Just thought I'd do a writeup on my experiences so far. Critique as you
will. If this is horribly off topic for this list, let me know and I won't
post any follow ups to it.
I read in Atomic MPC Magazine about this Myth thing, having encountered a
similar beast in a flatmate's media PC, which had no television
capabilities beyond playing back DiVXs. Atomic included a bootable custom
Knoppix CDROM, which booted up into MythTV. Once I had bought a Hauppauge
PVR150, I immediately booted up the 'AtomicTV' CDROM again. The fact that
it had no drivers for anything other than a el cheapo BTTV capture card
came up almost immediately. This didn't dull my desire for a HTPC, however,
and Dad was completely behind me, since we are currently subscribed to Sky
Digital (DVB-Satellite) for better reception on TV1-3, and to get Prime.
The thought of losing the monthly subscription to Sky sounded like a very
good idea to Dad.
My initial desires for my MythBox was to have expandability in terms of
peripherals, cheapness, relative power, and independence of a telephone
line, since we are on dialup and tying up the telephone line downloading
listings isn't really an option at all. In terms of expandability, I wanted
as many PCI slots as possible to enable me to have five or six tuners if I
wanted, so that I wouldn't encounter recording conflicts. Cheapness is
obvious – traditionally, the best value for your money seems to be the most
underpowered system possible. For relative power, I wanted a system that
could eat Standard Definition and happily spit the bones out in two seconds
dead. High definition isn't a priority for me, as no one in New Zealand
broadcasts in HD. I've heard the reason for this is the local TV production
studios, as they are only set up for SD. As for independence of the 'phone
line, I wanted to avoid tying up the telephone downloading the week's EPG.
When I found that the EPG that the Sky Digital box uses was received over
the satellite, I immediately wanted to have a satellite tuner in my future
MythBox. This had an additional bonus in the quality stakes, even if it is
just for TV 1 and 2. (TVNZ and CanWest will be broadcasting more channels
when Optus' new satellite goes up.) As for software, my initial plan was to
have a Debian system, getting packages from the Marillat site. My laptop
runs Debian, and has done for many years quite reliably and easily. This
changed.
First thoughts hardware-wise were Via C3 for low power, until I found a
lack of PCI slots, lack of 'keeping up' power, and high price. The second
option was an AGP/PCI system, since they tend to always have a lot of PCI
slots and a bottom of the food chain FX5200 should be plenty cheap. I
ordered the absolute cheapest CPU (Celeron D 331) and motherboard (Asrock
775V88+) from my usual supplier, only to find that the Socket T system
didn't work, and nothing could coax it to work. This is usual with my
experiences of building Intel systems, and frustration led me to a purchase
of an AMD Sempron and an Asus motherboard, since every AMD system I have
built has worked on first pop and Asus have a good reputation. Intel
systems always produce various anglo-saxon words from me, eventually. The
Sempron lived up to my expectations – the only flaw in the physical build
was me plugging the power LED into the power switch pins by accident.
My physical build wound up being the following:
CPU: AMD Sempron 2600+
Mobo: Asus K8N (nForce3)
Ram: 512MB TwinMos
GFX: Gigabyte FX-5200
HDD: Seagate 300GB SATA-II
PSU: 3R 400W I had lying around
Tuners:
Analog - Hauppauge PVR-150MCE-OEM
DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D
DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D
The next step was installing an operating system. The fact that it was
Linux would be a given, preferably with a 2.6 kernel since they seem to
support DVB-S and Skystar2s better than 2.4. I dutifully downloaded the
Debian NetBoot CD image over dialup (180MB), and popped it into the
Sempron. It failed to detect my SATA harddrive, and nothing could make the
2.6 image talk to the Seagate. The 2.4 kernel on the CD worked with the
Seagate, but I didn't want 2.4. It also couldn't detect the K8N's onboard
ethernet port, and I didn't want to sacrifice a slot to my spare 3Com NIC.
I decided to get a DVD set of Fedora Core 5 from Dick Smith, since $10 for
a DVD sounds better than umpity zillion hours downloading Debian on a 56k
connection that may or may not work. This turned out to be the wrong
decision in the end, despite the ethernet and hard drive issues.
