I've subscribed to Linux Journal for almost 13 years, and long ago bought up all the back issues I could so I have a near-complete collection. For years it's been the only worthwhile print computer magazine around.
Amazing feat. 37 credits in a single semester?!? Interestingly, the semester I took 22 credits (Columbia requires 124 credits for a non-engineering undergraduate degree, similar to Virginia's 120) in seven classes was the one with my highest GPA. Having that much work on the plate forces discipline, whether you like it or not.
Another neat case is that of venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. Let me quote from his online biography:
At Stanford University, he finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class, as the Henry Ford Scholar.
Stanford, which uses the quarter system and thus requires 180 credits to graduate, permits no more than 20 credits per quarter. 8 quarters (i.e., two years and two more quarters) X 20 credits = 160, still a quarter short. According to a 1999 New York Times Magazine article on the guy, Jurvetson figured out how to sign up for and take more classes than allowed. If I recall correctly, on each quarter's registration cards he penciled in fewer credit hours for each class than its true worth, so the registration computer--which presumably watched for students who penciled in too many credits--wouldn't notice. Isn't that awesome? (And, unfortunately, something that Stanford's Axess completely-automated system won't allow today.)
First, please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193371&cid=158 64227a prior Slashdot comment for my detailed writeup of what a totally state-of-the-art MythTV high-definition system is capable of. I've had this system up and running since early January 2006, and its power and features still so far exceed any available commercial application it's not funny.
The funny thing is that I heard so many stories about how MythTV is the ne plus ultra of difficult installations that I actually put off getting started for some time after assembling the necessary parts. Some common MythTV installation mistakes:
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because everyone knows MythTV installation makes grown men weep. SOLUTION: It might do so . . . For those who've never installed Linux before. Yes, having some experience with Linux, or the willingness to learn along the way with learning MythTV internals, is essential.
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because MythTV only runs on custom-built, homemade systems and I don't know how to build one. SOLUTION: I'm two thumbs when it comes to hardware; even my earlier 2.8TB RAID 5 array (which I'm not using for MythTV storage, but will at some point) was more a software project than a hardware one. For MythTV, as I mention in my message above, I simply bought a stock 3.0GHz Pentium 4 Sony Vaio system. It did have the advantages of a) being pretty darn quiet and b) being black with flip-down covers covering the drive bay (a family member who visited recently didn't even recognize the case as belonging to a PC until I pointed it out), but these were simply superficial bonuses. There's no need to have to handcraft a SFF system in a "media PC" case unless one really wants to.
MISTAKE: Trying to build a high-definition system on the cheap. SOLUTION: Anyone who does not feel confident about his technical skills and doesn't need high defintion ought to buy a TiVo. Seriously. Don't think that a MythTV system will somehow save you money, because it probably won't and probably won't look as nice sitting under the TV set. For those who moan and groan about the monthly TiVo fee, I'll bet they're also the ones who moan and groan about paying $15 a month for World of Warcraft despite it being a far, far, far better value per dollar than any movie, DVD, or other videogame purchase. Get out of living in mom's basement, loser!
That said, anyone who wants to build a high definition-capable system needs to look at MythTV hard because, as mentioned, it can do things no commercial system can do. However, high definition takes horsepower. Lots of horsepower. The mythtv-users list sees a constant influx of new people who think that they can get away with assembling a HD-capable system with the spare parts sitting in their closets. They fail, then go away whining about how "MythTV is hard."
Here's what one needs:
* 3.0GHz Pentium 4 or better. Don't try to use a less-powerful system and then rely on XvMC to fill the gap. * Nvidia FX 5200 or better. No, don't try ATI. No, don't try a MX400. * Lots of storage space. Each high-definition recording stream takes 5-8GB per hour. I can record three such at once. Do the math. * A standalone PC. The best way, by far, to install MythTV is to follow Jarod Wilson's justly-famous installation guide, which uses Fedora Core. Don't try to press in a system already being used for something else to the task (at least not as a frontend); it's not worth the hassle.
I have tried a few times in the past to set up LDAP and all the documentation is written by space-aliens as far as I can tell. I can't even penetrate the language used, let alone follow the steps prescribed.
Glad to see I'm not alone. I successfully set up Kerberos 5 for single signon on my little home network, complete with master/slave redundant KDCs. I then successfully set up NIS. The next step is to migrate to LDAP, right? Well, this totally mystified me.
As I posted just yesterday, I've had a Palm OS-based PDA of one kind or another since 1997 when I was still in college, and just bought a Treo 700p. Every one has been a huge help in keeping me organized.
As a student I didn't find synchronization with a desktop PIM essential. I entered all my contacts and schedules on the PDA and used pilot-link on my Linux box for app installs and backups. Since I graduated and entered the workforce that's completely changed, but you have at least four years before you'll likely have to worry about that. Assuming you were the same way in high school, this gives you a bit more flexibility than I have in terms of picking a PDA; my need for Outlook synchronization meant I couldn't consider a Nokia 770 or a Zaurus, no matter how badly I wanted real Linux on my pocket device. My post from yesterday talks about why Windows Mobile and Symbian were out for me. That leaves . . . just Palm OS.
You mention cost. Brand-new Palm PDAs are as inexpensive as $99 for a Z22. Or, do what I did and get the Treo 700p; Amazon.com offers it for new Sprint or Verizon customers for as low as $250 after rebate and a two-year contract. Not a bad price for a combination of state-of-the-art Palm PDA and EV-DO-capable handset!
I neglected to mention in the above post that, although the thinner, antenna stub-less form factor of the upcoming Treo the article mentions is appealing, the UMTS and Windows Mobile are not.
I just bought a Palm Treo 700p through Sprint. It is my fifth Palm OS-based device, and replaces both a Sony Ericsson T610 (T-Mobile) and a Sony Clie UX50.
I wanted: * Synchronization with Outlook at work. * A data service faster than the T610's GPRS. * A keyboard. * Small size. * If possible, keep using my large library of Palm OS applications.
Yes, there's no question that the Palm OS is aging fast; there's a reason why Palm OS 5.4.9 is nicknamed FrankenGarnet. However, in my mind, it's still the best choice:
* Windows Mobile (such as in the Treo 700w) - What's the point of preemptive multitasking if the user interface and phone aspects of the device are awful? The 700w's 240x240 resolution is inferior to the Treo's 320x320, anyway; text on the latter looks *great* when using a replacement TrueType-based font and FontSmoother. * Symbian OS - I know that Symbian, thanks to its EPOC ancestry, is one fantastic piece of work. However, even if (as another poster noted) one can use Python to develop for it, in practice the third-party development community is a fraction of that for the Palm OS. The one S60-based device that has the display resolution I'd want, the N90, is a $600 GSM-only camera-hybrid monster that still doesn't come with a keyboard. And what's with the multiple, mutually-incompatible OS iterations (S60 v2, S60v3, S90, etc., etc.)? I can still run Palm OS applications I started using on my first Pilot 1000 from March 1997.
By contrast, my Treo 700p gives me: * The same solid out-of-the-box synchronization with Outlook as with my previous PDAs. Having been able to keep around every calendar and contact entry I've made since that first Pilot 1000 is not only convenient but invaluable. * EV-DO. It's fast enough for emergency logging into work through Windows Terminal Server with my notebook, something that "slower than 28.8K dialup" GPRS certainly couldn't do. Sprint's EV-DO network is up and rolling in 200 US metro areas. * A tiny, but quite usable, keyboard. * A very pocketable form factor. I'm a guy, and have no desire to start carrying a Tribbianish man-bag to carry one of those Nokia monster phones. Although the T610 and UX50 were together not hard to carry in one pocket (it helps to be a six-footer), the 700p is easier still. * As mentioned above, access to the entire gigantic library of Palm OS applications. * An unexpected bonus: With Sprint's PCS Business Connection service, I have push access to my work mail, meaning that the 700p has *also* replaced my BlackBerry. It's not quite as elegant as a BlackBerry, but is still quite usable. Besides, it looks like within a few months I'll be able to use either GoodLink or BlackBerry connect to make the process even more seamless.
That said, I'll be dismayed if my next phone/PDA isn't some kind of Linux- or some other modern OS-based platform. I don't care whether it's Symbian, Palm 6 Cobalt, the Qtopia Greenphone I saw at LinuxWorld, something Nokia 770-based, something Sharp Zaurus-based, etc., etc., as long as it has the above features. (Of course, I said this before purchasing the UX50, and the PDA before that, too.)
Westinghouse Digital has almost single-handedly pulled retail prices for quality flat panels down to earth. Its first breakthrough, a little more than a year ago, was the LVM-37W1, a 37" 1080p model which by Christmastime was selling for $1,600. Just a couple of months ago, it released the LVM-47W1, a 47" 1080p model which Crutchfield sells for $2,499 with free shipping and no sales tax outside Virginia. (Who could have imagined a 47", 5"-thick panel that can handle 1920x1080 for under $5,000 a year or even six months ago?!?)
Very savvy consumers will hack together ["PC-TV hybrid"] setups themselves.
Yes, we are indeed building them ourselves. However, we are doing so primarily because we can't find what we want on sale anywhere for any price. The below is an adapted version of a recent Usenet post of mine describing what I have come to daily take for granted with my high-definition MythTV setup: ------------ . . . MythTV works, and works well, for those who are interested in a "HD TiVo" without any of TiVo's limitations. I must admit to chuckling whenever I see a question in alt.tv.tech.hdtv or elsewhere asking how to record from a HD video source with a computer in terms that make it clear the poster and the respondents view the task as something akin to cavemen discovering fire.
I work long, long hours and, when I get home, often don't have any more energy left to do more than want to just relax in front of the tube. When I do so, I want to have as much choice in what to watch as possible. Let me tell one and all of what I with 100% reliability do with my MythTV setup every day:
Push a button on the remote[1] to wake the 47" 1080p[2] LCD panel[3] from its DPMS slumber.
Pick from a gigantic library[4] of high-definition programs that MythTV constantly adds to[5] based on my choices.[6]
While playing the program, rewind, fast-forward, and jump to arbitrary points as desired. I can also adjust the playback speed anywhere from 0.5X to 2X without affecting audio pitch.[7]
I can push a button to instantly and accurately skip over commercials.[8] If I've gone too far, another button will skip me back to the previous spot.
If I exit a recording, the next time I watch it the playback will continue where I left off.[9]
If I ever need to restart MythTV, pushing a button on my remote twice within three seconds will cause it to do so.[10]
If I want, I can run MythTV on my MacBook and watch the exact same programs[11] with the exact same elegant and attractive user interface.[12]
All this time, MythTV is silently recording yet more for me to watch.[13]
If any of this intrigues you, I recommend visiting:
A well-regarded MythTV reference design for those who want to either buy it off the shelf from the vendor or build it themselves. I'm neither a customer nor an employee; all I did for my own setup was buy a Sony Pentium 4 system on sale at Fry's then add the video card, ATSC capture card, gigabit Ethernet card, remote, and NAS. However, in retrospect, there's something to be said for buying at once all the parts except the NAS in one convenient, already-integrated form.
