[Luna] MythTV for next meeting?

[Kyle Winfree]

Hey Andrew,
        I might have a 666Mhz Celeron to try this out on.  I have a 
Hauppauge something or other video card that I have used with windows a 
few years ago.  It has a coax input and an rca output from what I 
remember.  I was able to capture in windows, but I don't remember if the 
processing was done on the cpu or hw (was also on a faster machine at that 
time).  My wife would really like something like the tivo, but of course 
we don't want to actually get  a tivo.  You and I talked about the ir 
mouse receivers I have (I haven't checked on those yet though); if we 
could get it to work with my current multifunction remote and this basic 
hardware, my wife would love to have a MythTV.  Better yet if if could 
record to disk, and share that on the network so that I can grab and edit 
from the office (ie: record camcorder stuff, or video shows, and then dump 
them to DVD from another comp).  I'll ask my wife about it tonight, as the 
computer I have in mind is the one she is using in her classroom (but 
since its summer...).
        I can also just bring in a vcr with some taped random show if you 
want to show off the MythTV of yours next time.
Thanks,
Kyle




Andrew Roazen <Andrew.Roazen at nau.edu> 
Sent by: luna-bounces at lists.flaglug.org
05/24/2006 12:30 PM
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Linux Users of Flagstaff/Northern Arizona <luna at lists.flaglug.org>


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Subject
[Luna] MythTV for next meeting?






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. 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
, 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

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