Re: MythTV
On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 20:12 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Monday June 27 2005 1:00 pm, disciple@exis.net wrote:
> > This MythTV sounds really cool. I've been reading about it for a
> > few weeks now, and would like to try it. I have a couple of
> > questions for those that have it running.
> >
> > 1. What card would you suggest that I use?
> >
> > 2. To install, do I just do apt-get install mythtv?
> >
> > What are the steps to installation? I'll be starting with a clean
> > machine.
> >
> > Compaq Deskpro PIII 866 MHz with a 120GB hard drive.
>
> Bzzt! Rule of thumb is 1GHz per stream you'll be handling. So if you
> want to record *or* play, 1GHz. If you want to record while playing
> another show, look at 2GHz. You can squeek it by with less (like,
> say, an Apple Macintosh LCIII) if you throw in MPEG hardware to do
> all the encoding and decoding (like the TiVo Series 1, which is
> remarkably similar to a Mac LCIII with a PCI slot turned inside out).
>
> Google is your best friend when it comes to DIY PVRs. Please post a
> followup of what you did to build one if you find a relatively
> Debianized way to do it if you find one, I'm sure someone else will
> be looking for it in the future.
Been running a MythTV box for a couple of years now, can't live without
it to be honest. I compile from source though, and it's much easier now
that they have bundled all the modules into one build project.
As for hardware, if you live somewhere that has HDTV and you want to use
that, then you'll need a 2.8Ghz machine at least. My box has a Hauppage
PVR250 which has a hardware encoder so no CPU used when recording, it's
a great card and very popular with MythTV folk. I also have a Hauppage
Nova-T DVB card. You need to patch your kernel to get it working (it's
the newer 909 model), but it's worth it. The quality is great and I get
the extra Freeview channels (I'm in the UK). I'd also recommend getting
more than one tuner card so you can do PiP/record 2 things at once etc.
I recommend reading the docs from start to end before you begin
anything:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-singlehtml.html
Andrew
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