[2] MythTV does an *excellent* job of deinterlacing 1080i recordings into 1080p for those displays that can handle it. Any Nvidia video card from the FX5200 to the present will work.
[3] Westinghouse LVM-47W1. Under $2500 from Crutchfield for 1080p LCD goodness.
[4] MythTV tells me that I have "242 programs, using 1.7 TB (427 hrs 33 mins) out of 1.8 TB (54 GB fr
Oh, great. So now, when Skynet launches its attack on the human race and needs raw materials to build additional attackbots, all its androids have to do is to raid the nearest hardware, grocery, or stationery store for some Scotch® Tape? Curse you, Inha and Texas A&M Universities! You have betrayed the human race!
In other news, Dr. Sven Bronson announced that two of the newly-discovered Planemos may be headed in our general direction. "Mankind may be facing its greatest danger yet," the renowned astronomer said. However, world governments have so far received his predictions with skepticism.
Bitrate and filesize of an analog capture are traits that YOU SET, not some inherent property the video has.
As I've made clear from the beginning, I don't have any analog capture cards. Neither FireWire cable boxes nor ATSC capture cards emit any analog signals to me from my perspective.
One of us is confused. x264 is the name of a GPLd h.264 implimentation, specifically for Linux, written by the VLC guys.
Sorry for the confusion; the last time I saw x264 discussed on mythtv-users it was said that the Linux GPL reimplementation wasn't up to snuff yet. I have recently used VLC to play back high-definition trailers from the Apple trailers site but haven't needed to pursue it any further.
Incidentally, HD playback may be much faster with OpenGL, rather than Xv. Try "mplayer -nortc -dr -vo gl", and perhaps try adding "-vf format=bgr24" to that command-line.
Will try this; in my experience -vo gl has been slower (or, at least, no faster) than -vo xv, but perhaps the additional switches will make a difference.
part of me wants to bow before you for your system.
And you should! (As well as bowing before my four-digit Slashdot ID, you 900K+ peon.)
Seriously, I really am curious to hear whether the commercial PVR software packages like Windows MCE, SageTV, or EyeTV can, like my MythTV box, simultaneously record two FireWire streams and one ATSC stream. (I could of course record more if desired simply by using additional cable boxes and capture cards.) Having never owned any of them, I don't have any firsthand experience. I *do* know that no TiVo can equal what my box can do.
the other part of me wants to mock you for telling all of slashdot that you recorded "mona lisa smile."
Not the greatest movie in the world but not that bad either. The wife of a longtime role model graduated from Wellesley in almost exactly the same year the film's students did and says that it got the details all wrong but the larger themes all right.
More to the point, in my experience too many Slashdot types suffer from an intellectual poverty that causes them to never try any films outside SF, fantasy, and superheroes or any books outside . . . well, SF, fantasy, and superheroes. Don't get me wrong. I've read pretty much every Heinlein novel and short story and every Asimov robot story and Foundation series. I can recite the real names of every pre-Five Year Gap Legionnaire and have a healthy pull list at the local comics shop. I've watched the 1978 Superman a dozen times or so and can't wait for Superman Returns.
But I've also read most of Austen (I'm one of those who prefer Emma to Pride and Prejudice), am slowly working through Trollope, and have read through the entire Sherlock Holmes canon several times. I've been watching the new Battlestar Galactica since the miniseries, but I also enjoyed watching the first four seasons of Gilmore Girls (for some reason get out of the habit during the past two), and have watched The OC from the first episode, before it became huge. My MythTV collection has Mona Lisa Smile, yes. It also has three Star Trek films *and* Ben-Hur *and* LA Confidential *and* Ghostbusters *and* Master and Commander *and* The Music Man. I see nothing contradictory in juxtapositioning these works and, again, I wish more Slashdot types felt this way.
Nice imitation of Comic Book Guy's death-in-Lucite speech. Otherwise, not sure what you mean here. My understanding is that, over FireWire, *all* the channels on the cable box--whether HD digital, regular digital, or analog--are sent in MPEG2 format. The fact remains that in my experience analog channels take up much more space per hour than non-HD digital channels, whose signals are of course much cleaner.
Using a better codec (eg. lavc, Xvid, x264) with a much larger keyint, varible bitrate (2-pass) encoding, etc., you can get that down to at least 1/4th the size, with really no quality loss at all.
You've inspired me to look further into MythTV's transcoding features. So far all I've done with it is to remove certain HD network TV shows' commercials (thanks to MythTV's pretty darn good commercial-detection feature) with MythTV's lossless MPEG2 encoding. (x264 isn't yet in the cards, alas, for Linux. The other codecs should be, though.)
That said, one reason I haven't bothered is because I rarely want to keep movies and TV shows after I've watched them and those I do want to keep I generally want to keep as pristine as possible, with no resolution loss. Not sure how denoising would help on my clean, no-analog-involved-anywhere MPEG2 HD recordings, anyway.
If you don't have a very fast CPU (~3GHz/3000+) h.264/x264 is out-of-the-question. However, MPEG-4 decoding is actually FASTER than MPEG-2 decoding with a decent codec.
*And if your system is about 2GHz/2000+ or so, hardware decoding (XVMC) will use up as much or more CPU-time than decoding in software, unless you've got an AGP2x bus/card, or DMA doesn't work on your motherboard/videocard.
