Myth TV system

[MkIII_Supra]

I am in the process (very slow one at that since I am trying to gather as much information as possible...) of building my own MythTV system.

Right now I have a tower with a Foxconn Winfast AMD K8S755A mother board and an AMD Athlon™ 64 Model 3200+ CPU and 1.25GB PC2700 SDRAM.

I am looking to get a capture card Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350 with NTSC Tuner but I have a couple questions.

Essentially the prime function of this system is to store all my video DVD's so I can call them up when I want to without having to search through the physical disks. As well as allow me to put the physical disks in storage so as to keep them from getting scratched over time. I know I will need a couple 1TB drives and I have found a good deal on one here Samsung Spinpoint F1 3.5" Hard Disk Drive (HD753LJ) I figure 3 of these and I should have enough storage for now.

My question is, looking at the capture card I don't see a way to put the signal back out to my TV. I have an nVidia MX-440-8X-64TV graphics card with a SPFID <is that right?> jack, is that what I plug into the TV to move the signal?

So far I haven't found a really solid hardware how to on MythTV, a lot on the software side, not much on hardware. SO I will be using this post to address issues and questions as they come up. And this is my first one!

[gamblor01]

My question is, looking at the capture card I don't see a way to put the signal back out to my TV. I have an nVidia MX-440-8X-64TV graphics card with a SPFID <is that right?> jack, is that what I plug into the TV to move the signal?

Not quite. S/PDIF is is an audio interface for uncompressed, digital audio signals. It stands for Sony/Phillips Digital Interface Format or something like that. So that's not going to get you the video output.

I'm not familiar with that nVidia card, but basically you will need a card that has some sort of way to plug into your TV. It is going to need one of the following outputs:

- VGA (old standard but still fairly common)
- DVI (much more common these days)
- HDMI (doubt you'll find many cards with this, though you can just get a DVI/HDMI cable or adapter)
- Component (not sure I have ever seen a card with this output...unless it's a special "TV-OUT" connection and they provide you with a funky connector which is what my card does)
- S-video (rare anymore)
- Composite (even rarer!)

My guess would be that you'll get a card with the VGA output or DVI output. Then it's just a matter of getting the correct cable and/or adapter to plug it into your TV.

There's a good guide to doing a lot of MythTV setup on Fedora distros. I don't think it has been updated in quite a while, but you can probably still get some good information from it. It's here:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

Also, what distro are you planning to use? You might look into a distro like MythDora:

http://g-ding.tv/?q=node/3233

Their latest version is based on Fedora 8 and Myth 0.21 so it doesn't get much newer than that (considering Fedora 9 hasn't gone GA yet).

[trilarian]

I have a few suggestions from my experience, though by no means is this the only way to do things. =)

First off, your hard drive(s). I would suggest going with the Western Digital GP series. These guys have variable RPM speeds to run just fast enough to meet the demand, lowering both noise and power consumption considerably. I have two of these setup in RAID0 stripe and I have to place my ear to the case to hear if they are running. They also put off almost no heat when compared to the raptor 10,000 RPM drives in my desktop. I compared prices and they are slightly cheaper than the one you are looking at => http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136151 I would also suggest setting up a RAID array unless you like having multiple mount points(and slower I/O).

Next, your capture card. I'm assuming with the capture card you would like to record live TV and not use this for capturing the DVDs right? If you only want to rip the DVD's, you can do that with just a DVD reader - no need for capture. If you are going the live TV route (which if you watch TV at all, I'd highly recommend) then you have two routes - standard and high definition. For the SD route, I'd suggest the Hauppauge PVR-150. While the 350 you mentioned is newer, the 150 has been around a long time and has perfect support in Linux. You should still be able to get the 350 to work if you want to go that route. Personally, the only reason I would go 350 over 150 is if I had need for the S-Video in(I actually opted for the composite in on the 150 to convert some old VHS to digital format). I don't have any expierence with the HD route, but others may if that is your desire.

