, you would notice that I am now using a PVR-500 (2x 150 in single PCI card). The PVR-500 adds $135 to the cost, but that can be bought later to upgrade the system if needed.
I don't have any parts designed to be silent, except maybe the PSU. That came with the case so is factored in to the price of the case.
I did forget about the DVD writer. I had one lying around there was no need to buy one; had I needed to purchase one they are only ~$30. Of course I am pretty certain TiVO does not come with a DVD-Burner. Since I can easily dump video off my Myth box in MPEG2 I can use a DVD burner on any desktop PC.
I don't recall what the shipping cost were, but there was no tax. Purchased across state lines and all that. As far as research goes, there was a little. Right now I am using KnoppMyth on the system. If you want to build a fully working system with little research, check their forums. I think you may need to be registered.
With regard to ease of use, the TiVO I am sure is the easiest. If you don't want the DRM though MythTV is not hard. Granted I have several years of using Linux, but KnoppMyth is pretty easy. Just install it and at first boot it walks you through the system setup. If you get stuck post in their forum. I have been surprised at the quick responses I have gotten in the forums.
$500 for a TiVO w/ Lifetime subscription is not a bad price, but let me break down my MythTV box.
$119 nMedia Media Center Case I could have used an old beige box, but this case fits in perfectly with my other components
$88 Athlon64 3000+ CPU
$87 Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard with Geforce 6150 onboard
$95 Seagate 400GB SATA 3.0 HD
$90 1GB DDR RAM Crucial ValueRAM
$10 Universal Remote
$5 Homemade Serial IR receiver
$40 2 WinTV software encoder cards from Ebay
Total: $534
I happen to have Charter HD cable with a Motorola DCT-6200 cable box. This cable box has a FireWire port that can be used to record shows in HD. Because my Asus MB has FireWire built-in my ~$530 Myth box has 1 x HD Tuner, 2 x SD Tuner. No fees (except my cable fee) and 3 tuners with a 400 GB HD for storage. If I wanted to I could rent a second HD cable box and have 2 HD tuners, but that is overkill for me.
For $530 dollars and a little bit of time I have a box that far exceeds the TiVO and records my HD content in DRM free MPEG2. Plus, if I ever need to I can reformat the HD and use it as a decent desktop PC.
Next paragraph added to avoid lameness filter.
Above I priced out a basic MythTV box. My actually Myth Box is a little better with a PVR-500 (hardware MPEG2 encoder card) and I have several remote controls for it. I currently use a ATI RF remote (~$30 @ NewEgg). I would not recommend it unless you already have one. It works fine, but the button response is slow (1 press/sec). I have (yet to be installed) a Windows Media Center remote. I have tested it and it seems to work quite well. I also have tried the remote that came with my cable box. It works well, but I was unable to prevent the signal from changing the cable box. I have tried several multi function remotes with different homebrew receivers. I was able to configure everyone of them with MythTV and LIRC. I also have a gyration wireless keyboard/mouse connected to the system.
Because the filtering is not done on the routers, but rather on external machines this should take some time to plug. Off the top of my head I can't imagine how the Chinese government would change their filtering to defeat this trick. On a Linux box you could just set an iptables rule:
should take care of the reset packets at the local end. The remote end would need to drop them as well, but that would be easy to setup. Maybe we could setup some proxies for those in mainland China that would drop the resets so they could surf anywhere. Might be hard to restrict to those coming from mainland China.
You might want to check out the review on anythingbutipod.com They state that:
SanDisk gave us the best of both worlds by including MTP and UMS transfer protocols, which are switchable in the user settings. MTP gives you the option to automatically sync your media with Windows Media Player 10 and other DRM services. UMS (SanDisk calls it MSC, or Mass Storage Controller) allows you to drag and drop your music onto the player, keeping the folders organized how you want. UMS also means that the Sansa e200 is compatible with virtually all operating systems.
[emphasis mine]
It does not require Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10, although it does work with that combo.
Works nicely on a small dual-processor 2GHz Intel machine with a large RAID-10 (don't use RAID-5!)