My MythTV frontend/primary backend is indeed a 3GHz Pentium 4 and it indeed displays 1080p happily with Xv (not XvMC) and a Nvidia 6200. Bob deinterlacing is truly a sight to behold.
Which HDTV card do you use? I use the Technisat Air2PC-ATSC-PCI in Windows XP Pro. SP2. Nice cheap card for ATSC.
I have the Airstar HD5000, the Air2PC's successor. Not that having one versus the other matters in what we both use it for, ATSC. Linux supports both cards very well.
However, its software (DVB Viewer) is buggy and feature limited.
Get thee to MythTV immediately! Or, if you don't want to go to the trouble of installing a Linux box just for it, get yourself Sage TV or some commercial package. I can't say how well the Windows-based commercial packages work for FireWire, but it doesn't sound like that doesn't concern you, anyway.
Some keep saying that there's no point to ever-increasing drive storage numbers. I disagree. Huge drives will always be appreciated in media PCs, where good-quality video (even if compressed) takes up a good chunk of storage space.
As the owner of a MythTV box equipped with dual HD cable boxes (*and* fortunate enough to have a cable provider that doesn't 5C encode its HD premium movie channels) and a HD over-the-air capture card, all of which I can use simultaneously, I can testify to that.
Here's my experience with bandwidth use: * Digital non-HDTV channels generate the smallest files at about 900-1000MB/hour for a movie channel and up to 1200MB/hour for a cartoon (with probably a lower-quality feed). * Analog channels such as TCM generate about 2900MB/hour due to the extra noise. * HDTV premium movie channels generate about 4400MB-4700MB/hour. * A high-bandwidth HDTV channel (defined as HDNet or Discovery HD Theater and most network affiliates over cable or over-the-air) generates 7400-7700MB/hour . . . * Except for ABC and Fox, whose 720p programs record at about 5.8GB/hour.
On the MythTV box's dedicated NAS, I have (according to MythWeb) 176 programs, using 1.6 TB (324 hrs 32 mins) out of 1.8 TB (111 GB free). Almost all of the programs are high-definition movies. Examples:
* The Untouchables, 125 minutes, 16GB * St. Elmo's Fire, 120 minutes, 15GB * Shakespeare in Love, 125 minutes, 16GB * Ben-Hur, 215 minutes, 15GB * The Matrix Revolutions, 135 minutes, 11GB * A Passage to India, 165 minutes, 21GB * La Bamba, 110 minutes, 14GB * Mona Lisa Smile, 120 minutes, 6.1GB (Commercials transencoded out) * Spider-Man 2, 135 minutes, 12GB * Batman Begins, 150 minutes, 11GB * Seabiscuit, 180 minutes, 10GB (Commercials transencoded out) * Witness, 115 minutes, 11GB * The Passion of the Christ, 135 minutes, 9.8GB * The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 205 minutes, 19GB * Doctor Zhivago, 215 minutes, 14GB * Emma, 129 minutes, 12GB * Bye Bye Birdie, 124 minutes, 16GB * Giant, 204 minutes, 26GB * GoodFellas, 154 minutes, 12GB * Bullitt, 124 minutes, 16GB * Real Genius, 119 minutes, 11GB * Pulp Fiction, 164 minutes, 12GB
. . . etc., etc. Many of the larger-sized films were recorded off of HDnet Movies, which is an especial godsend for any movie lover. (I *can't wait* for the day TCM starts broadcasting in HD!) My all-time champion, now unfortunately lost in a box rebuild, was NBC's The Sound of Music annual broadcast. Four hours, including commercials, and 28GB!
The visuals are beautiful (I especially enjoyed the scenery of the land called Mulgore), and the soundtrack is filled with catchy tunes. But I couldn't understand half of the dialogue. What does 'kk' mean? And what about the mysterious words 'WTS [Warden Staff],' 'LFG UBRS need lock/mage/healer!!!!', and '60 flaged rouge @ XR', not to mention 'WTFPWNLOL'?
I've thricepreviouslyposted on Slashdot regarding my MythTV experiences. This comment should be read in context. (The main changes are that 0.19 has indeed fixed the OSD and the skipping-tuner issues. Everything else, both good and bad, I mentioned still hold true today. I *think* the newest KnoppMyth release actually now supports SATA drives, although I'll bet USB keyboards and mice are still considered suspect. I still disagree with the Pavlovian suggestion of MythTV--as we've once again seen in this thread--without appropriate caveats to anyone asking for an easy-to-use MythTV setup.)
Since the most-recent posting focused on the negative, I'll focus on the positive today. Thanks to MythTV and about $1100 in parts (not including $2150 for a 2TB NAS), I have a more-or-less reliable, elegant-looking (both hardware- and interfacewise) video recorder that:
* Simultaneously records from two cable boxes and one over-the-air tuner card, all in HDTV. * Gives me easy access to my recorded programs in alphabetic and record-date form, with multiple sort and grouping options (all the "How I Met Your Mother" episodes get grouped under that heading, for example), and due to a well-designed MySQL backend, no slowdowns no matter how big my library gets. (Any TiVo owner knows just how stupendously slow their boxes can get with a few hundred hours' worth of storage.) * Gives me easy access to my AVI library in nicely-organized form based on the directory tree. * Premarks programs recorded on non commercial-free channels with appropriate cues so that I can manually (or automatically) skip whole ad blocks with one button. (Tip: For North American viewers, "Logo Detection" alone is probably the best choice for commercial detection. It's faster and has fewer false positives than "All.")
