Mailing List Archive

That reminds me. Are you using any sort of overscan? It doesn't seem to
quite fill my entire screen, and the right side is a bit "wavy" looking.

Thanks,

Adam

On Tue, 2003-05-13 at 13:13, James Knight wrote:

<snip>

> The built in video (including TV-out) works fine, as does the built-in
> LAN and audio.
>
> James

<snip>

> --
> Adam Lydick <adam.lydick@verizon.net>

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I'm only going to respond for #1

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 02:51:20PM -0400, Adam Hirsch wrote:
> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

I started wanting a mp3/ogg player hooked into my home theater system. I
wanted eye candy to go with the music. Since this demanded a computer, I
added to my wants the ability to play MAME/NES/SNES/PS/SCUMM to my want
list. Based around this I purchased my box and started putting it together.
About this time, our VCR went out and my wife was suddenly unable to record
"Trading Spaces" (oh the horror). So, suddenly, I was providing TV capture.
The rest is history.

Jeff
- --
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930-2002)
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Adam Hirsch wrote:

> Hey, folks. I have a couple of non-technical questions and one technical
> question, being new to the list.
>
> The non-technical questions first, I suppose.
>
> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?
>
> Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
> why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.
>

Well, in my case I live in a place where Tivo/replay/whatever is not
available (Canada). MythTV also gives you an opportunity you'd never get
with Tivo: adding your own features, themes, etc. Open source is cool.
Plus you don't have to pay the Tivo fees and look over your shoulder for
the DMCA police to knock down your door for modding your Tivo. :-0

> 2) What have people's experience been with the amount of time it takes to
> go from "Machine assembled and hard drive blank" to "Machine running mythtv
> reliably, recording, scheduling, playing back"? Anyone had a very short or
> very long breaking-in period, i.e. fixing minor audio/video glitches,
> getting channel-changes happening reliably, etc? Anyone on the list have a
> non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv easily?
>

Don't know yet.

> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous little
> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box. Anyone had
> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv? (Specifically, audio: Realtek ALC650,
> video: VIA Savage8) If I could get away with just putting a hauppage card
> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine begins
> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).
>

I had a Shuttle (AMD/nvidia2) and was never successful getting the built
in video to work right. In my experience, Shuttles are also noisy little
bastards. The fan whine would go up and down constantly, driving me
nutso. I've been told that replacing the stock fan with something else
would help. However, I ended up taking mine back.

> Thanks,
>
> Adam
>

> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it
> the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the
> extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?
>
> Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
> why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.
>



Well, for me, I've really wanted a PVR for a while, but
(a) wasn't confident that Tivo or ReplayTV, etc, wouldn't go under, leaving
me with a useless device
(b) didn't like the idea of paying a subscription fee -- I don't pay a
subscription fee to set up VCR recordings, why should I pay to use my PVR?
(c) I think multimedia/digital convergence is the next big, largely untapped
consumer tech market. I had been kicking around the idea of developing my
own, open PVR system based on Linux and building a business around it. Then
I tried MythTV (then at version 0.7) and realized it had already been done.
Still wondering if a viable business could be built around selling
pre-configured boxen... seems a reliable (not controlled by an independent
commercial entity) source of TV listing data would be needed, otherwise
you'd have major support issues if a listing source changed...



> 2) What have people's experience been with the amount of time it takes to
> go from "Machine assembled and hard drive blank" to "Machine
> running mythtv
> reliably, recording, scheduling, playing back"? Anyone had a
> very short or
> very long breaking-in period, i.e. fixing minor audio/video glitches,
> getting channel-changes happening reliably, etc? Anyone on the
> list have a
> non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv easily?
>


My initial setup went pretty quick. I had initial issues with duplex
sound... even after I got it working, the quality was bad (but looking back
I think I was probably pegging the CPU capturing at too high a
resolution/quality, causing stuttering). Once I realized my WinTV-PCI card
could do btaudio, I was a happy camper.

My wife has adjusted to life with MythTV, and enjoys its benefits, although
she's not comfortable in the driver's seat yet.


-JAC

It's the journey, not the destination. I would wager few people ever stop
"tweaking" their machine an use it like an appliance the Tivo is. Anyone
feel differently?


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Hirsch [mailto:mythtv@quakerporn.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 1:51 PM
To: mythtv-users@snowman.net
Subject: [mythtv-users] two and one


Hey, folks. I have a couple of non-technical questions and one technical
question, being new to the list.