Can you elaborate on why not to store mail on a RAID-5 array? I am thinking of moving our email in house and have decided on Postfix. RAID-5 was my planned storage.
I just purchased an Asus A8N-VM motherboard for use in my HTPC. I bought it because it is MicroATX (9.6" x 9.6") and has built-in DVI output for my HD TV. I paired it with a nice HTPC case, AMD Athlon 64 3000+, and 1 GB of RAM. I already have a DVD-RW and HD. Total price w/ shipping ~$415.00. I'd say that is a good deal and I end up with a decent performer of a system for less than what I might spend on a high-end video card.
Oh - The motherboard was $78 of the total price. If you are thinking about a budget ~$80 video card, maybe a new mobo with builtin video is a better option.
How are you running an xbox as a MythTV frontend? I have an xbox modded with an upgraded HD. After doing a little searching there appears to be a build of MPlayer (that has support for the.nuv files from MythTV) compiled for native running on the xbox. I have looked at xbox-linux.org and I did not see an installer I could add as a menu item to my EvoX dashboard.
I don't know how well OpenOffice.org Calc does statistical analysis. I do know that if you change the file extension from.txt (or whatever) to.csv OpenOffice.org Calc will import it. I haven't looked for a way to change that, but OpenOffice.org will import.txt files to Writer and.csv files to Calc. Even if it is tab delimited (which is what your comment suggested) change the file extension and try again. The OpenOffice.org Calc import wizard very closely resembles MS Office Excel.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not live in California and am unlikely to be given any consideration from a politician elected in that state. For those that do live in California please contact Mrs Feinstein and let her know that you will definitely not vote for her again if this rider gets added to the stimulus bill. Her contact info (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.WashingtonDCOffice):
Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3841
Fax: (202) 228-3954
TTY/TDD: (202) 224-2501
Cheers,
the_crowbar
South Carolina may have WISP service in areas. The map linked in the article showed none. I went out and Googled for some that serve where I live. I found none for residential service. I did see a couple that stated for businesses only and looked no further into them. I did find one (www.scwireless.net) that serves an area not that far from me, but much farther than what 802.11b/g can cover.
I live in the upstate area (north west corner). The situation on the coast is much different. The company I work for has multiple location in Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Wilmington, NC. Wilmington is much like where I live because there is one telco and one cable company. Charleston is a better situation. Including the business only ISPs, we can pick from four or more (depending on location). For the exact same service AT&T charges significantly less in Charleston than the upstate.
I wish we had WISP service here. If it was reasonable it could force the other providers to improve service or lower prices or maybe even both.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Maybe I am an ISO addict, but every 6 months Ubuntu comes out with a new release and I try out the betas as well. It is nice to have them download in only a few minutes. I also keep bittorrent open so others can get them quickly as well.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
If I wanted a phone line I would get AT&T with their DSL package. I do not want a phone line. I have two cell phones and my wife has two as well. We don't need any more phones. I just want fast (I take online college courses and dialup is just painful), always on, reasonably priced internet. I used to live in Charlotte, NC and internet there was much cheaper. The company I work for has 66 retail stores in two states. I see first hand that the prices for phone and internet are cheaper where there is more competition. The same thing applies here. Where I live there are only two high speed internet companies. In other cities in the state where there is competition the prices are lower. Go figure, competition is better for the customer and worse for company profits. Of course Charter has had no profits recently and is simply raising their prices rather than attempting to improve their offerings. Cheers, James
It must be nice to have such cheap internet. I happen to live in the only state shown with no WISP coverage. High speed internet links here are ridiculous.
I have two options:
1) AT&T (formerly BellSouth). If you have a land line you can get 768k/128k for $19.99/month, but you must have a land line which adds another $15+/month. Naked DSL is available, but the cheapest price is $34.95/month for 1.5M/256k.
2) Charter cable offers internet by itself. Their minimum advertised speed is 5M. The price is almost $60/month or $54.99 if you also have cable.
