[SC.LUG] Fedora Core and MythTV

[Cockroft, John]

[Andy Roffe]
> Grab this man.. MythTV on FC4 is about as good a lecture subject as
you 
> are going to get for a LUG meet.

> John, I'm planning to do a myth box.. Are you up for swapping some 
> experiences ?  I've got all the kit lying around.. But last time round

> I got stuck with frequency settings for the NOVA-T Haven't found the
time 
> too look at it since..

I'd love to (at some point) *when* I actually get it working.  I've been

tinkering for ages trying to set up a system using MythTV and a
MediaMVP.
This is working fine under Windoze *sigh* but getting everything to play
ball 
under Linux is, quite frankly, hard work and I haven't managed to get
MythTV
to work with my Hauppauge Nova-T (PCI) yet.  I did get it to work
(sort-of) 
with my Hauppauge PVR-350 (analog) with help from these sites:

Fedora Myth(TV)ology 	
http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php 

Garry Parker's mythTV site (UK and Debian based)
http://www.parker1.co.uk/mythtv.php 

Richie & Gini's Page (Nova-T and Fedora Core 3)
http://www.helkit.com/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/Main/MythTVDVB-TAndConexant
Notes 

MediaMVP Media Center (for Linux)
http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main 

IMHO Fedora seems the best distro to do a MythTV box with as Jerod
Wilson is 
one of the guys doing the primary (stable) MythTV releases in
co-ordination with

Axel Thimms site (he is an engineer working at Hauppauge)
http://atrpms.net/ 

I gave up with FC4 and went back to FC3 for now as everything is just
too new 
in terms of add-on RPMSs.  FC3 is annoying in that you end up having to
download
1.2Gb(!) of updates from the ATrpms site but at least everything seems
to work.

[Rob]

> Any reason for not using yum ?  It seems to have been modified in it's
operation
> since its FC3 implementation making it significantly quicker than it
used to be, 
> and more informative about what its doing.  

This is partly personal preference and partly since IMHO apt-get is just
miles better.
I also prefer to use graphical tools like synaptic which is light-years
ahead of GYum.
Another reason is that apt-get is cross distribution and could easily be
adopted by 
all RPM and DEB based distros whereas Yum is purely RedHat specific
(like Urpmi for
Mandriva).

It's also because I used SimplyMEPIS for ages (before Debian stopped
supporting my
old Asus A7V motherboard - irrelevant now since it blew up!)

> Most noticeably that you are at least warned how large the update is
going to be 
> -  a real boon for the busy or bandwidth restricted user.

(bandwidth restricted) certainly applies to me!

> XFCE has been dropped from FC4 as you will have noticed, but it's now
got gnome
> 2.10 which again is smoother and quicker than it's predecessor.  I'm
not sure where
> the other performance comes from, but it appears to be generally
quicker. It could
> be because FC4 is compiled with gcc 4.0, or just the enhancements in
gnome 2.10.

Jerod is using XFCE on a MiniITX board under the TV but as my prettier
half views PCs
in the lounge as 'spawn of Satan' then I had to go down the MediaMVP
route (which is
acceptable in her eyes as it just looks like a mini Freeview box and
doesn't make a
sound.  It also means that I don't have to buy fancy cases of special
quiet components
as the MythTV box is elsewhere on my home LAN.

> Depending on your intentions and memory capacity, FC4 does come Xen 2
ready. Not had
> time to tinker with this yet, but it's on my to-do list.

Looks good.  I have used M$'s Virtual PC at work (and Fedora runs fine
under this although
X-Windows is a bit slow under the emulated S3 card) but haven't had time
to try Xen yet.

[Status]

Have rebuilt a new PC with FC3 and am following through Jerod's guide
for a new build
having got the drivers to load.  Will keep you posted and if I get it
working will
post details.  I cannot do any talks at the moment as I am just flat-out
at work at
the moment but would love to if I get it working and after things calm
down a bit.

Where and when are meetings?

John.