MythTV freeview box

[fergycool]

Hi all,

here's a little writeup on my MythTV box. MythTV, if you've not heard about, it is a pretty cool application. Basically it's a PVR that does a lot, lot more. It runs on Linux, although there is an OSX port, and rumours of a Windows one too! I've been using it with a pair of Freeview tuner cards here in the UK for a few months now. I've just recently setup a third DVB-s card with an attached monobloc LNB for Astra 19 and Hotbird 13.4. However, that is another story.

The original authors website www.mythtv.org

Since MythTV is a PVR it records everything. This gives the cool (although not exactly original) way to pause and rewind live TV. For UK people, it's like a Sky+ box on steroids!! Except you do not have to pay each month!!

Unlike some other PVR applications on linux, MythTV is really meant to be run on a dedicated box. Its architecture is more client and server than a single application. The ideal MythTV setup is going to be some big monster server running Mythbackend with a lot of noisy drives for lots and lots of fast storage. The backend will also have the CPU power to encode multiple video streams from your multiple DVB-T (or s or c) tuner cards. This is under the stairs or somewhere else out of the way. Then you can have multiple lightweight frontends all running Mythfrontend. Perhaps even diskless boxes, with just a decent video card. (Apparently Mac minis make great fanless frontends!!).

However, I went instead for a single box. Basically for simplicity, and also so less can go wrong!!

You can use any Linux distro you prefer. The main question is to use the one that you are most familar with. I use Gentoo www.gentoo.org, so I went with this. If there is no Linux distro that you prefer then, KnoppMyth is a really cool project that gives you a ready to run MythTV box from a single CD installation. I would suggest Linux newbies go with this!

KnoppMyth forums http://knoppmythwiki.org/
KnoppMyth home http://mysettopbox.tv

As for hardware I used:

• Ati Radeon 9250. A fairly low end card, but easily sufficient for even HD video. It has the great advantage of passive cooling. However, with what I would know now I would avoid ATI and go instead for Nvidia. These cards' drivers can take advantage of onboard MPEG decoding (XVMC), which the ATI cannot.
• Athlon64 + Asus K8N nForce3 250 AGP (Socket 754) Motherboard
• Silverstone Lascala casehttp://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc01.htm Looks great next to my Yamaha amplifier.
• 400w Silverstone ST35F Silent PSU
• A single seagate 320Gb SATA drive
• 
  0.5Gb RAM
• 2 x Haupauge Nova-t PCI cards
• a mini wireless keyboard with built in trackball as the oversize remote

Overall i spent a lot of time configuring this to my satisfaction. Probably somebody who used KnoppMyth would have spent a lot less time. However, I built in a lot of stuff to keep it minimal, and also as crash and fool proof as possible. It does have its other disadvantages too. Since it records everything switching channels can be a pain. To compensate the on screen EPG has a browse mode where you can see what is on other channels without switching channels. The main EPG is pretty good too. AND there's a built in web browser, so I can control the box from any remote browser. This does mean browsing telly listings at work and setting the box to record. Pretty cool I think! With a large enough pipe you could probably stream your recorded programs to wherever you want!! Oh... it does MP3s and DVDs too!

Give it a try!!

Cheers
Ferg

[BGonaSTICK]

Hey, excellent write-up m8

A very interesting project.

What CPU do you have in your box?
When you say it handles HD, do you mean mpeg2 HD or mpeg4 AVC/H.264?
What can you tell us about the video formats and codecs in can handle/employ?

This is a very similar concept to what many of us satellite guys do with the Dreambox (even the little DM-5620) and a big ugly PC.

Your software sounds better developed, but I bet there would be good value in comparing notes
There could even be a little beneficial interbreeding!

I use VideoLAN, and PCD has just developed stream2db to serve DVD's and other streaming video back to the STB.

STICK

[fergycool]

Originally Posted by BGonaSTICK

Hey, excellent write-up m8

Thanks!!

What CPU do you have in your box?

It's a Athlon64 3200+

When you say it handles HD, do you mean mpeg2 HD or mpeg4 AVC/H.264?

Sorry, I was a little misleading with the HD statement. I meant that the graphics card (and the rest of the box) is easily fast enough to play HD. I tested this with downloading some 1080p wmv clips from Microsoft's site.

As for watching HD from DVB-S or DVB-T I'm not sure. From what I can gather there's a Arte HD channel on Hotbird 13. I may give this a go.