I don't need 10M+ speeds, but it is nice to have if I watch streaming video or other things requiring greater bandwidths. I do not download music and movies illegally, but I do grab iso images of Linux discs regularly. 1.5M would be slow, but meet my needs. Problem is it is $35+/month. I would love to have a WISP available. I live less than 2 miles from a mountain that could service a large city if there was a WISP. I would switch if I had the choice.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
The problem with these NAS boxes is the processor is only able to push about 25mb/sec. The whole point of the rsync protocol is to trade network bandwidth for CPU. If your CPU is already taxed then what do you think rsync is going to do? Rsync will crawl on any of these SOHO NAS boxes.
Housecall is good, but the stable version is limited to 500 files to disinfect per run. The beta version does not have this problem, but it does not run well in IE7. If you use Housecall use it with Firefox (which will use the Java based verison). The new version in Firefox runs quite well. I don't think it is as fast as ClamAV, but it does disinfection which ClamAV does not.
Check out the Hauppauge HD-PVR. It records HD via component video and I think the newest firmware enables 5.1 audio. It is a hardware encoder and requires almost no CPU to record (you just save the video strem to disk). Playback on the other hand requires a very beefy system. Under Linux a 3.0GHz is about the minimum requirement. Windows users may be able to offload some of the video decoding to their graphics card.
Linky: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
I am currently taking an astronomy class at college and our text came with a copy of Starry Night Enthusiast software. The installer only works for Windows/Mac, but the software is java/opengl. Maybe one of these days I could try to load it under Linux. Anyway, it is rather neat software. I am just starting to explore it and some of the views it produces are incredible. Here is the website: http://www.starrynight.com/
PCI compliance is great and all, but in many smaller industries/specialized softwares PCI compliance is not enforced. I actually wrote a batch CC processing software for my employer and nowhere did PCI compliance enter the discussions. The CC processor (one of the largest in the US) nor the bank said one word about it. Some of the software that we use is industry specific. Probably in use at fewer than 2000 companies of which we are the largest. I have been pushing for PCI compliance for a while. The developer say that they are beta testing a new version that addresses my concerns. I do not hold my breath.
Shifting to the realm of possibility. We run software that is not currently PCI compliant. If a breach occurs because of that software, who is at fault? My employer or the company that developed the software? If I understand the PCI spec correctly the software developer is on thew hook not the end-user of the software. Now what about the EULA of the software? Thay all basically say that you pay for the software, but if things break you get both pieces. Does this shift the blame back to the user of the software? What about smaller shops? Mom and pop outfits that loose several hundred to a few thousand records? CC companies charge the merchant ~$49/lost card info. Do these big outfits get charged this fee as well?
If Best Western lost 8 million records do they get charged $400M for the loss?
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Two things that bug me about OOo 2.3:
1) On Linux Impress can not handle more than a few slides before using 100% CPU power. We have several digital billboards (50" Plasma Tvs) and I was tasked with making sure they had something to display. No prob I thought. I set up 3 media pc cases with Ubuntu 7.10 (i386, onboard nvidia gpu) and installed OOo. I was having some problems creating the slide shows with OOo Linux. I switched to my Windows box and was able to create a basic slide show. (1280x720 resolution maybe 10 slides) I tried running the show on my Ubuntu desktop (amd64) as well as the media pcs (Ubuntu i386) and OOo Impress would jump to 100% CPU after a few slides. In the end I used Wine and PowerPoint viewer to display the slideshow because it worked without killing the CPU. Here's hoping 2.4 fixes this bug.
2) OOo base is unable to open a new form from a button on a form. I was trying to use OOo Base as a quick proof of concept for a new HR database. It is easy enough to connect Base to a MySQL DB and create a form to modify records. The problem came when I tried to create a search page. The search was fine. I could display the results in a table, but then there is no way to select a result from the table and then open it in another form. This is not really a bug rather than a much needed feature. At this point Base is ok for only the simplest of things.
the_crowbar
I can't wait to try out OOo 2.4 to see if they have fixed these two things.
FYI, BestBuy sells the Insignia line of MP3 players. I have a NS-DV4G. It plays Ogg Vorbis files just fine and syncs with Linux (appears as a flash drive). It has a 2.2" screen and FM radio builtin. It does not have the space of the HD based players, but is cheap enough. I have seen them go for $50 or less on ebay.
