Building a Linux PVR Part I - MythTV Setup and Install
by Kristopher Kubicki on September 3, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Final Thoughts
And finally, after several hours of turmoil and despair, we have installed and tested our Linux device. Its far from perfect - we cannot readily work with digital TV broadcasts, for example. What we do have is a machine that will readily emulate all of the basic Windows MCE or TiVo functionality at a reduced cost - and we can hack/configure/manipulate it to any extent that we wish to in the future. On the downside, it did take us over four hours to set up and install everything.Another item to consider in our cumulative upcoming comparison is that you cannot easily (legally?) scrap together some hardware and install Windows MCE on it. We can do some neat things with programs like BeyondTV and SageTV, but we are not given the full experience of Windows MCE (and certainly not for free).
Other drawbacks of MCE devices include the inability to play back the video content on anything but other MCE devices, and the inability to re-render the recorded files into a different format to save space. With MythTV and Linux, on the other hand, we can capture, re-encode and playback on completely separate machines, even Windows systems. For the truly crafty, Myth allows us to connect the front end of a different machine to the first MythTV system and play video files/streams in that manner.
These are all functionality comparisons that we will get into more in Part II, so stay tuned and get ready to see if our little Linux experiment can take on Microsoft's best.
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shiftomnimega - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
Looking forward to part 2.Brazen - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
No win32 distribution for MythTV :(skeptic - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
Try the Knoppmyth distribution. IMHO it is the best and easiest to use. Total install time for me was around 20 minutes and I had previously unsuccessfully fumbled around with mythtv on red hat.My setup uses the Huappauge PVR 350 card which has a whole set of issues when attempting to get the tv-out on the card to work, but man the quality was actually better than on my TIVO. One month after I had it working I called up TIVO and cancelled - it felt so good. I have been running knoppmyth for over 6 months now and its fantastic.
reboos - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
Thank you for the article.Aquila76 - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
From Page 2: "Originally, we had scheduled to run all of our testes with the Hauppage WinTV Go card"Let me know how your testes run after that! ;>)
Seriously though, great article. Interesting that there's only a $60 savings (up front) for the Linux PVR over the WinMCE box. Tells you the cost of WinMCE is actually pretty cheap! If only they'd make it available for purchase, but they probably won't because of DMCA or something.
Kishkumen - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
Nice article. I've been a fan of MythTV for quite some time and have enjoyed experimenting with it. The biggest detriment to my full time usage has been a lack of viable Linux HDTV drivers for my particular card based upon the Teralogic TL880 chipset. However, I look forward to becoming more involved with it as more HDTV capture cards with good Linux support become available.Adul - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
Kris, nice article. I am glad you wrote it. Now I want to build my own :DResh - Friday, September 3, 2004 - link
It's late. I was about to go to bed when I saw this article. I leapt with glee! After a quick skim, I can't say that I saw any discussion of how SuSE dealt with the TV-Out. Did it work? Were you using TV-out during this whole process. Some explanation in this area would be great, either as an update, or as the opening to Part II.Looking foward to reading it, and the follow-up, in detail.
I love AT! :)