Archive for the ‘MythTV’ Category:
What I have tried… (part 1)
I started my Mythtv building with a Haugpauge 500 tuner card, 20 gb hard drive, and knppmyth. at the time the ivtv drivers for hauggpauge tuner cards was not very mature and could not handle the haugepauge 500 cards very well. The haugepauge tuner also did not fit in the computer that I wanted it to fit in. One bonus to this tuner was the fact that it also had a built in FM tuner for raido signals. I really didn’t care about this feature but I thought it was a nice addition.
Knoppmyth was easier than I could have ever imagined to install and set up but it did not include support for the Haugpauge 500 card that I was trying to use. One problem I had with knoppmyth was because most steps were done for me I had no idea how to add my own things or edit certian files to make it the way I wanted it. It was kinda like picking up someone elses project and trying to make it your own.
I attempted to use Mythdora which is very similar to Knoppmyth but instead of using Debian it used Fedora Lunix. I was told that it was a little bit more “state of the art” with its driver support but I found that I did not like Fudora as much as I liked Debian.
After trying the self installers I decided I would just try and build Mythtv myself from scratch. I mean how hard could it be? I started with Debian Sarge. I got Debian installed and then started reading documentation on how to get the newest ivtv drivers installed, media programs, and Mythtv.
I quickly gave up on Debian because, well, because there was to much documentation to read. I didn’t have time to read book upon book of documentation I just wanted to get mythtv working. At this point I took my first break from Mythtv. Things looked too difficult so I put it on the side for a month to figure out what I was going to do.
Worklog
I have been working on Mythtv for over a year. I am making a worklog of what I have done to get the installation working. I will start this series of posts with what hardware I will making my Mythtv box with.
The computer I will be using is a HP Evo D510
My particular computer has a 1.8 Pentium 4 processor, 512 mb DDR ram, 40 gb hard drive.
The extra hardware I have added to the computer are Nvidia 6200 video card, Turtle beach audio advantage micro (for optical audio), and a DIVICO Fusion HDTV gold 5 plus tuner card.
My purpose for this computer is to be able to watch and record HD shows and also play DVD’s and listen to music. I did not think that would be a daunting task but I have found differently along the way. My main goal for this computer is to allow the watching of TV, listening of music, and watching movies to be seemless and easy. I do not want to have to change inputs on my tv, turn on my receiver, or turn on my computer to do what I want it to do.
The OS I will be using is Kubuntu 6.06. The software I am using to control the HD watching and recording is Mythtv. I hope to let Mythtv control the music and DVD’s also but that is not required.
One catch to all of this is I am not a advanced Linux user. I have not been using Linux my whole life and I have never compiled my own kernel. I have been playing around with Linux in the form of live cd’s for about 3 years and I think with tutorials that already exist and irc rooms I can make this computer work exactly how I want it to.
I will try to keep this as up to date as I can with failures and progress so that anyone else with similar hardware or similar goals can join in my struggle.