The non-technical questions first, I suppose.

1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.



Thanks,

Adam

Adam Hirsch wrote:

>1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?
>
I want total "convergence" as Isaac would call it.

My desktop is connected to good speakers and a TV anyways for gaming,
and it can play videos. It seems pointless not to use it for TV, but to
have a separate devices for video and TV tuning. Those are legacy crap
for me. Having only one (visible) machine for everything (work,
shopping, gaming, music, TV etc.) is just elegant.

The desktop should be minimal, so having nasty TV hardware there is out
of question. I don't want to have TV cables around the house either,
ethernet should be enough and it is. So, it had to be a client/server
solution. MythTV is one of the very few ones, at least the first I saw
(meanwhile, there are commercial client/server solutions). Nice side
effect is that any computer is also a TV.

I don't like TiVo, because they try to lock me in. Into their service,
their hardware (expensive and small disk drives, IIRC) and worst of all
they think my recordings are their property or something. That is
totally out of question for me. I like the freedom of open source - if I
don't like something, I can always change it. I can't change everything
I don't like (time, of course), but chances are that somebody else did
it for me already.

I absolutely hate having to spend 1 week or more to build something like
that (and I did, answering your other question). That's just not
economic, and it annoys me. But it's unfortunately the reality of Linux
at the moment, at least in my experience (I spent most of the time for
the hardware, not MythTV, BTW).

I'm only responding to question 1, since I don't use the Shuttle and I'm
testing MythTV in a technical setting, where I'm constantly fiddling with
host configurations and have no non-technical users.

At 02:51 PM 5/13/2003 -0400, Adam Hirsch wrote:
>Hey, folks. I have a couple of non-technical questions and one technical
>question, being new to the list.
>
>The non-technical questions first, I suppose.
>
>1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
>pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
>from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
>that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

My interest in video capture with Linux is not specific to MythTV. I've
started using it only recently, after over a year doing standard DivX caps
using vcr and avifile (which I still continue to do, on a different host).
My reasons for prefering Linux-based video in general to TiVo are (probably
in order of importance):

1. Easily able to store for the long run, not just for timeshifting. I've
managed to build up a nice library of movies and shows I especially like,
in a format that I can watch on any Linux or Windows host.

2. Cost. I'll get back to this below.

3. Privacy. I don't imagine you need me to expand on this one.

>Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
>it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
>why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
>why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.

It's not. But you've chosen a relatively high cost solution. Try this one:

Celeron 1.7 GHz -- just got a CPU, mobo, and heatsink/fan on sale today for
$75.
Standard case and P/S -- don't know today's price, but I've gotten them for
$30 on sale by watching the specials.
256 MB PC133 RAM -- about $25 when on local special.
250 GB hard disk -- about $220 when on sale.
low-end Aver or (until recently) Hauppauge vidcap card -- $40 when on sale.
some decent AGP video card with TV out -- $50 or less
Sound card (if needed) -- low-end Soundblaster, usually $30
NIC (if needed) -- $10
keyboard and mouse -- often free locally (due to $0 net cost rebates)
IR control -- I bought some CIMR100 units for $8 each a few months ago;
don't know what cheap stuff is available now.

This (did I leave anything out?) totals to about $490, and 45% of the total
is the enormous hard disk. And there is even room to trim here, if the mobo
has usable sound and a NIC, and if you can use a cheaper video card (say
the Savage IX with TV-out, currently on sale for $13) ... and, of course,
with a smaller hard disk (a 120 GB was on sale locally for $90 last weekend).

I don't know current TiVo pricing, so you (or someone) will have to tell me
how it compares to this.

The actual Myth host I'm running cost a bit more than this, because I
didn't always get rock-bottom prices and because it has a WiFi card.

[other questions deleted]

No Nathan I agree with you. I had my Mythbox working perfectly. But NOOOOO
I wanted to add a PVR250 and now I want new hardware... and then I'll want a
good remote.... Its the journey, the promise of something cooler. This has
been fun and a HUGE learning experience. Plus everyone on this list and the
ivtv list have been great. I think I need to build another "stable" box as
my wife keeps asking "is it done yet". I got the poor girl hooked then took
it away from her =)

-Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces@snowman.net]On Behalf Of Nathan Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 2:16 PM
To: 'Discussion about mythtv'
Subject: RE: [mythtv-users] two and one



It's the journey, not the destination. I would wager few people ever stop
"tweaking" their machine an use it like an appliance the Tivo is. Anyone
feel differently?