Lastly, your video out to your TV. This can be done a couple ways. You can directly connect with a video card(doesn't have to be the same box as your backend), which gamblor01 gives a good description. Or you can connect via an UPnP connection as a client <> server configuration. For me, I'm using a PS3 as the client and my Myth Backend as the server. I hear the xbox 360 also does the trick. There is always the option of if you have a laptop with wireless network, you can place that by your TV and direct connect the laptop and TV while streaming over the network to your backend.

At any rate, let me know where you get lost or confused. I did this a few months back, so its still relatively fresh in my head.

EDIT => Bookmark this page as you will be frequenting it for information (also has HowTo's for multiple Distro's) => http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

[bigboppercole]

I would recommend sticking with the PVR-350, as it both encodes and decodes.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_PVR-350
I've been using one in a MythTV setup for 5+ years. It has an adapter that plugs into the card to provide RCA and S-video hookups to your TV. Tigerdirect has their picture labeled wrong. Where it showd "Video/Audio Input", it's actually output. Look at the pdfs linked toward the bottom of the page.

Steer clear of the MCE edition cards as they can be problematic in Linux (MCE = Windows Media Center Edition)

I agree with the WD HD recommendation. For a MythTV box, they would be superb.

Instead of RAID, I would look at LVM. It seems a bit daunting at first, but is actually very useful once you get the concept figured out. I remember when I initially setup MythTV ~8 yrs ago, it was in the standard documentation. It is far more flexible than RAID. All my new Linux boxes are being setup with LVM.

[trilarian]

Ah, didn't catch the mislabeled 350. =)

The 150 does MPEG encoding in hardware as well, I have it in my box.

You can combine LVM and RAID, is actually how I have mine setup. As I only have the two 1 TB drives, and I wanted more partitions than just a MythTV dump. My FSTAB looks like:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> 		<mount point>   	   <type>   <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            		/proc           	   proc     defaults        0       0
/dev/mapper/raid-root 		/               	   ext3     noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/md0        		/boot           	   reiserfs notail          0       2
/dev/mapper/raid-var 		/var            	   ext3     defaults        0       2
/dev/mapper/raid-swap 		none            	   swap     sw              0       0
/dev/mapper/raid-documents 	/home/trilarian/Documents  xfs      noatime 	    0       0
/dev/mapper/raid-music 		/home/trilarian/Music      xfs      noatime         0       0

[bigboppercole]

...For the SD route, I'd suggest the Hauppauge PVR-150. While the 350 you mentioned is newer, the 150 has been around a long time and has perfect support in Linux. You should still be able to get the 350 to work if you want to go that route. Personally, the only reason I would go 350 over 150 is if I had need for the S-Video in...
Lastly, your video out to your TV. This can be done a couple ways. ...

Actually, the 150s that are available now are mainly the MCE cards, which are newer than the 350s. I would avoid the MCE cards, I was unable to get mine to work a few years ago, as there was absolutely NO Linux support for them. I'm sure that has changed by now, but the 350s have been around longer than the 150s. IIRC Hauppauge came out with the 250s and the 350s first, then came with the 150s later, basically being a chopped down cheaper 250 that relied more on the OS (being Windows) for doing alot of the work.

In my experience, the 350 has been a solid card that was easy to setup, even back when I set mine up years ago. It provides both encoding and decoding, with the corresponding input and output connections. The first system I setup with my first 350 was a PIII 600MHz. Using a card that didn't have a decoder, it would really work the CPU (90-100%) while watch a show, and it would still drop some frames. With the 350, the same box was able to record 2 shows (I had 2 350s in the same box), and watch a recording, all at the same time, and the CPU was hardly working (20-30%, 40% max).

Al

[trilarian]

If the 350 looks more appealing to you, then by all means go with the 350. =) What I have to say below is my reasoning for the 150, not an argument.

