MythTV and Me

I finished writing an article about My MythTV Install Experience.

MythTV is an open source project to allow you to use your PC as a custom-made digital video recorder. It has even more functionality than anything the media companies would allow, and it is actively developed.

Unfortunately, it is also still maturing, which means that there were quite a few nights spent trying to get it to work. MythTV is at v0.20, though, so I suppose expecting it to “just work” was too much to ask.

If you want to make your own MythTV box, I would strongly suggest researching your motherboard and your capture cards. I had the most trouble with the nForce 410 chipset which prevented me from using onboard audio. I also had trouble with two non-hardware encoding capture cards, but once I replaced them with well-supported hardware encoders, my problems seem to go away.

It took way more time than I would have liked, but it is pretty much finished now…just in time for Battlestar Galactica and other shows to start.

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Posted by GBGames on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 10:00 am.

3 Responses to “MythTV and Me”

[…] My MythTV installation experience I just finished writing up an article about my MythTV installation experiences. You can see it on my blog: &nbsp MythTV and Me » GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development and the actual article is GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development After finishing the article, I set the machine to record a number of shows throughout the night. I had it record three shows that played at different times, and then two shows that played at the same time. I woke up to find that four of the shows recorded fine. One of the shows that played simultaneously says it was recorded, but there was nothing there. I found that one of the capture cards was dead, requiring a reboot to fix it. I am not sure, but I believe it might have something to do with the fact that I installed the ivtv drivers and firmware before I bought the second capture card. I can’t seem to get it to reinstall the firmware, but if the problem continues, I will have to try uninstalling everything and installing again. I’ve set it to record a number of shows throughout the day again, and I guess I’ll see how it goes when I get out of the day job. __________________ — GBGames’ Blog: An Indie Game Developer’s Somewhat Interesting Thoughts […]

Left by My MythTV installation experience - Personal Development for Smart People Forums on January 19th, 2007

I’ve been running Knoppmyth for a few years now and can can relate to your furstration in getting and running. It never is as easy as everyone says it is, plus R5E50 was release way before it was ready for release. Some things that I would suggest to someone trying out Knoppmyth
-choose an IDE drive over a SATA
-choose a hauppauge 250 cpature card
-do not choose the very latest knoppmyth release
-when you select a release, check out the forum for troubles posted
-the fastest, latest harware is is wate of money and electricity
-take your time and post your porblems on the forum in a friendly manner.
Getting my 1st mythbox up and running took me 6 months. Now I see now there are video tutorials that show you step by step exactly what to do. Once you get it installed you still need to know a bit about linux
terminal commands in order to get the codecs installed along with other tweaks.

Left by Mike on January 29th, 2007

Thanks for the advice, Mike.

Unfortunately, I’ve already purchased a SATA drive, and I now have two PVR-150 capture cards. I’ve been messing with Ubuntu 6.10 running a new 2.6.20 kernel.

I have narrowed down my problems to the fact that I am using a dual-core 64-bit processor, an nForce 410-based motherboard, or potentially buggy drivers.

Since I am now using the CVS ivtv drivers, there isn’t much more I can do on that end. I may try using a 32-bit OS, then try turning off the second core, but I would like to avoid doing so if I can. I will, however, be replacing my motherboard. It seems to cause me troubles and I can’t make use of the onboard audio, which adds one more potential problem point: the USB audio device.

If I had to do this project all over again, I would definitely have saved on the processing power.

Left by GBGames on January 29th, 2007

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