The Wilsonet guide helped immensely in getting the downloading part of the
install working, with the only road blocks being my own inexperience with
Fedora, which seems to be highly attached to the Gnome packages. I removed
the GDM package, only for X to die and refuse to come back up upon reboot.
I therefore SSH'ed into the box, upgraded it via yum, and tried to get a
“yum install xdm”, or “yum install kdm”. I should be so lucky. For some
reason known only to God, Fedora had decided to nuke xsm as well as gnome,
resulting in any attempts at logging in via the console resulted in the
would-be user landing right back at login after X failed to find xsm.
Luckily, SSH still worked. A quick "yum install xsm" fixed that issue, but
my Fedora install, having lost Gnome, wasn't letting me use any window
manager other than "twm" in retaliation. twm is horrible. Just for
reference, I put a http proxy on my main desktop and downloaded the rpms
through this machine to avoid shuffling modem cards around all day.
A yum install mythtv-suite worked a lot better, and I actually got a gui
working. A quarter working gui. It would scan my PVR150, and failed on the
Skystar2s. On the second attempt, it scanned the channels okay. Despite the
scan working on the PVR150 immediately, and on the second go around for the
Skystar2s, MythTV refused altogether to go into 'Watch TV'. A reboot
resulted in mythtv-setup, mythbackend, and mythfrontend all dying at the
first database lookup. Running mysql manually resulted in zilch.
Fedora is not something I would recommend. Debian's 'dselect' package tool
is a great deal better in how it presents dependencies to you, and I never
had problems like this on Debian. At this stage, I was prepared to dump the
lot, install Windows, and settle for MediaPortal, even if the interface
wasn't as good as Myth.
A plea for help on the mythtvnz list resulted in someone with a similar
hardware setup recommending knoppmyth to me. I asked a relative with
broadband to download the CD image for me, and am currently waiting for
them to bring the image to me.
--
Alan Podjursky ICQ 24423014
"Yay, evil evil! Happy torture!" -- Gwyneth
"When in doubt, use brute force." -- Ken Thompson
http://www.fanfiction.net/~mercva
_______________________________________________
mythtvnz mailing list
mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz
http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz
Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/
will. If this is horribly off topic for this list, let me know and I won't
post any follow ups to it.
I read in Atomic MPC Magazine about this Myth thing, having encountered a
similar beast in a flatmate's media PC, which had no television
capabilities beyond playing back DiVXs. Atomic included a bootable custom
Knoppix CDROM, which booted up into MythTV. Once I had bought a Hauppauge
PVR150, I immediately booted up the 'AtomicTV' CDROM again. The fact that
it had no drivers for anything other than a el cheapo BTTV capture card
came up almost immediately. This didn't dull my desire for a HTPC, however,
and Dad was completely behind me, since we are currently subscribed to Sky
Digital (DVB-Satellite) for better reception on TV1-3, and to get Prime.
The thought of losing the monthly subscription to Sky sounded like a very
good idea to Dad.
My initial desires for my MythBox was to have expandability in terms of
peripherals, cheapness, relative power, and independence of a telephone
line, since we are on dialup and tying up the telephone line downloading
listings isn't really an option at all. In terms of expandability, I wanted
as many PCI slots as possible to enable me to have five or six tuners if I
wanted, so that I wouldn't encounter recording conflicts. Cheapness is
obvious – traditionally, the best value for your money seems to be the most
underpowered system possible. For relative power, I wanted a system that
could eat Standard Definition and happily spit the bones out in two seconds
dead. High definition isn't a priority for me, as no one in New Zealand
broadcasts in HD. I've heard the reason for this is the local TV production
studios, as they are only set up for SD. As for independence of the 'phone
line, I wanted to avoid tying up the telephone downloading the week's EPG.
When I found that the EPG that the Sky Digital box uses was received over
the satellite, I immediately wanted to have a satellite tuner in my future
MythBox. This had an additional bonus in the quality stakes, even if it is
just for TV 1 and 2. (TVNZ and CanWest will be broadcasting more channels
when Optus' new satellite goes up.) As for software, my initial plan was to
have a Debian system, getting packages from the Marillat site. My laptop
runs Debian, and has done for many years quite reliably and easily. This
changed.