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Hirsch [mailto:mythtv@quakerporn.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 1:51 PM
To: mythtv-users@snowman.net
Subject: [mythtv-users] two and one


Hey, folks. I have a couple of non-technical questions and one technical
question, being new to the list.

The non-technical questions first, I suppose.

1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.



Thanks,

Adam


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@snowman.net
http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

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> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV.
> Is it the geeky pleasure of building something oneself? Is it
> wanting to be independent from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is
> it cost? Is it the extra features that one can't get from the
> commercial PVRs out there?

Remember, if you want a Tivo to do everything you can do with Myth,
you've got to add in the cost of the Home Media Option at $99, and
that you're going to need a Series 2 box to do it. Add in that Tivo
forces things on you like Advertisements on the main menu and that
they disengeniously state that all of the Showcases don't take up
recording space (sure they do - if that space wasn't pre-allocated to
commercials you'd have that much more available for recording.) and
you realize that Tivo can pretty much do what they want.

Want more recording capacity on a Tivo? Void the warranty and open
the box. You're still limited to the size of the drive you can
install. On Myth, just install a new hard drive, add it to your LVM
and expand the partition. Presto.

Also, unless you specifically call them up and tell them not to, Tivo
is keeping track of every keypress and selling aggregate data to
advertisers.

But that's just me.



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On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 03:12 PM, Curtis Stanford wrote:
>> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous
>> little
>> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box. Anyone had
>> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
>> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv? (Specifically, audio: Realtek
>> ALC650,
>> video: VIA Savage8) If I could get away with just putting a hauppage
>> card
>> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine
>> begins
>> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).
>
> I had a Shuttle (AMD/nvidia2) and was never successful getting the
> built in video to work right. In my experience, Shuttles are also
> noisy little bastards. The fan whine would go up and down constantly,
> driving me nutso. I've been told that replacing the stock fan with
> something else would help. However, I ended up taking mine back.

If you want reliable advice about the Shuttle PCs you really need to
specify which model you're talking about. There is no one "Shuttle."
The amount of noise varies greatly depends on the model. I'm running
MythTV on the SK41G. It is *VERY* quiet. I understand the SK41G2 isn't
nearly as quiet because it has an extra fan for the nVidia chipset. The
model that the SK41G replaced (SK40G) was reportedly very noisy as well.

The built in video (including TV-out) works fine, as does the built-in
LAN and audio.

James

>
>
>1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
>pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
>from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
>that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?
>
>
With careful buying a myth setup can be cheaper than a TIVO if you don't
count your time. But since I'm having fun, I don't think I should count
my time. Myth particulary shines in the cost department when you start
thinking about higher end setups. The ability to add storage cheaply, to
have multiple tuners, and multiple (low cost) front ends blow TIVO away
cost wise. Only if you want an entry level PVR, with no "extras", and no
prospect of expansion do you win cost wise with a TIVO. Plus it is hours
of geeky fun, I have learned a ton about linux, and I'm not dependent on
any company!

>Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
>it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
>why it's still really alluring to me to try building one.
>
Many people insist on buying pretty expensive hardware for this project.
They come to the list hoping for suggestions for $400-500 dollar
hardware, then say "by the way, I want it to be powerful enough to drop
in a second tuner, be really small, look really good, be quiet, etc etc
etc". People want the impossible. Instead how about buying a sub 2Ghz
processor, 256 ram, sub 100 gig HD, a cheap software based tuner card,
cheap board like an nforce with built in nic, sound, video, and a
cheap/ugly/loud case. I know you can do that for well under $500. If you
work at it you could probably do it for less than $400. Then put the
damn case in a closet or something. I did, and ran a few wires through
the wall. Damn these cute little cases that are quiet and good looking
if they force you to use expensive hardware.

> Anyone on the list have a
>non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv easily?
>
>
Techy people only for setup. Daily use is very easy for everyone in the
househod and they all love it. In fact, I shudder to think what would be
done to me if I took away my girlfriend's "tv thingy".


best,
Cedar

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Hirsch" <mythtv@quakerporn.com>

> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

I started out wanting to build my own box to play mp3's through my stereo,
along with NES/SNES/PS emulation to replace some of the older consoles crammed
underneath my TV. After seeing some of the great looking stuff from Myth, I
remembered the old bt878 card I had around and added TV to the list too.

> Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
> why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.

I love tweaking and fiddling with things too, and after comparing the features
available (or possibly available soon) with the cost of some new hardware, it
was a pretty easy choice for me to make. Compared to Myth, a Tivo's
adaptability seems pretty limited to me- for example I'd like to do full house
distributed video.

> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous little
> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box. Anyone had
> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv? (Specifically, audio: Realtek ALC650,
> video: VIA Savage8) If I could get away with just putting a hauppage card
> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine begins
> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).

I decided to go with a Shuttle SK41G, along with an AMD 2100+ and a generic
bt878 card that I already had around. Saddly, real life stepped in, and I
haven't gotten further past the initial install of Debian. (So I couldn't
answer your 2nd question).

But the reasons I chose it were:
- It's small, very quiet, and looks nice
- Lots of integrated hardware limited the amount of new hardware I had to buy
- The combo of a fast IDE controller, USB 2.0, firewire, and digital audio was
hard to find in the small form factor I wanted.

One thing that bugs me a little bit- at the time, I was planning on putting in
a second tuner at some point in the future. (One of the Matrox AGP hardware
encoders) IIRC, video quality can be less than with software encoding, or the
PVR250. So, if I had the chance again, I'd consider the Asus Pundit too, which
has been mentioned on the list recently.

James Knight wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 03:12 PM, Curtis Stanford wrote:
>
>>> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous little
>>> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box. Anyone had
>>> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
>>> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv? (Specifically, audio: Realtek
>>> ALC650,
>>> video: VIA Savage8) If I could get away with just putting a hauppage
>>> card
>>> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine
>>> begins
>>> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).
>>
>>
>> I had a Shuttle (AMD/nvidia2) and was never successful getting the
>> built in video to work right. In my experience, Shuttles are also
>> noisy little bastards. The fan whine would go up and down constantly,
>> driving me nutso. I've been told that replacing the stock fan with
>> something else would help. However, I ended up taking mine back.
>
>
> If you want reliable advice about the Shuttle PCs you really need to
> specify which model you're talking about. There is no one "Shuttle." The
> amount of noise varies greatly depends on the model. I'm running MythTV
> on the SK41G. It is *VERY* quiet. I understand the SK41G2 isn't nearly
> as quiet because it has an extra fan for the nVidia chipset. The model
> that the SK41G replaced (SK40G) was reportedly very noisy as well.
>
> The built in video (including TV-out) works fine, as does the built-in
> LAN and audio.
>
> James
>

I thought "AMD/nvidia2" would suffice since there is only one Shuttle
with that combination (SN41G2 or something like that). I've heard from
more than one person (including myself) that it's louder than a fart in
church.

Good to know that the SK41G is quieter.

> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users@snowman.net
> http://lists.snowman.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

From: Adam Hirsch <mythtv@quakerporn.com>
>1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out
>MythTV. Is it the geeky
>pleasure of building something oneself? Is it
wanting >to be independent
>from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is
>it the extra features
>that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out
there?

All of the above.

>Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I
>can't quite seem to make
>it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm
>trying to figure out
>why it's still really alluring to me to try building
>one. Figured asking
>why it's alluring to other people might help
>illustrate it.

Here's what I paid:

Duron 1.3Ghz, case, power supply, motherboard - $79
CPU heatsink/fan - $10
256MB DDR RAM - free after rebate
60GB HDD - $49 after rebate
Geforce2 MX400 TV out - $30
BT8x8 TV card - $30 (estimated FMV, had it a while)
soundcard - free (integrated into motherboard)
NIC - free (integrated into motherboard)
IR receiver - $5 (built it myself)

That puts me just over $200, which is about what
the Tivo hardware alone would've cost me. Yes,
the case is ugly, but I have an extension cable
for the IR and a spot to hide it near the TV.
Yes, the fans were noisy but I solved that by
slowing them down with a few resistors. Yes,
I didn't include keyboard, mouse and optical
drive but those things were only used during
the install and weren't required once I moved
the box to the living room. And yes, the
rebates came through with no problems :)

If you really want the Shuttle:
SK41G - $165 after rebate
http://www.essencompu.com/nupplysingar.asp?ID=2862
Athlon XP1700 - $43
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=AXDA1700
256MB RAM - $18
http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com/user_sales_getprod.php/masterid=563028/lot_id=104265/ut=cde5320a71b9a4e6
BT8x8 card - $33
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=KW%2DTV878RF
30GB HDD - $50
http://www.basoncomputer.com/st330610a_o/item.aspx

This puts you at ~$310 not including tax and/or
shipping, which is about what Tivo/ReplayTV
lifetime service alone will cost. And the
Tivo/Replay won't play divx/wmv, won't play mame,
doesn't offer ssh logins, etc.

