G'day All,
You knew me as FredZ, but for some reason the site no longer accepts my log in. I gave up trying to retrieve my password and reverted to my new alter ego, The GuiGuy.
OK, a couple of months ago I lost the plot trying to play nice with Bill Gates and his (IMO) appalling VISTA HOME PREMIUM. I decided to knuckle down and get MythTV going. After all, the other PCs in my home and SOHO were Linux.
HARDWARE and DISTRO
Research suggested to be careful with hardware selection. Tried and tested will always work better with
MythTV. And best to check the
hardware compatibility list.
The hardware platform I finished up with was an ASUS M3A mobo, AMD AM2 X2 4800+ in a Silverstone LC10 case. I put in 4 X 500G SATA HDDs. GFX is by an Nvidia 7300GT.
Regrettably my new PCIe tuners were not going to work, so initially I installed a couple of old Ultraview PLUS cards and a DVICO DD4. While the DD4 worked, it quickly became apparent that it was no where near as signal sensitive as the Ultraviews. Because I am in a fringe reception area II ditched it and replaced it with a another leftover, a Leadtek 1000.
I tried two distros,
MythDora and
MythBuntu.
Both distros installed quickly and easily. Both identified all hardware except the DD4. It has to be set up manually, but there are
instructions in the MythTV Wiki.
I finished settling for the MythBuntu distro mainly because the other five PCs in our house run on Ubuntu.
LIRC had no difficulty setting itself up for my Microsoft remote control, once I identified which MS remote I actually had. Apparently MS remotes aren't MS remotes.
CONFIGURATION
mythBuntu installs the XFCE desktop, which is lighweight and quick to load. However, the default applications it installs are minimal. I would recommend that you install gedit and a few other useful utilities as soon as the desktop loads.
You are also given the option of installing the proprietary Nvidia gfx drives and codecs. Again, the interface makes it doddle which I found robust and reliable.
THE BACKEND
I always had difficulties grasping the backend concept. Maybe that's a Windows' legacy. This time I read the wiki and made sure my head was straight with what the backend is. You need to configure a backend to get the thing to work. Essentially, the backend is a server that dishes out the media, be it sound, vision, tv etc.
I worked with a printed copy of the wiki pages at hand to step through the back end settings. No major dramas except the the channel scan locked onto the wrong transponders. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to lock onto the transponder or choice. To explain, I am in the signal area of two transponders Nowra and Knights Hill, Illawarra. I need to use the latter because the other is severely affected by weather changes.
THE EPG
Initially I used the Iceguide, because I had a subscription and it is relatively easy to install into MythTV.
However, since then I have installed
The Shepherd. Installing it is a little more fiddly, although the
instructions are clearly written, which is generally unusual for Linux based software.
I couldn't get the Shepherd to update automatically out of MythTV, so I run it as a cron job.
FRONTENDS
The frontend is the user interface to watch and listen to multimedia. It is a straightforward and intuitive interface. "Her Indoors" has given it full WAF marks.
It's setup is straight forward. Especially if the backend concept has been mastered.
Initially I was running a combined backend/ frontend. However, I have since move the LC10 box out of the way and dedicated it as a backend server only. A separate frontend in an ANTEC Fusion mATX multimedia case serves as a frontend in the lounge. I've used mostly passive components and low noise fans to keep it quiet.
NB: The other PCs in the house also have frontends installed, with the obvious benefits,
ARCHIVING
Archiving recorded TV shows is called TRANSCODING in the MythTV jargon. The inbuilt Transcoding functions seemed limiting and primitive to me. So I opted for
NUVEXPORT - installation is straight forward. It is a script that you run from a command line, but it does make it easy to batch convert/ transcode to XVID etc.. IMO the MythTV transcode is capable of producing better quality XVID files, so I run "nuvexport --transcode". It's a bit slower but worth the result.
MAINTENANCE
Because the backend is essentially a database (mysql), it is important to carry out some
maintenance from time to time. The other thing I did on the backend was to install
mondo rescue to maintain an external backup.
IN USE
The system is rock solid, as I have said elsewhere. Sure, it might not be up to the eye candy of MCE or Vista, but neither does it take 10 minutes of coffee grinder hard disk activity to boot and settle.
CONCLUSION
I am absolutely over the top with the outcome. However my memory glands still work, so I can remember that I have previously struggled with MythTV, especially when those deflating "Your Backend Is Not Working" messages used to flash up.
MythDora and MythBuntu have put that behind me. Both install quickly and reliably on established hardware.
And when you get around to running it as a separate backend and have more than one frontend, it really gets encouraging.
I am pleased with my decision to turn my back on Vista and MCE.
FOOTNOTE
I should mention the commercial marking in recorded TV shows. It's part of MythTV and does work very well. It took me a while to work out how to edit recorded video to remove or insert markers, but once again, once I found the right page in the wiki, it became obviously easy.
Cheers