First thoughts hardware-wise were Via C3 for low power, until I found a
lack of PCI slots, lack of 'keeping up' power, and high price. The second
option was an AGP/PCI system, since they tend to always have a lot of PCI
slots and a bottom of the food chain FX5200 should be plenty cheap. I
ordered the absolute cheapest CPU (Celeron D 331) and motherboard (Asrock
775V88+) from my usual supplier, only to find that the Socket T system
didn't work, and nothing could coax it to work. This is usual with my
experiences of building Intel systems, and frustration led me to a purchase
of an AMD Sempron and an Asus motherboard, since every AMD system I have
built has worked on first pop and Asus have a good reputation. Intel
systems always produce various anglo-saxon words from me, eventually. The
Sempron lived up to my expectations – the only flaw in the physical build
was me plugging the power LED into the power switch pins by accident.
My physical build wound up being the following:
CPU: AMD Sempron 2600+
Mobo: Asus K8N (nForce3)
Ram: 512MB TwinMos
GFX: Gigabyte FX-5200
HDD: Seagate 300GB SATA-II
PSU: 3R 400W I had lying around
Tuners:
Analog - Hauppauge PVR-150MCE-OEM
DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D
DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D
The next step was installing an operating system. The fact that it was
Linux would be a given, preferably with a 2.6 kernel since they seem to
support DVB-S and Skystar2s better than 2.4. I dutifully downloaded the
Debian NetBoot CD image over dialup (180MB), and popped it into the
Sempron. It failed to detect my SATA harddrive, and nothing could make the
2.6 image talk to the Seagate. The 2.4 kernel on the CD worked with the
Seagate, but I didn't want 2.4. It also couldn't detect the K8N's onboard
ethernet port, and I didn't want to sacrifice a slot to my spare 3Com NIC.
I decided to get a DVD set of Fedora Core 5 from Dick Smith, since $10 for
a DVD sounds better than umpity zillion hours downloading Debian on a 56k
connection that may or may not work. This turned out to be the wrong
decision in the end, despite the ethernet and hard drive issues.
The Wilsonet guide helped immensely in getting the downloading part of the
install working, with the only road blocks being my own inexperience with
Fedora, which seems to be highly attached to the Gnome packages. I removed
the GDM package, only for X to die and refuse to come back up upon reboot.
I therefore SSH'ed into the box, upgraded it via yum, and tried to get a
“yum install xdm”, or “yum install kdm”. I should be so lucky. For some
reason known only to God, Fedora had decided to nuke xsm as well as gnome,
resulting in any attempts at logging in via the console resulted in the
would-be user landing right back at login after X failed to find xsm.
Luckily, SSH still worked. A quick "yum install xsm" fixed that issue, but
my Fedora install, having lost Gnome, wasn't letting me use any window
manager other than "twm" in retaliation. twm is horrible. Just for
reference, I put a http proxy on my main desktop and downloaded the rpms
through this machine to avoid shuffling modem cards around all day.
A yum install mythtv-suite worked a lot better, and I actually got a gui
working. A quarter working gui. It would scan my PVR150, and failed on the
Skystar2s. On the second attempt, it scanned the channels okay. Despite the
scan working on the PVR150 immediately, and on the second go around for the
Skystar2s, MythTV refused altogether to go into 'Watch TV'. A reboot
resulted in mythtv-setup, mythbackend, and mythfrontend all dying at the
first database lookup. Running mysql manually resulted in zilch.
Fedora is not something I would recommend. Debian's 'dselect' package tool
is a great deal better in how it presents dependencies to you, and I never
had problems like this on Debian. At this stage, I was prepared to dump the
lot, install Windows, and settle for MediaPortal, even if the interface
wasn't as good as Myth.
A plea for help on the mythtvnz list resulted in someone with a similar
hardware setup recommending knoppmyth to me. I asked a relative with
broadband to download the CD image for me, and am currently waiting for
them to bring the image to me.
--
Alan Podjursky ICQ 24423014
"Yay, evil evil! Happy torture!" -- Gwyneth
"When in doubt, use brute force." -- Ken Thompson
http://www.fanfiction.net/~mercva
_______________________________________________
mythtvnz mailing list
mythtvnz@lists.linuxnut.co.nz
http://lists.ourshack.com/mailman/listinfo/mythtvnz
Archives http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/mythtvnz/