(*note, I'm picking these prices at random and
am not endorsing any particular vendor in any way)

>2) What have people's experience been with the amount
>of time it takes to
>go from "Machine assembled and hard drive blank" to
>"Machine running mythtv
>reliably, recording, scheduling, playing back"?
>Anyone had a very short or
>very long breaking-in period, i.e. fixing minor
>audio/video glitches,
>getting channel-changes happening reliably, etc?
>Anyone on the list have a
>non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv
>easily?

The first time I did it, it took about 4-6hrs spread
out over several days (worked on it perhaps ~1hr/day).
The second time (swapped around hardware) it took
about 1hr, the third time (hardware upgrade) it took
about 2hrs (hardware incompatibilities).

The only thing preventing my wife from using mythtv
without my supervision is that I consolidated all
the living room electronics onto a cheapo
multi-function universal remote. Switching modes
on the remote is rather confusing. I'll bet if I get
a second remote dedicated to Myth, she might use
it. Or maybe not since we have a hard enough time
trying not to lose our existing remote to the couch
cushions. I'll probably try training her on the
remote first.

-Dennis

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> 1) I'm curious as to what brings people to try out MythTV. Is it the geeky
> pleasure of building something oneself? Is it wanting to be independent
> from TiVo's feature control or fate? Is it cost? Is it the extra features
> that one can't get from the commercial PVRs out there?

like many others, I initially wanted one because I don't trust the
financial stability of replaytv (I didn't want a tivo because it doesn't
do broadband, and I don't want to give up my phone line so the box can
call in and get program listings). Plus, I wanted something that would
play my music (much of it in ogg/vorbis format).

> Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
> why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.

my setup:

$165 - Asus Pundit
$170 - p4 2.5Ghz (I started with a 2.0 celeron, but wanted more speed)
$130 - Seagate 120Gig 7200.7 drive (quietest on the market)
$70 - 512Mb RAM

Granted, I paid wholesale since I work for a systems integrator (we
build rackmount machines), but the prices are pretty close to retail
since we tend to get higher quality gear than is really necessary (I
just grabbed what we had on-hand). For info about the Pundit (of which
I'm a huge fan now), check out some of the list archives from the past
week or so.

My TV card is a PCTV Pro I picked up a year or so ago for $5 after
rebate. I plan to get something better at some point, though.

> 2) What have people's experience been with the amount of time it takes to
> go from "Machine assembled and hard drive blank" to "Machine running mythtv
> reliably, recording, scheduling, playing back"? Anyone had a very short or
> very long breaking-in period, i.e. fixing minor audio/video glitches,
> getting channel-changes happening reliably, etc? Anyone on the list have a
> non-technical family member who's taken to mythtv easily?

once I bit the bullet and grabbed the rpm's, installing myth was REALLY
easy (about 5 minutes). getting my vid card working was a little more
difficult, but that's because I'm working with really new hardware and
there just isn't that much info out there about it.

> 3) the technical question: I think the Shuttle cases are gorgeous little
> boxes, and am thinking of one as an all-in-one mythtv box. Anyone had
> experience, good or bad, with using the onboard audio and s-video from
> shuttle in conjunction with mythtv? (Specifically, audio: Realtek ALC650,
> video: VIA Savage8) If I could get away with just putting a hauppage card
> in there and not needing a separate gfx or sound board, the machine begins
> to look nice and lean (and more importantly, cooler and cheaper).

can't say much here. We've built a few shuttles for clients, and I can
say that the p4 ones are pretty quiet (though the pundit is quieter) -
don't have experience with their athlon stuff, but athlons in general
run hotter and thus require more active cooling.

-Chris

These are all good reasons why we prefer myth over Tivo or replay.

My primary driver is that I would like to burn programs and save them for posterity or share them with friends.
I can now burn my programs to vcd, divix, or dvd.