My job requires long hours. I often fall asleep exhausted on the sofa soon after arriving home while trying to relax by watching the TV. But when I'm awake, it's nice to know that at any time I have about 200 programs or about 340 hours' worth of Hollywood movies, dramas, and comedies, almost all in HD, to enjoy. That's worth the money and setup time in my book.
Anyone use MythTV or the Mac Mini to store terabytes of video and audio, successfully?
Here's the last line from the 'Recorded Programs' page of MythWeb (the Web interface to my MythTV setup):
210 programs, using 1.7 TB (338 hrs 23 mins) out of 1.8 TB (30 GB free).
Since HDTV movies take up anywhere from 10-25GB and one-hour episodes take up 7.5-8GB, space goes fast. But no, no slowdowns whatsoever. That's because MythTV runs on a MySQL engine; its architects designed the system right from day one.
MRO is going to send back 34 trillion bytes of data, more than all the previous missions put together.
Great! Here's BitTorrent's chance to prove that it's designed to speed up downloads and not just to trade movies! Only problem is the lack of peers, as Spirit and Opportunity's ISP is running packet filtering. (Clearly, this story should have been filed under the heading "Your Rights Online.")
Slashdot Mirror
I've subscribed to Linux Journal for almost 13 years, and long ago bought up all the back issues I could so I have a near-complete collection. For years it's been the only worthwhile print computer magazine around.
Another neat case is that of venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. Let me quote from his online biography:
Stanford, which uses the quarter system and thus requires 180 credits to graduate, permits no more than 20 credits per quarter. 8 quarters (i.e., two years and two more quarters) X 20 credits = 160, still a quarter short. According to a 1999 New York Times Magazine article on the guy, Jurvetson figured out how to sign up for and take more classes than allowed. If I recall correctly, on each quarter's registration cards he penciled in fewer credit hours for each class than its true worth, so the registration computer--which presumably watched for students who penciled in too many credits--wouldn't notice. Isn't that awesome? (And, unfortunately, something that Stanford's Axess completely-automated system won't allow today.)
First, please see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193371&cid=158 64227a prior Slashdot comment for my detailed writeup of what a totally state-of-the-art MythTV high-definition system is capable of. I've had this system up and running since early January 2006, and its power and features still so far exceed any available commercial application it's not funny.
The funny thing is that I heard so many stories about how MythTV is the ne plus ultra of difficult installations that I actually put off getting started for some time after assembling the necessary parts. Some common MythTV installation mistakes:
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because everyone knows MythTV installation makes grown men weep.
SOLUTION: It might do so . . . For those who've never installed Linux before. Yes, having some experience with Linux, or the willingness to learn along the way with learning MythTV internals, is essential.
MISTAKE: Not trying to build one because MythTV only runs on custom-built, homemade systems and I don't know how to build one.
SOLUTION: I'm two thumbs when it comes to hardware; even my earlier 2.8TB RAID 5 array (which I'm not using for MythTV storage, but will at some point) was more a software project than a hardware one. For MythTV, as I mention in my message above, I simply bought a stock 3.0GHz Pentium 4 Sony Vaio system. It did have the advantages of a) being pretty darn quiet and b) being black with flip-down covers covering the drive bay (a family member who visited recently didn't even recognize the case as belonging to a PC until I pointed it out), but these were simply superficial bonuses. There's no need to have to handcraft a SFF system in a "media PC" case unless one really wants to.
MISTAKE: Trying to build a high-definition system on the cheap.
SOLUTION: Anyone who does not feel confident about his technical skills and doesn't need high defintion ought to buy a TiVo. Seriously. Don't think that a MythTV system will somehow save you money, because it probably won't and probably won't look as nice sitting under the TV set. For those who moan and groan about the monthly TiVo fee, I'll bet they're also the ones who moan and groan about paying $15 a month for World of Warcraft despite it being a far, far, far better value per dollar than any movie, DVD, or other videogame purchase. Get out of living in mom's basement, loser!
That said, anyone who wants to build a high definition-capable system needs to look at MythTV hard because, as mentioned, it can do things no commercial system can do. However, high definition takes horsepower. Lots of horsepower. The mythtv-users list sees a constant influx of new people who think that they can get away with assembling a HD-capable system with the spare parts sitting in their closets. They fail, then go away whining about how "MythTV is hard."
Here's what one needs:
* 3.0GHz Pentium 4 or better. Don't try to use a less-powerful system and then rely on XvMC to fill the gap.
* Nvidia FX 5200 or better. No, don't try ATI. No, don't try a MX400.
* Lots of storage space. Each high-definition recording stream takes 5-8GB per hour. I can record three such at once. Do the math.
* A standalone PC. The best way, by far, to install MythTV is to follow Jarod Wilson's justly-famous installation guide, which uses Fedora Core. Don't try to press in a system already being used for something else to the task (at least not as a frontend); it's not worth the hassle.
BOTTOM LINE: Anyone with some prior Linux i
Glad to see I'm not alone. I successfully set up Kerberos 5 for single signon on my little home network, complete with master/slave redundant KDCs. I then successfully set up NIS. The next step is to migrate to LDAP, right? Well, this totally mystified me.
As I posted just yesterday, I've had a Palm OS-based PDA of one kind or another since 1997 when I was still in college, and just bought a Treo 700p. Every one has been a huge help in keeping me organized.
