MythTV 0.20 released.

[fergycool]

Originally Posted by jontydog

Got it sorted a lot better on Sunday night when everyone was asleep and I had a bit of peace.

Cool!!!
[quote Also I am not sure whether my PC has enough power to actually run something like that its only a p4 1.7gig with 512 ram
[/quote]

From what I can know you are on the limits with that hardware. However, you'll only be recording/viewing a maximum of a single channel at a time, as you only have single tuner. As a benchmark I use a Athlon64 3200 chip. With this I can easily record three channels. Although whilst doing so the hard drive sounds like its tunneling to Australia :-)

What graphics card do you have? If you have NVIDIA you can use XVMC, which is a way of offloading some of the MPEG decoding to the graphics card away from the main CPU. This means your main CPU is much less underworked. Unfortunately although the actual graphics hardware is present in ATI chips, the ATI Linux driver is not written to take advantage of it!!

Cheers
Ferg

[jontydog]

I have a 128 meg nvidia geforce FX5500

[fergycool]

Originally Posted by jontydog

I have a 128 meg nvidia geforce FX5500

I reckon that is a decent enough card. In fact I was thinking of ditching my ATI Radeon 9250 and getting that one instead. Mainly due to the better Nvidia driver support under Linux.

I think that's one of the fastest NVIDIAs you can get that has passive cooling. Is that true?

Cheers
ferg

[jontydog]

dunno about the passive cooling fergy I just know its a damn fine card for what I use my PC for. I play the odd game watch a bit of telly and burn cds and dvds and that is about it

[imported_Mogwa_]

Knoppmyth from http://mysettopbox.tv is a nice way to install mythtv if you have a spare pc.

ive been running it for a few months now with 2 x nova-t DVB-T cards. hoping to add a nova-s for sat very soon so i can get the german channels for the missus.

Im running on a nvidia 6200, works very well.


link modified.

[fergycool]

I gave KnoppMyth a go first, and it is pretty good. I ended up using Gentoo as that is the Linux distro I am most familar with, so although it took longer to setup, I can maintain it much better. A mate is using KnopMyth, and with hardly any linux experience he set it up fine.

MythTV rocks :-)

I've got a fairly similar setup to ou now. 2 x DVB-T cards with a single DVB-s. If it's the German channels you are after, then pointing to Hotbird and Astra (as I am doing) will surely please the missus!!

There's some pretty decent German channels, including quite a few (e.g. proSieben) with Dolby digital sound.

Cheers
Ferg

[BGonaSTICK]

Deviating from the subject slightly, does anyone have any experience of running twin satellite cards with KnopMyth/MythTV or any other Linux distros?

I'm particularly interested in the Skystar2's or Nova-S cards. I heard a long time back that there were issues with running two identical drivers concurrently (at least under Windows...) but I suspect that Linux wouldn't have a problem with that.

I have a media-PC/server concept on the back burner but I'm just waiting for something to take my fancy really.

I was just going to use it as a streaming hub, but it does seem kinda empty inside the case

I think I'm leaning more towards having an XBOX take care of the streaming thing now.

[Gav]

Its sorta of subject but in regards to the specification of computer required, I have a KnopMyth box downstairs that has dual DVB-T tuners. It runs fine and its only an AMD XP 2400+ (1.8Ghz) / 512MB Thing. The graphics are handled by a Nvidia Nforce 2 Chip (Built into the motherboard).

I know DVB-T & S have next to nothing in common, but I shouldn't think that you'd have any problems on a P4 1.7Ghz.

I don't think Graphics cards are that important as I've used both the built in Nvidia Nforce 2 Chip & a Rage 128 Pro (32MB) Card and they both work fine for standard definition terrestrial TV.

When my SkyStar2 card arrives I'll put my theory to the test - but I don't think you can use SkyStar2s with Nforce Motherboards, so it'll probably end up in another sys.

[fergycool]

Hi,

if the power of the machine is an issue, then Nvidia cards are the way to go as the Linux drivers can take advantage of the onboard hardware MPEG decoding, via XVMC, something that none of the ATI drivers can do! So playing whilst recording on the other would be less of a struggle.

That being said I can watch, and record on my 2 x dvb-t and 1 x dvb-s all at the same time with no real problems. The hard drive feels like it may explode, but otherwise it keeps up!

As to twin DVB-S cards, wait a couple of weeks until I have bought my 2nd one, and I'll be your Guinea pig :-) Although I think I'll be asking for advice before hand as to a 2nd LNB/ switch to connect it to!

Cheers
ferg

[BGonaSTICK]

BTW the rev 2.6x SS2's only have a problem with certain nForce boards. The 2.6x requires PCI 2.1 (5V).

http://www.technisat.com/datasheets/....2.6x_1281.pdf

Mine runs perfectly on an ASUS A7N8X (which is PCI 2.2 but can still operate at 5V).

This taken from quatech.com

The original PCI standard required that plug-in boards use 5V power provided by the PCs motherboard. As the PCI standard evolved, the option was added for a 3.3V power source. Now, with the latest PCI 2.3 release the 3.3V power supply is required and the 5V power supply is obsolete.

In order to make sure that a plug-in board receives the correct voltage (as getting the wrong voltage would cause the PC to be badly damaged) a different set of keys was designed for each voltage type. The key is the arrangement of gold fingers at the bottom of the board. When a board is inserted into a PCI slot, those goldfingers fit into the appropriate socket. Motherboards supplying 5.5V slots can only accept PCI cards keyed for 5V. Motherboards supplying 3.3V slots can only accept PCI cards keyed for 3.3V.

Both PC manufacturers and PCI board developers realise that users would optimally like a combination of both options. So, some motherboards provide universal connectors that can accept both 3.3V and 5V keyed PCI cards. Likewise, some PCI cards specifically designed to function with either a 3.3V or 5V power supply use a special key that will fit into either type of motherboard connector. These boards are called UniversalPCI boards.

Note that as stated above, the newest PCI 2.3 release has made the 5V power supply obsolete. This means that many of the newer computers can ONLY accept 3.3V PCI or UniversalPCI I/O cards.

Now I've gone really off-topic ops: :spite: