[Luna] MythTV for next meeting?

[Andrew Roazen]

Over the last 3 days I successfully installed MythTV 0.19 (the current 
release) onto an Ubuntu box with the necessary HW prerequisites. If you 
aren't familiar with it, MythTV is Tivo on steroids 
<http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures>. It pauses/rewinds 
live television, records shows from a detailed program guide it builds 
from XML listings, plays DVDs/CDs/movie files as well as your recorded 
shows, manages image/movie/music libraries, displays RSS feeds and your 
local weather, manages your Netflix queue, frontends a Skype-like VoIP 
phone application, and frontends Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator. It 
serves a web-based interface to other boxes in your network for remotely 
controlling programming and can serve recordings to those clients if 
they have the client application.

Because I inherited the machine nearly to spec (450MHz PIII, 512Mb RAM, 
200Gb SATA HD, DVD burner), the hardware cost to me so far has been $100 
for the Hauppauge PVR-150 TV tuner card/IR remote and $45 for the VGA to 
TV adapter cable. There are cheaper tuner cards out there, but they 
typically don't contain MPEG-2 encoder chips, don't bring IR 
receivers/remotes, and the Hauppauge series have excellent driver 
support (in part because installation includes reflashing their 
firmware). If there were no budget on this project, the CPU were faster 
and CompUSA had them in stock, I would have picked the PVR-500 which 
sandwiches two PVR-150s on one board (allowing you to watch one channel 
while recording another). Instead, I'll be using a coax A/B switch to 
choose between the Myth's output (playback) and the regular cable 
(recording).

It's a fair implementation of the LAMP stack: it puts a single frontend 
to both external and internal apps, demonstrates client/server 
applications, and puts a practical face on Linux in the household beyond 
generic file/web/print servers. If someone has a spare PC with the 
necessary specs <http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html>, a 
compatible TV tuner card, and Shoemaker has a live cable connection, I'd 
be happy to demonstrate an install at a future meeting. Bear in mind 
that this PC's drive will be reformatted/repartitioned and the tuner 
card's firmware may be reflashed; if you're serious about this contact 
me before shopping for tuner cards. (For one thing, there's the PVR-150 
MCE, which is optimized for XP Media Center Edition and has no remote; 
avoid it.)
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Andrew Roazen, Application Systems Analyst
| Cline Library, Northern Arizona University
| ? 928.523.6764 vCard <http://www2.nau.edu/%7Ear24/aroazen.vcf>

The opinions expressed are those of the guy who sits at this desk, not 
his employers.
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