As a student I didn't find synchronization with a desktop PIM essential. I entered all my contacts and schedules on the PDA and used pilot-link on my Linux box for app installs and backups. Since I graduated and entered the workforce that's completely changed, but you have at least four years before you'll likely have to worry about that. Assuming you were the same way in high school, this gives you a bit more flexibility than I have in terms of picking a PDA; my need for Outlook synchronization meant I couldn't consider a Nokia 770 or a Zaurus, no matter how badly I wanted real Linux on my pocket device. My post from yesterday talks about why Windows Mobile and Symbian were out for me. That leaves . . . just Palm OS.
You mention cost. Brand-new Palm PDAs are as inexpensive as $99 for a Z22. Or, do what I did and get the Treo 700p; Amazon.com offers it for new Sprint or Verizon customers for as low as $250 after rebate and a two-year contract. Not a bad price for a combination of state-of-the-art Palm PDA and EV-DO-capable handset!
. . . as if millions of Goa'uld-infested Stargate fanatics suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I neglected to mention in the above post that, although the thinner, antenna stub-less form factor of the upcoming Treo the article mentions is appealing, the UMTS and Windows Mobile are not.
I just bought a Palm Treo 700p through Sprint. It is my fifth Palm OS-based device, and replaces both a Sony Ericsson T610 (T-Mobile) and a Sony Clie UX50.
I wanted:
* Synchronization with Outlook at work.
* A data service faster than the T610's GPRS.
* A keyboard.
* Small size.
* If possible, keep using my large library of Palm OS applications.
Yes, there's no question that the Palm OS is aging fast; there's a reason why Palm OS 5.4.9 is nicknamed FrankenGarnet. However, in my mind, it's still the best choice:
* Windows Mobile (such as in the Treo 700w) - What's the point of preemptive multitasking if the user interface and phone aspects of the device are awful? The 700w's 240x240 resolution is inferior to the Treo's 320x320, anyway; text on the latter looks *great* when using a replacement TrueType-based font and FontSmoother.
* Symbian OS - I know that Symbian, thanks to its EPOC ancestry, is one fantastic piece of work. However, even if (as another poster noted) one can use Python to develop for it, in practice the third-party development community is a fraction of that for the Palm OS. The one S60-based device that has the display resolution I'd want, the N90, is a $600 GSM-only camera-hybrid monster that still doesn't come with a keyboard. And what's with the multiple, mutually-incompatible OS iterations (S60 v2, S60v3, S90, etc., etc.)? I can still run Palm OS applications I started using on my first Pilot 1000 from March 1997.
By contrast, my Treo 700p gives me:
* The same solid out-of-the-box synchronization with Outlook as with my previous PDAs. Having been able to keep around every calendar and contact entry I've made since that first Pilot 1000 is not only convenient but invaluable.
* EV-DO. It's fast enough for emergency logging into work through Windows Terminal Server with my notebook, something that "slower than 28.8K dialup" GPRS certainly couldn't do. Sprint's EV-DO network is up and rolling in 200 US metro areas.
* A tiny, but quite usable, keyboard.
* A very pocketable form factor. I'm a guy, and have no desire to start carrying a Tribbianish man-bag to carry one of those Nokia monster phones. Although the T610 and UX50 were together not hard to carry in one pocket (it helps to be a six-footer), the 700p is easier still.
* As mentioned above, access to the entire gigantic library of Palm OS applications.
* An unexpected bonus: With Sprint's PCS Business Connection service, I have push access to my work mail, meaning that the 700p has *also* replaced my BlackBerry. It's not quite as elegant as a BlackBerry, but is still quite usable. Besides, it looks like within a few months I'll be able to use either GoodLink or BlackBerry connect to make the process even more seamless.
That said, I'll be dismayed if my next phone/PDA isn't some kind of Linux- or some other modern OS-based platform. I don't care whether it's Symbian, Palm 6 Cobalt, the Qtopia Greenphone I saw at LinuxWorld, something Nokia 770-based, something Sharp Zaurus-based, etc., etc., as long as it has the above features. (Of course, I said this before purchasing the UX50, and the PDA before that, too.)
Westinghouse Digital has almost single-handedly pulled retail prices for quality flat panels down to earth. Its first breakthrough, a little more than a year ago, was the LVM-37W1, a 37" 1080p model which by Christmastime was selling for $1,600. Just a couple of months ago, it released the LVM-47W1, a 47" 1080p model which Crutchfield sells for $2,499 with free shipping and no sales tax outside Virginia. (Who could have imagined a 47", 5"-thick panel that can handle 1920x1080 for under $5,000 a year or even six months ago?!?)
Attaching the panel to a MythTV system and using Bob deinterlacing to double the framerate results in true 1080p video output from ordinary 1080i content that's *better* than anything else out there.
Yes, we are indeed building them ourselves. However, we are doing so primarily because we can't find what we want on sale anywhere for any price. The below is an adapted version of a recent Usenet post of mine describing what I have come to daily take for granted with my high-definition MythTV setup:
------------
. . . MythTV works, and works well, for those who are interested in a "HD TiVo" without any of TiVo's limitations. I must admit to chuckling whenever I see a question in alt.tv.tech.hdtv or elsewhere asking how to record from a HD video source with a computer in terms that make it clear the poster and the respondents view the task as something akin to cavemen discovering fire.
I work long, long hours and, when I get home, often don't have any more energy left to do more than want to just relax in front of the tube. When I do so, I want to have as much choice in what to watch as possible. Let me tell one and all of what I with 100% reliability do with my MythTV setup every day:
If any of this intrigues you, I recommend visiting:
[1] Home Theater Master MX-500 universal remote. I programmed it using a $30 infrared keyboard/mouse combo.