I have a Canon MP600 Printer/Scanner and I can purchase refill kits for it or refilled ink. (web search will find plenty for sale. Also there is a Cartridge World close tome that sells the refilled inks) I think the Canon ink is not that expensive. I have had my printer for about 6 months and just replaced the black cartridge. I printed a couple hundred pages (almost no color) on one cartridge. The new Canon branded cartridge cost me ~$18. I have only printed a couple of pictures with the printer so the color is still almost full. I think that photo printing is going to eat the ink of any printer.
Linux support for the MP 600 is a bit spotty. Canon has a binary (x86 or amd64 with emulation) driver that can be made to work under Linux. I currently just use the Turboprint drivers (commercial ~$40 or free for the 300 DPI version). The Turboprint driver had worked quite well for me. The scanner works with cvs sane drivers.
Cheers,the_crowbar
Does Verizon sell naked DSL? Here in the sunny south we have BellSouth^H^H AT&T which will under no circumstance sell you a DSL line without a voice line to go with it. There are not any other DSL providers left. There were a couple of small time outfits, but none of them offer DSL anymore. Go competition.
Getting back on point, Verizon is not providing the DSL and voice line without getting anything. The customer at each end is paying Verizon for either DSL or voice dialtone. Verizon is getting a piece of the pie either way.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
I would also vote for SmoothWall. We have been testing their Advanced Firewall product at work. We were running an old PC with Debian and some custom IPTables rules I put together. Our company size has expanded and those that work for me lack the technical skills to understand how a firewall works. SmoothWall has an easy enough web gui that I can walk someone through what to change while I'm on the road.
The product does cost money, but we also have several SonicWALL firewall appliances and the SmoothWall I feel is a better value.
I just emailed the link on their website http://www.smoothwall.net/ and they had a reseller contact me. I was able to get a 30 day eval and then they even extended that for 15 days for me.
One nice thing about their licensing is they encourage you to have another install with the same license ready as a hot swap spare in case of hardware failure.
We run some unusual configurations (57 remote sites mesh vpn setup) and their support has been very helpful.
Thanks,
the_crowbar
A couple of years ago I worked for a pool management company. We maintained large community sized pools. For the chlorine we used a very strong calcium hypochlorite solution. (I think it was 12-15%, a drop would eat right through your clothes.) This had the affect of pushing the pool water to the base side. We always had to add muriatic acid to rebalance the pH.
When I was a kid my family had a pool in our backyard. The chlorine we used was tablets or powder form. Probably the trichlor, but I was too young to really know anything about the specific chemicals.
Thanks,
the_crowbar
Couple of points:
- The case did come with a quiet 280 watt PSU. The only fans in the system are the PSU and the CPU cooler. The AMD stock cooler is very quiet.
- The embedded video has s-video output. I don't use it because I am doing HD over DVI. The s-video adapter does cost an extra $10 though. If you have another Asus board that has onboard s-video that adapter will work.
- $10 universal remote is not a problem. I bought a nice one off woot.com for $8. I also have a MCE remote I bought off ebay with receiver for $15. The case also has an internal IR Remote window to place the receiver inside the case.
- The WinTV may not be the best capture card, but it is as good as the TiVO. Had you read the rest of my comment, you would notice that I am now using a PVR-500 (2x 150 in single PCI card). The PVR-500 adds $135 to the cost, but that can be bought later to upgrade the system if needed.
- I don't have any parts designed to be silent, except maybe the PSU. That came with the case so is factored in to the price of the case.
- I did forget about the DVD writer. I had one lying around there was no need to buy one; had I needed to purchase one they are only ~$30. Of course I am pretty certain TiVO does not come with a DVD-Burner. Since I can easily dump video off my Myth box in MPEG2 I can use a DVD burner on any desktop PC.
I don't recall what the shipping cost were, but there was no tax. Purchased across state lines and all that. As far as research goes, there was a little. Right now I am using KnoppMyth on the system. If you want to build a fully working system with little research, check their forums. I think you may need to be registered.With regard to ease of use, the TiVO I am sure is the easiest. If you don't want the DRM though MythTV is not hard. Granted I have several years of using Linux, but KnoppMyth is pretty easy. Just install it and at first boot it walks you through the system setup. If you get stuck post in their forum. I have been surprised at the quick responses I have gotten in the forums.
