Just setup mythTV.

[Faustus]

A friend and myself just took an extra box of his (P4 1.8ghz) threw in a PVR250 and installed KnoppMyth.

Wow it was easy, there are a few bugs to work out such as the network card we are using is apparently not supported so the channel info didn't come down correctly, and we still haven't got the remote up.

However, considering its a project that *I* was involved in and considering it also involved linux it went very well. Video quality is very nice (actually somehow I think its better then WinMCE or the other Win PVR clones), and the default options are very nice.

[rallynavvie]

I never got it to work on my old video workstation. I was running the MythTV build on FC2 though. And then there was that huge issue with the NVTV tuner card not cooperating with the AMD762MP chipset in there. I've actually been doing pretty well with MCE2005 and my PVR250, but I found I needed to run some XP apps in the background of my HTPC to really utilize the two processors.

I think for those familiar with Windows that MCE is the better option since it can double as just another Windows box. The Linux HTPC platforms may be a better solution if you're building an HTPC for just that as they tend to run a lot quicker and on lesser hardware because you can tweak the kernel down to only the necessities.

[Faustus]

Exactly, run mythTV as a dedicated box and KnoppMyth made everything VERY easy. Got to bypass trying to setup MythTV from scratch and it came with more stuff installed then a basic mythTV.

The install comes with such as the ability to create vcd,kvcd, and even DVDS straight within the Interface. It seems to already have some versionof MAME and a nes/snes emu installed.

What I'm saying is when it comes to linux I can like use sudo, make a directory, change some permission IF I know how to type them out and thats about it. Even so we got it up and running.

[rallynavvie]

That's the other nice thing about having that on a Linux core, there are a few more folks writing 3rd party apps for it than there are with MCE. I looked around for old console game emulators when I was putting my system together and couldn't find anything. May be something available now but that's pretty cool that it comes with the build. I've been wanting to play ChronoTrigger again

[Garibaldi]

Does MythTV pick up streaming broadcasts or just stuff with a tv tuner?

[rallynavvie]

Depends on what you mean by "streaming". If you mean view streaming video over IP then yes. I'm guessing it would take any other sort of streaming protocol as well as long as there were a viable player for it. Isn't the MythTV player loosely based on the VLC open-source player?

[Faustus]

No clue actually. Likely either it or mplayer one or the other I'd assume.

I do know it plays files off the hard drive fine, no clue on streaming stuff.

I'm building on myself but it will have to wait utnil I can afford a new case, big hard drive, and a PVR-150 video card.

[rallynavvie]

Are you making it solely an HTPC? If I were to go that route from scratch I'd definitely look into an SFF. Most of the SFF boards have all the onboard bits (USB 2.0, FireWire, GbE, audio good enough for cinema playback) and room for a tuner card, a good video card, two hard drives, and an optical drive. That's pretty much all you need for an HTPC, and since it's a SFF you could feasably take it with you places. I'm seriously considering doing this myself with how cheap the older processors are getting now. Since you don't need the latest and greatest I was thinking maybe a 2.8 P4 would work well.

[Garibaldi]

Depends on what you mean by "streaming". If you mean view streaming video over IP then yes. I'm guessing it would take any other sort of streaming protocol as well as long as there were a viable player for it. Isn't the MythTV player loosely based on the VLC open-source player?

Great, thanks for the quick response!

[Faustus]

Are you making it solely an HTPC? If I were to go that route from scratch I'd definitely look into an SFF. Most of the SFF boards have all the onboard bits (USB 2.0, FireWire, GbE, audio good enough for cinema playback) and room for a tuner card, a good video card, two hard drives, and an optical drive. That's pretty much all you need for an HTPC, and since it's a SFF you could feasably take it with you places. I'm seriously considering doing this myself with how cheap the older processors are getting now. Since you don't need the latest and greatest I was thinking maybe a 2.8 P4 would work well.

I already have the mobo and cpu and ram.Its a mATX board so I have that to work with HOWEVER I still need a case with full PCI cards instead of MiniPCI so that makes case selection a little more difficult. Also I'm gonna need something cheap as possible. Not alot of cash for the project and somehow I need a LARGE hard drive and PVR card in there.