As for codecs, it will support H264 with the next release apparently (0.20). If you want to access and compile from the source code then you can try it now. For the moment I'm staying with the latest stable release.

This is a very similar concept to what many of us satellite guys do with the Dreambox (even the little DM-5620) and a big ugly PC.

Your software sounds better developed, but I bet there would be good value in comparing notes
There could even be a little beneficial interbreeding!

I use VideoLAN, and PCD has just developed stream2db to serve DVD's and other streaming video back to the STB.

That all sounds pretty interesting. This satellite world is quite new to me. In fact I only ever had a crappy Cable TV box previously. I generally watch films etc from DVD. Setting this box up has allowed me to watch stuff I want when I want. Almost removing the need for live TV!!

Cheers
Ferg

[BGonaSTICK]

I think you're going to have a lot of fun in the satellite world

With the Skystar card, folks are finding that as the decoding is done in software, they need an outrageously fast dual-core CPU to ensure stable viewing of MPEG-4. I'm sure your Nova-T's are the same, so it'll be interesting to see what you get if you ever have the chance to try MPEG-4 terrestrial.

The Skystar 2 will only do DVB-S and not DVB-S2, so you're only looking at a limited selection of the HD satellite channels. Have a read of some of our other write-ups here, and then go check out:

http://en.kingofsat.net/hdtv.php.

It tells you which is in what format in the header bars.

STICK

[fergycool]

Hi Stick,

thanks for that.

I think spending a little bit more cash on the motherboard and getting a faster chip might have been a better idea in hindsight. I'm at the absolute limit for CPU speed with the Athlon64 3200+. I've not come across any faster ones for this socket.

Anyway, I've a spare PCI card slot left in the box, and I did envisage getting a second DVB-s card so I can record and watch at the same time (i.e. as with the dual freeview cards). I'll spend a bit more time researching the cards available, but I think so far the SS2 has shown great value for money!

Cheers
ferg

[Jimdefruit]

Hi Fergycool, thanks for that write-up, very interesting.

I have an SS2 card in my PC which also has an AMD 64 3200+ processor and an ATI 800GTO video card.

The Astra HD test channel on 19.2E clears and runs very nicely but the system is not fast enough to deal with the BBC HD streamed via my Dreambox to my PC.

I think it is worth waiting for a hardware decoding PCI HD card for the DVB S2 systems. I am sure one will be out sometime.

[fergycool]

Hi Jimdefruit

Originally Posted by Jimdefruit

I have an SS2 card in my PC which also has an AMD 64 3200+ processor and an ATI 800GTO video card.

The Astra HD test channel on 19.2E clears and runs very nicely but the system is not fast enough to deal with the BBC HD streamed via my Dreambox to my PC.

I think it is worth waiting for a hardware decoding PCI HD card for the DVB S2 systems. I am sure one will be out sometime.

Thats interesting to know. Thanks. I'll have a play at recieving the Astra channel tonight.

Cheers
Ferg

[jontydog]

Hi fergycool did you find mythtv very hard to set up m8? I had major difficulty in setting up the database in ubuntu a couple of weeks ago but I have now installed Kubuntu and this seems a lot easier to use so I am thinking about having a go

[fergycool]

Originally Posted by jontydog

Hi fergycool did you find mythtv very hard to set up m8? I had major difficulty in setting up the database in ubuntu a couple of weeks ago but I have now installed Kubuntu and this seems a lot easier to use so I am thinking about having a go

Hi JontyDog,

I had a few difficulties, but nothing too problematic. This box is the second time I have installed MythTV. The previous time was about a year ago, and then i did have a lot of problems. However, this version was much easier.

What problems did you see? I'm at work now, but from memory simply running the script that creates the mysql tables for Mythconverg should be sufficient to get up and running.

If you get problems, try posting them here, and I'll have a look. Although you'd probably get a better response from the MythTV forums.

Incidentally I'm guessing that Kubuntu is a KDE version of Ubuntu? How could you prefer the K desktop over the work of art that is Gnome? :-) (only joshing!!! Don;t want to start a flame war :-)

Cheers
Ferg

[jontydog]

Much prefer KDE m8 while I am still finding my way round linux

Gonna give mythtv another go when I get in from work l8r. Got Kaffeine working fine on hotbird but still struggling to find "open" channels. I just wish someone would port altdvb or progdvb over to linux would make life a lot easier. Will post back tomorrow with any problems and there are bound to be some.