[2] MythTV does an *excellent* job of deinterlacing 1080i recordings into 1080p for those displays that can handle it. Any Nvidia video card from the FX5200 to the present will work.
[3] Westinghouse LVM-47W1. Under $2500 from Crutchfield for 1080p LCD goodness.
[4] MythTV tells me that I have "242 programs, using 1.7 TB (427 hrs 33 mins) out of 1.8 TB (54 GB fr
However, according to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, prices rose by 43% between 1991 and 2005, and 49% between 1991 and 2006.
Like, you've been pwn3d.
Oh, great. So now, when Skynet launches its attack on the human race and needs raw materials to build additional attackbots, all its androids have to do is to raid the nearest hardware, grocery, or stationery store for some Scotch® Tape? Curse you, Inha and Texas A&M Universities! You have betrayed the human race!
In other news, Dr. Sven Bronson announced that two of the newly-discovered Planemos may be headed in our general direction. "Mankind may be facing its greatest danger yet," the renowned astronomer said. However, world governments have so far received his predictions with skepticism.
Here's some more places you can get Fedora with security updates conveniently added on:
* Click here
* or here
* or here
* and finally, here (Plenty of servers, so best performance!).
HTH!
As I've made clear from the beginning, I don't have any analog capture cards. Neither FireWire cable boxes nor ATSC capture cards emit any analog signals to me from my perspective.
Sorry for the confusion; the last time I saw x264 discussed on mythtv-users it was said that the Linux GPL reimplementation wasn't up to snuff yet. I have recently used VLC to play back high-definition trailers from the Apple trailers site but haven't needed to pursue it any further.
Will try this; in my experience -vo gl has been slower (or, at least, no faster) than -vo xv, but perhaps the additional switches will make a difference.
And you should! (As well as bowing before my four-digit Slashdot ID, you 900K+ peon.)
Seriously, I really am curious to hear whether the commercial PVR software packages like Windows MCE, SageTV, or EyeTV can, like my MythTV box, simultaneously record two FireWire streams and one ATSC stream. (I could of course record more if desired simply by using additional cable boxes and capture cards.) Having never owned any of them, I don't have any firsthand experience. I *do* know that no TiVo can equal what my box can do.
Not the greatest movie in the world but not that bad either. The wife of a longtime role model graduated from Wellesley in almost exactly the same year the film's students did and says that it got the details all wrong but the larger themes all right.
More to the point, in my experience too many Slashdot types suffer from an intellectual poverty that causes them to never try any films outside SF, fantasy, and superheroes or any books outside . . . well, SF, fantasy, and superheroes. Don't get me wrong. I've read pretty much every Heinlein novel and short story and every Asimov robot story and Foundation series. I can recite the real names of every pre-Five Year Gap Legionnaire and have a healthy pull list at the local comics shop. I've watched the 1978 Superman a dozen times or so and can't wait for Superman Returns.
But I've also read most of Austen (I'm one of those who prefer Emma to Pride and Prejudice), am slowly working through Trollope, and have read through the entire Sherlock Holmes canon several times. I've been watching the new Battlestar Galactica since the miniseries, but I also enjoyed watching the first four seasons of Gilmore Girls (for some reason get out of the habit during the past two), and have watched The OC from the first episode, before it became huge. My MythTV collection has Mona Lisa Smile, yes. It also has three Star Trek films *and* Ben-Hur *and* LA Confidential *and* Ghostbusters *and* Master and Commander *and* The Music Man. I see nothing contradictory in juxtapositioning these works and, again, I wish more Slashdot types felt this way.
Nice imitation of Comic Book Guy's death-in-Lucite speech. Otherwise, not sure what you mean here. My understanding is that, over FireWire, *all* the channels on the cable box--whether HD digital, regular digital, or analog--are sent in MPEG2 format. The fact remains that in my experience analog channels take up much more space per hour than non-HD digital channels, whose signals are of course much cleaner.
You've inspired me to look further into MythTV's transcoding features. So far all I've done with it is to remove certain HD network TV shows' commercials (thanks to MythTV's pretty darn good commercial-detection feature) with MythTV's lossless MPEG2 encoding. (x264 isn't yet in the cards, alas, for Linux. The other codecs should be, though.)
That said, one reason I haven't bothered is because I rarely want to keep movies and TV shows after I've watched them and those I do want to keep I generally want to keep as pristine as possible, with no resolution loss. Not sure how denoising would help on my clean, no-analog-involved-anywhere MPEG2 HD recordings, anyway.
My MythTV frontend/primary backend is indeed a 3GHz Pentium 4 and it indeed displays 1080p happily with Xv (not XvMC) and a Nvidia 6200. Bob deinterlacing is truly a sight to behold.
I have the Airstar HD5000, the Air2PC's successor. Not that having one versus the other matters in what we both use it for, ATSC. Linux supports both cards very well.
Get thee to MythTV immediately! Or, if you don't want to go to the trouble of installing a Linux box just for it, get yourself Sage TV or some commercial package. I can't say how well the Windows-based commercial packages work for FireWire, but it doesn't sound like that doesn't concern you, anyway.
As the owner of a MythTV box equipped with dual HD cable boxes (*and* fortunate enough to have a cable provider that doesn't 5C encode its HD premium movie channels) and a HD over-the-air capture card, all of which I can use simultaneously, I can testify to that.