Kyle Bowerman

On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 06:12:29PM -0700, Chris Petersen wrote:
[snip]
>
> like many others, I initially wanted one because I don't trust the
> financial stability of replaytv (I didn't want a tivo because it doesn't
> do broadband, and I don't want to give up my phone line so the box can
> call in and get program listings). Plus, I wanted something that would
> play my music (much of it in ogg/vorbis format).
>

I pretty much have the same feeling as Chris... although there's one
other thing: Getting under the hood. Its nice to be able to go read the
mythtv code.. to grab the cvs and tweak it a little.

> > Spec'ing out a Athlon/shuttle/WinTV-PVR/IR box, I can't quite seem to make
> > it cost less than a TiVo + a year's service, so I'm trying to figure out
> > why it's still really alluring to me to try building one. Figured asking
> > why it's alluring to other people might help illustrate it.
>
> my setup:
>
> $165 - Asus Pundit

After reading your post I looked these up. They are pretty cool! ;)
Are all of the onboard components supported?

> $170 - p4 2.5Ghz (I started with a 2.0 celeron, but wanted more speed)

Just curious... what did you need more speed for? Planning for something
more demanding? HDTV anyone? ;)

> $130 - Seagate 120Gig 7200.7 drive (quietest on the market)
> $70 - 512Mb RAM
>

I took a different approach than other people did. My setup:

Backend:
Dual Athlon MP1900+ (Tyan S2466N-4M) running Debian sid.
512MB PC2100
80GB 7200rpm Maxtor ATA/133 Drive.
Hauppage WinTV connected to Hughes DirecTV "Oh my god thats a cheap
receiver" receiver.
IR solution: ????? I need some sort of solution, more on this in another
post. Can't change channels right now :( .

Frontend:
PIII 550 on cheap old Asus motherboard running Debian Woody.
128MB PC100
13GB 5400rpm Maxtor ATA drive (working on setting things up so this
parks itself after bootup).
Wireless Logitech USB keyboard (Yes this is bulky, but it definitely fit
my budget of $0 right now).
LinkSys 802.11b PCMCIA card stuck in generic PCI PCMCIA adapter board.
GeForce2 MX 400 w/ S-video out.

Right now I don't run any sort of encryption over the 802.11b, but that
will change if I can justify the extra load of IPSec. The wireless
segment is seperated from the wired segment via a linux firewall, so it
should be cake. ;) The system works *great* except that I can't change
channels yet on the DirecTV box.

I'm a geek, so I already had all of the hardware listed above, collected
from various garage sales and of course the Dualie is my main
development workstation. The only things I had to buy were some s-video
and A/V cables. The frontend box is ugly as hell, but it hides behind my
subwhoofer and needs not be seen. It is super quiet, being a PIII. The
dualie is like a jet engine, but lives in a room at the absolute other
end of the house. :)

[snip]
>
> once I bit the bullet and grabbed the rpm's, installing myth was REALLY
> easy (about 5 minutes). getting my vid card working was a little more
> difficult, but that's because I'm working with really new hardware and
> there just isn't that much info out there about it.
>

Same here, except I grabbed some apt sources.list entries, instead of rpms. ;)

[snip]

> I pretty much have the same feeling as Chris... although there's one
> other thing: Getting under the hood. Its nice to be able to go read the
> mythtv code.. to grab the cvs and tweak it a little.

oh, yeah, I must admit that I like that, too.. especially some of the
features (like mythweb) that the commercial ones don't have.

> After reading your post I looked these up. They are pretty cool! ;)
> Are all of the onboard components supported?

yeah, one of my bosses bought one as a test machine for a client who
likes low-end workstations, and I knew EXACTLY what it would be perfect
for. :) As far as I can tell, everything is (you have to manually
compile the NIC drivers, and I'm having trouble getting them to compile
with the openmosix kernel, but they work with the normal one just fine),
with the exception of the flash memory readers. The flash memory
readers MIGHT work; I just haven't had enough time to poke around with
them (ie. they weren't auto-detected by the redhat 9 installer).


> Just curious... what did you need more speed for? Planning for something
> more demanding? HDTV anyone? ;)

basically, I wanted to use mpeg4 compression at 640x480 instead of
rtjpeg.

> Dual Athlon MP1900+ (Tyan S2466N-4M) running Debian sid.

heh, that's my desktop (well, an asus board). no free pci slots in
there, though, and it's too noisy to leave on all the time (and my
servers in the basement are just p3 systems).

