MythTV
For the past year or two, I've been running my homebrew DVR using a program called GB-PVR under Windows XP. The program worked well enough, but there were a couple of quirks with it. I probably could have lived with those quirks, but the wife-factor meant that this was supposed to be an appliance, not a computer. Quirks, therefore, were strongly discouraged. Plus I'm a Linux geek. Running a Windows-based DVR just wasn't cool.
When I first built this box a couple of years ago, I intended to install KnoppMyth on it, since it was supposed to achieve what I wanted; MythTV without hassle. I first ran into trouble with an unsupported WiFi card. OK. Try ndiswrapper. No luck. No problem. I can set aside a problem and come back to it, so I ran an ethernet cable across the living room floor to use temporarily. Once everything else worked, I could mess with ndiswrapper to get wireless going. But then, once MythTV was installed, it couldn't properly tune anything over channel 5 or 6. Time for a little research. I had purchased a Hauppauge PVR-500MCE, and Hauppauge had just changed to a cheaper chipset that wasn't yet supported completely by the ivtv drivers. Guess I should have researched more beforehand.
After a bit of digging, I discovered another distro called MythDora and decided to try it out. This time, I installed ndiswrapper and had it working with minimal effort. Same trouble with the channels, though. There were some tips available for getting things working, but none did the trick.
This is the point where I installed Windows XP and GB-PVR. I considered installing Slackware and building everything from source, but since I had a working solution that my wife only complained about occasionally when one of the quirks popped up. I added a second Hauppage PVR-500MCE (two dual-tuner cards, FTW!), and purchased a larger drive. The drive sat on the shelf for months, as I wasn't looking forward to transferring Windows XP and all the data to it.
Meanwhile, work progressed on Mythbuntu. So, last weekend, I finally downloaded it and installed it on the new, 500 Gig drive. I had minimal effort getting the WiFi going. It's supported via a restricted driver now, so all I had to do is use an ethernet cable long enough to download it. TV-Out through my Nvidia card works great, though I'm tempted to use the TV-Out on one of the PVR-500s for the built-in mpeg2 decoder. Not sure if it's worth the bother or not, though. But all in all, I've been happy with MythTV over the past week. I did discover that a couple of channels don't work on tuner 4 so well, but if I set one of the other tuners as the preferred tuner for anything I record from those channels, the problem is effectively solved, so I'm not too worried about the one quirk I've found so far.
When I first built this box a couple of years ago, I intended to install KnoppMyth on it, since it was supposed to achieve what I wanted; MythTV without hassle. I first ran into trouble with an unsupported WiFi card. OK. Try ndiswrapper. No luck. No problem. I can set aside a problem and come back to it, so I ran an ethernet cable across the living room floor to use temporarily. Once everything else worked, I could mess with ndiswrapper to get wireless going. But then, once MythTV was installed, it couldn't properly tune anything over channel 5 or 6. Time for a little research. I had purchased a Hauppauge PVR-500MCE, and Hauppauge had just changed to a cheaper chipset that wasn't yet supported completely by the ivtv drivers. Guess I should have researched more beforehand.
After a bit of digging, I discovered another distro called MythDora and decided to try it out. This time, I installed ndiswrapper and had it working with minimal effort. Same trouble with the channels, though. There were some tips available for getting things working, but none did the trick.
This is the point where I installed Windows XP and GB-PVR. I considered installing Slackware and building everything from source, but since I had a working solution that my wife only complained about occasionally when one of the quirks popped up. I added a second Hauppage PVR-500MCE (two dual-tuner cards, FTW!), and purchased a larger drive. The drive sat on the shelf for months, as I wasn't looking forward to transferring Windows XP and all the data to it.
Meanwhile, work progressed on Mythbuntu. So, last weekend, I finally downloaded it and installed it on the new, 500 Gig drive. I had minimal effort getting the WiFi going. It's supported via a restricted driver now, so all I had to do is use an ethernet cable long enough to download it. TV-Out through my Nvidia card works great, though I'm tempted to use the TV-Out on one of the PVR-500s for the built-in mpeg2 decoder. Not sure if it's worth the bother or not, though. But all in all, I've been happy with MythTV over the past week. I did discover that a couple of channels don't work on tuner 4 so well, but if I set one of the other tuners as the preferred tuner for anything I record from those channels, the problem is effectively solved, so I'm not too worried about the one quirk I've found so far.
