[Lancaster] My experience with MythTV

[Ken Hough]

Martyn,

Did you have much to do to get your TV card working under Linux?
If so what did you do?

I have a KWorld DVB-T 210 card which came already fitted to my PC. According 
to info on the Internet, it is possible to get this to work under Linux,but 
I've not yet been able to do this.

I'm wondering if it would be sensible to go for a more 'standard' Hauppuage 
card. I have an ancient Hauppuage analogue TV/Radio card that used to work 
just fine.

Regards

Ken Hough

On Tuesday 10 February 2009 09:00:00 Martyn Welch wrote:
> Rik Boland wrote:
> > If one was going to record a TV programme on a computer apart from
> > needing a box with TV card in a linux distro and sound/graphic card what
> > else would you need?
>
> Hi Rik,
>
> This very much depends, I can only really tell you what I have and
> suggest a bit of experimentation:
>
> 1) TV Card - I have a Hauppauge Nova-TD-500 (The "new" TD version not
> the "old"). I wouldn't necessarily pick this card again if I was to
> start fresh, Linux support for the "TD" still seems a little ropey. The
> advantage is that it has 2 tuners on one card, so I can record two
> things at once with one card. Note that this card encodes the TV
> broadcast to an MPEG stream. This is important as it saves a *lot* of
> work for the CPU.
>
> 2) Graphics - I use the one built into my motherboard. It's a VIA
> EPIA-EN12000EG motherboard that was bought especially for my MythTV
> setup. The graphics on this board (CN700, S3 UniChrome Pro) can do TV
> out via a s-video or composite connector. I use the s-video into a
> s-video to scart adapter for my TV. The sound is also fed into the scart
> adapter via a 3.5mm jack to dual phono lead.
>
> 3) Processor - I'm using a motherboard with a via C7 1.5GHz processor.
> As I;m using a TV card with MPEG encoding built into it this processor
> is fast enough for me to run the front and back end on the same box, I
> do have to limit the times that it can run some of the heavy background
> tasks (such as finding ad breaks), but it's just enough to allow me to
> watch a previous recording and record 2 other shows!
>
> 4) Hard drive - You'll want a big one if you are like me. I started with
> a 80G HD, but fast found I was filling this. MPEG videos take up a bit
> of room! I have a 250G SATA laptop drive, this is very quite, low power
> and has plenty of space. The important ones for me were low power (I
> want to be reasonably power efficient) and noise (the box sits under my
> TV, it's very close to silent).
>
> 5) RAM - To give you an idea, I have 1G of RAM in this machine, I could
> probably get away with a little less, but given the thrashing the HD is
> probably getting when at full load from MythTV, I didn't want it to need
> to be swapping as well.
>
> 6) Remote or wireless keyboard - I have both, an infrared remote for
> basic operation and a wireless keyboard with a track pad built in. The
> remote is good for basic TV functionality, though if the box isn't
> connected to your TV in your living room, this probably won't be that
> big a deal. The keyboard is great for a bit of debugging and for
> occasionally using the box a bit more like a PC. Again, if you don't
> mind a few training wires or it's not going to be used by a non-geek
> significant other, this might not be a requirement.
>
> 7) A good aerial - Depending on the quality of your signal, it will be
> important you have a good TV aerial. We live in a rather weak signal
> area, my aerial is *huge* with a mast amplifier. It's probably a bit
> over=kill, but I very rarely get any artifacts in the picture from a
> weak signal. I expect the artifacts have more to do with the odd large
> bird deciding to land on the aerial.
>
> 8) Software - I use Mythbuntu. It takes a bit of the leg work out of the
> setup. I also use Ubuntu and it's derivatives on most of my other
> machines, so it just makes sense to be, There are others like Mythora if
> you are more of the Fedora perversion, I mean persuasion. ;-)
>
> 9) Oh I almost forgot - a DVD player. I have one in my Myth box, this
> means I don't need a standalone DVD player under my TV as well.
>
> 10) Yes - one more. A TV license :-)
>
> I went from 4 separate boxes under my TV:
>
> - DVD player
> - Video recorder
> - Freeview box (which didn't get a signal at the time with the old
> aerial we had, but was a funky one which was connected to my network and
> could be used for really light web access and streaming music from my
> server)
> - Sky box (purely used for the free channels, I'm not paying for more!
> The house had a satellite dish already attached)
>
> To 1, my Myth box. 3 less remotes and a lot tidier. I haven't done the
> power consumption comparison yet - I've been meaning to do that, but I
> don't mind a modest increase given the added functionality and ease of
> use and tidiness.
>
> My biggest suggestion would be to scrounge and borrow enough bits to get
> a simple approx 1-2G PC together, with a +20G HD. Use a monitor to begin
> with (TV out can be a pain to configure depending on the exact graphics
> card) and go and buy a "good" TV card. See what you can do, play around.
> MythTV can be a bit of a pain to configure, some of the terminology it
> uses is a little counter intuitive, but I does work quite well when
> setup correctly.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Martyn
>
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