When I was getting the hardware for my box, the 150 was suggested and it worked out of the box. On bootup the card was in dmesg and after installing the driver set for it, I was able to record without configuration. I would assume the 350 has roughly the same steps involved.

I don't decode with the encoder card, so I didn't care if hardware decode was an option (as I'd either be viewing the video's from video card output or streaming via the NIC with no decode). My only concern was hardware encode, which both the 150 and 350 have. I only needed one coaxial in and the composite was nice for the handful of VHS I wanted to convert and toss out. The price difference was the thing that made my final decision. Speaking of which, looks like the 150 is ~$60 and the 350 is ~$130.

Awhile back, the MCE was a no-no since that means you need software drivers(usually winblows only) to get the hardware to work. However, Hauppage have been very good to the Linux community and the MCE line of cards are working just fine. In fact, I have the PVR-150 MCE in my box - it worked out of the box and has not given me a single error to date.

Anyway, the point of me responding is not to promote 150 over 350, but just to give you peace of mind that the 150 MCE does work well with Linux if you don't need the extra features of the 350 and want to save some money. If you will be connecting your TV to the video out on the capture card, then the 350 will save you some CPU cycles. If thats a bonus to you depends on how fast your CPU is and do you plan on having that box do other things while watching TV through it.

[bigboppercole]

...However, Hauppage have been very good to the Linux community...

That's always a good thing to hear.

As I alluded to in my post, my experience is a bit dated.

In the OP, he mentioned hooking up to his TV, I wanted to assure him that it was possible, and works well with the 350.

Al

[cybertron]

Hmm, I thought the MCE versions of the 150 were only different in the remote they included. In any case, last I heard 150's were being replaced with something newer that wasn't supported in Linux yet, and sometimes they were still in 150 boxes so you couldn't tell. I think Hauppauge had plans to release drivers for them, but it hadn't happened yet. It's something you'd want to look into before making a purchase at least.

[MkIII_Supra]

First to clarify, there are occasional TV programs that I would want to record, but it's not that important to me really. As for HDTV, I have no plans to get it now or in the future. Regular TV is fine and does what I need it to do. Since I usually only watch DVD's I am looking to build a MythTV system to store my 300+ DVD's so I can have them on demand any time I want. Also to clear some clutter out of the house. I can store the disks for later use.

Do basic cable is about all I have and of that maybe I will watch 1 hour of TV from the cable network a week. Otherwise I watch 1-2 hours of TV 5 days a week (Monday-Friday) and that is a DVD from either Netflix or my own collection. Weekends, I am usually out cycling or camping/backpacking or shooting.

So this project is in the initial phases right now and that is learning what and how. Thank you for the hardware clarifications and such. I am looking forward to setting this up. One thing I have run into is a problem ripping DVD's to my drive. I am using my main system to experiment with DVD ripping and playback but have not been successful in getting a DVD to rip without a whole series of errors.

This is another step in my process, and that is to play with the software first so I can learn it and it's shortcomings. Right now it's shortcomings are it doesn't seem to work.

I have tried the following without success:

Lemon Rip
OGM Rip DVD Encoder
dvdrip

All on my OpenSuSE_64 10.3 AMD X2 system. So that's not looking very good for the home team there and is a show stopper in the software side. Ideas?

PS: I really do prefer a GUI ripping tool if at all possible. I just prefer it for my own self.

[cybertron]

Personally I've used Acid Rip for DVD ripping in the past. Not sure how easy that will be to install on OpenSuse though.

[je_fro]

Dude, I've got a pvr-350 and I rip movies a lot.
Look us up on IRC (see my sig). as we do this all the time.
A gui program to rip dvd's? I've found that dvd's vary widely, and it's difficult to re-use the same commands over and over again on every dvd. Assume they are all different and use mplayer/transcode to manipulate them. Here's some old scripts that might help you out.
http://www.je-fro.net/RRweb/files/mencoder.html