Suggestion: Build a PC with an HD-3000 card and MythTV, use the "Video Out" from the cable box as the "Video In" to the HD-3000 card.
Controlling, I have two possibilities. The easiest is to program the cable box to go to the channel you want at the time you want to view (actually record) the program, and program MythTV to record the "Video In" signal at that time. Two steps, but much easier than the remaining possibility, which is to:
Have the MythTV PC run an infared transmitter that sends commands to the Digital Cable box. That isn't so hard, but the PC might need to know what's on the cable box's screen, and software to extract the on-screen text from the box's displayed menu and make sense of it would be a challenge to a funded team of programmers. I think that some work on this has been done (the commanding via a transmitter part, not the interpreting the cable box's on-screen display part).
The anode cap is on top in every TV that I can recall working on, but if it was on the side in a couple I just might not remember it.
Outside of the world of TV's, such as CRT-based calculators, radars, medical equipment, etc. there's a lot of variety in where the anode cap shows up. If the accelleration voltage is low enough (older 5" or smaller CRT's), it's just another pin on the base of the tube (but that's really rare).
If you're using a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus, which nearly everything does, the top speed is going to be 400Mbit. OTOH, that's going to be the top speed of your drive controller too.
I got a dual-P3 Tyan board from Ebay and intend to run a 66MHz RAID controller in one 64-bit slot and a 64-bit SysKonnect Gigabit Copper Ether card in another. My hub is an Asante GX5-800 (I beleive the internal switching is 7GBit, the "800P", recommended earlier, doesn't have a published internal speed).
I was hoping that "Extreme PCI" and the BTX form factor was going to make it easier and the parts more mainstream, but that's been slow in coming and I got impatient.
I computed that 640x480 pixel, 24-bit images in a 60-frame-per-second slideshow, uncompressed, required 600MBit's of throughput and need about 400GB of storage to hold two hours. I do intend to use compression, and I've found that my animation tools fall apart at 60frames per second, but that was my goal for the network and server. It wasn't possible when I wrote the spec, but now it's nearly cheap!
Happy Networking,
-Mark
THIS TAGLINE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
The worst I saw was from a second-tier aerospace company that expected you to basically have a PhD in databases, on in Computer Science, and a third in the new acronyms that've popped up in the last two years (e.g. 14 years experience in Mod_Perl). After two pages of acronyms and the ability to design and fabricate CPU's in your home as well as write MacOs X in Assembler without taking notes, the position requires up to 75% travel. You should be able to pick your own jobs and own a mansion at that level; but the position won't let you see your mansion for 9 months out of the year! Finally the sentance that nobody on Earth could live up to: "Only those applicants having ALL of the listed qualifications will be considered". I almost emailed the company and asked to meet the successful applicant.
-Trogdor the Burninator for President
I worked at a small IT company a few years ago. Burglers broke in one night and took PC's, install disks, UPS's, monitors, you name it. We had one cartridge tape with UnixWare on it the night before the hit. After the burglers had hit, we had two cartridge tapes with UnixWare on them.
I'm seeing people try to replicate Exchange's protocols so that a replacement server app can use Outlook.
Wouldn't it be wiser to use a web interface; the mail part's already been done for Qmail and Sendmail, to my knowledge. That's most of what Exchange/Outlook users want. the shared folders, calander and address book features are all that remains, and probably some of that's been done.
The Web interface lets macs, Linux/Unix and Amiga's be clients, and you don't have to care who has Outlook, MS-Office or even Windoze at that point.
Seems obvious to me, but I don't see it suggested. Maybe there's a reason why it shouldn't be done that everyone else understands but me.
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Suggestion: Build a PC with an HD-3000 card and MythTV, use the "Video Out" from the cable box as the "Video In" to the HD-3000 card. Controlling, I have two possibilities. The easiest is to program the cable box to go to the channel you want at the time you want to view (actually record) the program, and program MythTV to record the "Video In" signal at that time. Two steps, but much easier than the remaining possibility, which is to: Have the MythTV PC run an infared transmitter that sends commands to the Digital Cable box. That isn't so hard, but the PC might need to know what's on the cable box's screen, and software to extract the on-screen text from the box's displayed menu and make sense of it would be a challenge to a funded team of programmers. I think that some work on this has been done (the commanding via a transmitter part, not the interpreting the cable box's on-screen display part).
The anode cap is on top in every TV that I can recall working on, but if it was on the side in a couple I just might not remember it.
Outside of the world of TV's, such as CRT-based calculators, radars, medical equipment, etc. there's a lot of variety in where the anode cap shows up. If the accelleration voltage is low enough (older 5" or smaller CRT's), it's just another pin on the base of the tube (but that's really rare).
If you're using a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus, which nearly everything does, the top speed is going to be 400Mbit. OTOH, that's going to be the top speed of your drive controller too. I got a dual-P3 Tyan board from Ebay and intend to run a 66MHz RAID controller in one 64-bit slot and a 64-bit SysKonnect Gigabit Copper Ether card in another. My hub is an Asante GX5-800 (I beleive the internal switching is 7GBit, the "800P", recommended earlier, doesn't have a published internal speed). I was hoping that "Extreme PCI" and the BTX form factor was going to make it easier and the parts more mainstream, but that's been slow in coming and I got impatient. I computed that 640x480 pixel, 24-bit images in a 60-frame-per-second slideshow, uncompressed, required 600MBit's of throughput and need about 400GB of storage to hold two hours. I do intend to use compression, and I've found that my animation tools fall apart at 60frames per second, but that was my goal for the network and server. It wasn't possible when I wrote the spec, but now it's nearly cheap! Happy Networking, -Mark THIS TAGLINE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
The worst I saw was from a second-tier aerospace company that expected you to basically have a PhD in databases, on in Computer Science, and a third in the new acronyms that've popped up in the last two years (e.g. 14 years experience in Mod_Perl). After two pages of acronyms and the ability to design and fabricate CPU's in your home as well as write MacOs X in Assembler without taking notes, the position requires up to 75% travel. You should be able to pick your own jobs and own a mansion at that level; but the position won't let you see your mansion for 9 months out of the year! Finally the sentance that nobody on Earth could live up to: "Only those applicants having ALL of the listed qualifications will be considered". I almost emailed the company and asked to meet the successful applicant. -Trogdor the Burninator for President
I worked at a small IT company a few years ago. Burglers broke in one night and took PC's, install disks, UPS's, monitors, you name it. We had one cartridge tape with UnixWare on it the night before the hit. After the burglers had hit, we had two cartridge tapes with UnixWare on them.
I'm seeing people try to replicate Exchange's protocols so that a replacement server app can use Outlook. Wouldn't it be wiser to use a web interface; the mail part's already been done for Qmail and Sendmail, to my knowledge. That's most of what Exchange/Outlook users want. the shared folders, calander and address book features are all that remains, and probably some of that's been done. The Web interface lets macs, Linux/Unix and Amiga's be clients, and you don't have to care who has Outlook, MS-Office or even Windoze at that point. Seems obvious to me, but I don't see it suggested. Maybe there's a reason why it shouldn't be done that everyone else understands but me.