Here's my experience with bandwidth use:
* Digital non-HDTV channels generate the smallest files at about 900-1000MB/hour for a movie channel and up to 1200MB/hour for a cartoon (with probably a lower-quality feed).
* Analog channels such as TCM generate about 2900MB/hour due to the extra noise.
* HDTV premium movie channels generate about 4400MB-4700MB/hour.
* A high-bandwidth HDTV channel (defined as HDNet or Discovery HD Theater and most network affiliates over cable or over-the-air) generates 7400-7700MB/hour . . .
* Except for ABC and Fox, whose 720p programs record at about 5.8GB/hour.
On the MythTV box's dedicated NAS, I have (according to MythWeb) 176 programs, using 1.6 TB (324 hrs 32 mins) out of 1.8 TB (111 GB free). Almost all of the programs are high-definition movies. Examples:
* The Untouchables, 125 minutes, 16GB
* St. Elmo's Fire, 120 minutes, 15GB
* Shakespeare in Love, 125 minutes, 16GB
* Ben-Hur, 215 minutes, 15GB
* The Matrix Revolutions, 135 minutes, 11GB
* A Passage to India, 165 minutes, 21GB
* La Bamba, 110 minutes, 14GB
* Mona Lisa Smile, 120 minutes, 6.1GB (Commercials transencoded out)
* Spider-Man 2, 135 minutes, 12GB
* Batman Begins, 150 minutes, 11GB
* Seabiscuit, 180 minutes, 10GB (Commercials transencoded out)
* Witness, 115 minutes, 11GB
* The Passion of the Christ, 135 minutes, 9.8GB
* The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 205 minutes, 19GB
* Doctor Zhivago, 215 minutes, 14GB
* Emma, 129 minutes, 12GB
* Bye Bye Birdie, 124 minutes, 16GB
* Giant, 204 minutes, 26GB
* GoodFellas, 154 minutes, 12GB
* Bullitt, 124 minutes, 16GB
* Real Genius, 119 minutes, 11GB
* Pulp Fiction, 164 minutes, 12GB
. . . etc., etc. Many of the larger-sized films were recorded off of HDnet Movies, which is an especial godsend for any movie lover. (I *can't wait* for the day TCM starts broadcasting in HD!) My all-time champion, now unfortunately lost in a box rebuild, was NBC's The Sound of Music annual broadcast. Four hours, including commercials, and 28GB!
If u cn rd th1s, u r c0mput3r l33t3r8 n r a tru haxx0r!!!11!!!!!
I can see the movie reviews now:
The visuals are beautiful (I especially enjoyed the scenery of the land called Mulgore), and the soundtrack is filled with catchy tunes. But I couldn't understand half of the dialogue. What does 'kk' mean? And what about the mysterious words 'WTS [Warden Staff],' 'LFG UBRS need lock/mage/healer!!!!', and '60 flaged rouge @ XR', not to mention 'WTFPWNLOL'?
Hey, at least it isn't a simple World of Warcraft clone. On the contrary, this will be the first game in the nascent "MMO-Arrgh!-PG" genre.
I've thrice previously posted on Slashdot regarding my MythTV experiences. This comment should be read in context. (The main changes are that 0.19 has indeed fixed the OSD and the skipping-tuner issues. Everything else, both good and bad, I mentioned still hold true today. I *think* the newest KnoppMyth release actually now supports SATA drives, although I'll bet USB keyboards and mice are still considered suspect. I still disagree with the Pavlovian suggestion of MythTV--as we've once again seen in this thread--without appropriate caveats to anyone asking for an easy-to-use MythTV setup.)
Since the most-recent posting focused on the negative, I'll focus on the positive today. Thanks to MythTV and about $1100 in parts (not including $2150 for a 2TB NAS), I have a more-or-less reliable, elegant-looking (both hardware- and interfacewise) video recorder that:
* Simultaneously records from two cable boxes and one over-the-air tuner card, all in HDTV.
* Gives me easy access to my recorded programs in alphabetic and record-date form, with multiple sort and grouping options (all the "How I Met Your Mother" episodes get grouped under that heading, for example), and due to a well-designed MySQL backend, no slowdowns no matter how big my library gets. (Any TiVo owner knows just how stupendously slow their boxes can get with a few hundred hours' worth of storage.)
* Gives me easy access to my AVI library in nicely-organized form based on the directory tree.
* Premarks programs recorded on non commercial-free channels with appropriate cues so that I can manually (or automatically) skip whole ad blocks with one button. (Tip: For North American viewers, "Logo Detection" alone is probably the best choice for commercial detection. It's faster and has fewer false positives than "All.")
My job requires long hours. I often fall asleep exhausted on the sofa soon after arriving home while trying to relax by watching the TV. But when I'm awake, it's nice to know that at any time I have about 200 programs or about 340 hours' worth of Hollywood movies, dramas, and comedies, almost all in HD, to enjoy. That's worth the money and setup time in my book.
Here's the last line from the 'Recorded Programs' page of MythWeb (the Web interface to my MythTV setup):
Since HDTV movies take up anywhere from 10-25GB and one-hour episodes take up 7.5-8GB, space goes fast. But no, no slowdowns whatsoever. That's because MythTV runs on a MySQL engine; its architects designed the system right from day one.
Great! Here's BitTorrent's chance to prove that it's designed to speed up downloads and not just to trade movies! Only problem is the lack of peers, as Spirit and Opportunity's ISP is running packet filtering. (Clearly, this story should have been filed under the heading "Your Rights Online.")