I only skimmed the Windows sections, as I have no plans to be touching Windows here. The cases shown are rather interesting and might be right up my alley.
It is an interesting introduction, but I would really like to talk about MythTV/Linux-optimal specifics.
-Galen
On Apr 10, 2005, at 9:51 PM, Jonathan Henry wrote:
You might find this link helpful in deciding what hardware and casing to use. It also discusses software and has a few sections on mythtv, but overall a great article about today's options with HTPC's
http://www.2cpu.com/articles/113_1.html
-Jonathan
Galen wrote:
Well, let me first state that I am an extremely curious person, but a complete newbie when it comes to MythTV. I'm looking to build myself a MythTV box, and I'm hoping to gather input and assistance from this list. In particular, I want to hop in before July 2005 and the dreaded U.S. broadcast flag! Please feel free to respond to just portions of this email, as I know various people have different areas of expertise and limited amounts of time.
I have been most heavily involved in Mac OS X, PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc professional over the past few years, and I'm not afraid of compiling software myself. But I don't derive any particular pleasure from it, either! I have had a growing interest in HDTV, and have recompiled VLC to allow me to view raw MPEG2 transport stream via OpenGL acceleration on my 1.33 GHz OS X PowerBook G4. (OS X's built-in YUV->RBG performance SUCKS!!!) I have a good understanding of *nix basics - permissions, compiling, file systems, etc. I'm not stupid in this department by any means and I'm extremely willing to learn what is needed. But, I have not been administrating or setting up Linux systems anytime recently, so much of the very specific hardware/driver stuff is foreign.
Over the past several months, I've taken a nearly complete break from television. It has given me time to think about it. I'm getting ready to bring it back, but on my terms. That means HDTV and PVR. I've been toying with HDTV enough to understand the format and qualities, including working with a number of raw transport streams on my OS X PowerBook. I've toyed with transcoding it, and I'm quite familar with video codecs and playback software.
I'm basically wanting to build myself a single, self-contained Linux-based HDTV PVR box at the moment, without spending too excessively much. The sole purpose will be HDTV PVR functions, and I am planning to at least start with only one tuner card. (Hence I can only record or view one channel at a time). I'm going to discuss what I am understanding and my plans, so please correct me if I'm wrong about anything or you feel you can provide additional comments.
For the basic equipment, I need a basic but solid PC. I do not have one that will suffice, nor do I have much equipment that would be used within one, so I will be purchasing nearly everything. For HDTV, I think we're talking about a 3 GHz P4 processor. What AMD processor would be equivalent? What would be the advantages/disadvantages to more or less CPU? Are there specific motherboard options highly recommended? How much RAM is suitable/optimal - 256 MB? 512 MB? Cost is very important to me, but not the only factor.
I'm not a noise-nazi, but keeping this system reasonably quiet and on the more compact end of things would be preferable, if there are any reasonable yet inexpensive choices I can make in selecting the equipment, practical advice would be welcome.
I obviously also need an HDTV tuner card. It appears my options are the pcHDTV 3000 and the Air2PC-ATSC-PCI. The prices and features appear to be quite similar. Can anybody describe any differences between the two? Any significant difference in RF performance? Compatibility? MythTV support?
Regarding storage devices, it seems any modern hard drive should be able to handle HDTV raw streams (20 Mb/s) without too much trouble, and I will only have one tuner. Even my little 2.5" 60 GB 4200 RM laptop hard drive can handle it. Clearly, the limiting factor will be capacity, not performance, it seems. I have been pondering producing a RAID (probably software-based, RAID5 if possible) on here and perhaps using this machine for some light home file server functions. Anybody have experience with RAIDs and MythTV?
Once the content is tuned in and everything, I need to output it. For the video card, my understanding is that NVidia may be preferable because of better hardware acceleration under Linux. I am looking to run HDTV, and that is all, so other performance is unimportant. I need good analog out (s-video), and of course VGA. If possible DVI would be preferable if not too costly, so I could run pure digital to DVI-equipped projectors, displays, and HDTVs. (At HDTV resolutions, VGA has noticeable blurring) Can anybody suggest some cards that would offer solid performance and value? What would be my best options for sound output? I do not currently need more than simple stereo RCA-style output, but if multiple channel support can be incorporated into the system for not too much more, I would love to include it. What sound cards would be best for Linux compatibility, good value, and reasonable quality? Should I even think about using built-in (motherboard) audio out?
So once I get all this stuff hooked up physically, it's time for software. First and obviously, I'm talking about using MythTV. I am guessing that running MythTV on top of a Linux distro would be preferable, as I will probably want to tweak lots of little things over time and perhaps do tiny other tasks with the machine. Without starting a holy war, what distro would be the simplest to setup and use with MythTV? (Yes, I know I will probably get multiple and conflicting opinions here!) I am aware of KnoppMyth, but I think I would rather have a little more control over the system than that, and I think I can manage to setup MythTV manually.
I also will need some sort of remote control apparatus. I need to further research this topic, but I would find it particularly interesting if I could use my Treo 650 (bluetooth and IR equipped) to control my system. I mean, if I already have the device, why not use it as a remote? This is really a secondary topic, but I know it's possible, so I'll get there.
Looking forward to a few thoughts from people.... and thank you in advance!
-Galen _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
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