> IR solution: ????? I need some sort of solution, more on this in another
> post. Can't change channels right now :( .

Look at the ATI Remote Wonder. No idea how well it works, or how to get
one these days, but it sounds like a USB dongle that mimics
keyboard/mouse directly - and it's RF instead of IR. I want one, but
will have to wait until I have the $$.

> Frontend:

Sounds similar to what I wanted to do, though I was hoping to use a
passively-cooled crusoe-type motherboard (forget now what they are
called - a friend of mine was installing them into LCD screens to make
some REALLY small terminals). But that would take money.

> The dualie is like a jet engine, but lives in a room at the absolute other
> end of the house. :)

ah, yes, I know that feeling. too bad I have a small house. feels
weird to shut off a linux machine every night.

-Chris

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> > my setup:
> > $165 - Asus Pundit

You mentioned in another message that you work for a computer
distributor. Is the markup really that small? ie, Newegg and a few
others are selling this for $180 with free shipping. If the
wholesale cost is $165, that's not much of a profit margin.

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[offtopic]

Robert Kulagowski wrote:

>You mentioned in another message that you work for a computer
>distributor. Is the markup really that small? ie, Newegg and a few
>others are selling this for $180 with free shipping. If the
>wholesale cost is $165, that's not much of a profit margin.
>
>
Sounds about right. I'm told that profit margins for computer
discounters are about 5-15%. That's why the retail shops all die, at
least here. :-(

> > After reading your post I looked these up. They are pretty cool! ;)
> > Are all of the onboard components supported?
>
> yeah, one of my bosses bought one as a test machine for a client who
> likes low-end workstations, and I knew EXACTLY what it would be perfect
> for. :) As far as I can tell, everything is (you have to manually

Looking around I found reference to the RCA connector on the back being
tv-out and other references to it being SPDIF, is there a jumper for
swapping these on the motherboard (it'd be nice to not have cables hanging
out the front). Since there's S-Video out, I wouldn't really want to use
the composite out anyway. How well does the video out work on this? Can
you post the X configuration you needed to make this work properly?

-- Gerald

From: Pete Hartman <mythtv@elmegil.net>
>I'd be really surprised if such a system performed
>reasonably well, unless
>it was just barely sub 2Ghz.

Where'd you get this idea?

-Dennis
1.3Ghz Duron
480x480 MPEG4 @2200kbps, MP3 @level 7
Pauses live TV just fine
~$200

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> Looking around I found reference to the RCA connector on the back being
> tv-out and other references to it being SPDIF, is there a jumper for
> swapping these on the motherboard (it'd be nice to not have cables hanging
> out the front). Since there's S-Video out, I wouldn't really want to use
> the composite out anyway. How well does the video out work on this? Can
> you post the X configuration you needed to make this work properly?

spdif and rca are completely different protocols (I don't know much
about spdif, but was under the impression that it was optical). And no,
I doubt there's any way to make the rca plug do anything other than rca
video.

Here's the important stuff from my XF86Config file. Basically, the only
REALLY important thing is the XVOnCRT2 section (for some reason, it
doesn't default like it should, and needs to be on to turn on the tv
ports). Also, the ForceCRT2Type also seems to need to be manually
tweaked. I don't think the overscan setting actually does anything
(though I wish it would), but I left it set, anyway.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "sis"
Option "XvOnCRT2" "true"
# Option "ForceCRT2Type" "SVIDEO"
Option "ForceCRT2Type" "TV"
Option "CHTVOverscan" "false"
VendorName "Silicon Integrated Systems"
BoardName "SiS 315/650"
VideoRam 65536
EndSection


-Chris

On Wednesday 14 May 2003 11:48 am, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > Looking around I found reference to the RCA connector on the back being
> > tv-out and other references to it being SPDIF, is there a jumper for
> > swapping these on the motherboard (it'd be nice to not have cables
> > hanging out the front). Since there's S-Video out, I wouldn't really
> > want to use the composite out anyway. How well does the video out work
> > on this? Can you post the X configuration you needed to make this work
> > properly?
>
> spdif and rca are completely different protocols (I don't know much
> about spdif, but was under the impression that it was optical). And no,
> I doubt there's any way to make the rca plug do anything other than rca
> video.

EPIA-M motherboards (at least) have a plug that can be switching between
composite TV-out and SPDIF through a jumper on the motherboard.

Isaac