Thanks,
the_crowbar
- $xxx part
- $xxx part
-- (Long line of dashes...maybe 20 total)$total
It was the line of dashes that triggered the lameness filter. I never bothered removing the rest of the stuff after that.
Thanks,
the_crowbar
$500 for a TiVO w/ Lifetime subscription is not a bad price, but let me break down my MythTV box.
- $119 nMedia Media Center Case I could have used an old beige box, but this case fits in perfectly with my other components
- $88 Athlon64 3000+ CPU
- $87 Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard with Geforce 6150 onboard
- $95 Seagate 400GB SATA 3.0 HD
- $90 1GB DDR RAM Crucial ValueRAM
- $10 Universal Remote
- $5 Homemade Serial IR receiver
- $40 2 WinTV software encoder cards from Ebay
Total: $534I happen to have Charter HD cable with a Motorola DCT-6200 cable box. This cable box has a FireWire port that can be used to record shows in HD. Because my Asus MB has FireWire built-in my ~$530 Myth box has 1 x HD Tuner, 2 x SD Tuner. No fees (except my cable fee) and 3 tuners with a 400 GB HD for storage. If I wanted to I could rent a second HD cable box and have 2 HD tuners, but that is overkill for me.
For $530 dollars and a little bit of time I have a box that far exceeds the TiVO and records my HD content in DRM free MPEG2. Plus, if I ever need to I can reformat the HD and use it as a decent desktop PC.
Next paragraph added to avoid lameness filter.Above I priced out a basic MythTV box. My actually Myth Box is a little better with a PVR-500 (hardware MPEG2 encoder card) and I have several remote controls for it. I currently use a ATI RF remote (~$30 @ NewEgg). I would not recommend it unless you already have one. It works fine, but the button response is slow (1 press/sec). I have (yet to be installed) a Windows Media Center remote. I have tested it and it seems to work quite well. I also have tried the remote that came with my cable box. It works well, but I was unable to prevent the signal from changing the cable box. I have tried several multi function remotes with different homebrew receivers. I was able to configure everyone of them with MythTV and LIRC. I also have a gyration wireless keyboard/mouse connected to the system.
More crap to bypass the lameness filter. thoiioe uiowjelkf auieohfla jsioayruhd aypiorhpqjhp iywphrqodhnq qyprhaondpohap qihd hqahd q doiahdoh kljsgf kljsgldf lkjgasldf lgsf lkagfd lkaghf agf jag jklgad iuotqwr bkjhs htaia hgskjdg aghsg lagsl lkagd lagsd algda lagld ad aldgla dlkasg dlagd aldga lslagls dlags dlgald aldglagdla dlkagld aldgla dagd lagd algdl adlagd agdlagd aldglagd adg aldg aldgThanks,
the_crowbar
Just a thought.
the_crowbarIt does not require Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10, although it does work with that combo.
Cheers,The_crowbar
Thanks,
the_crowbar
Oh - The motherboard was $78 of the total price. If you are thinking about a budget ~$80 video card, maybe a new mobo with builtin video is a better option.
How are you running an xbox as a MythTV frontend? I have an xbox modded with an upgraded HD. After doing a little searching there appears to be a build of MPlayer (that has support for the .nuv files from MythTV) compiled for native running on the xbox. I have looked at xbox-linux.org and I did not see an installer I could add as a menu item to my EvoX dashboard.
Thanks,
the_crowbar
I don't know how well OpenOffice.org Calc does statistical analysis. I do know that if you change the file extension from .txt (or whatever) to .csv OpenOffice.org Calc will import it. I haven't looked for a way to change that, but OpenOffice.org will import .txt files to Writer and .csv files to Calc. Even if it is tab delimited (which is what your comment suggested) change the file extension and try again. The OpenOffice.org Calc import wizard very closely resembles MS Office Excel.
Cheers,
the_crowbar