26.11.08
MythTV
For a quick breather away from the piano, I decided to set up a MythTV box.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, MythTV is the Linux DVR project. It also has a lot of optional plug-ins (installed seperately) for things like Weather, News, NetFlix queuing, etc. Not having a digital capture card makes my success thus far limited, but allow me to tell you what I have learned.
First of all, for those who are interested in different types of cards out there, here are the different terms that get thrown around:
* NTSC [in terms of broadcast] = analog/"your grandmother's television". Think the TV with two knobs, the first one you turn to "U" to make the second knob work.
* ATSC = new, hip digital broadcast TV [officially taking off Feb 2009]
* Clear QAM = The "free" broadcast channels your local cable provider gives out. Usually includes the ATSC channels in your area. For those who are interested, my research shows that Cox Cable has a whopping 6 Clear QAM channels available in Norman, OK.
* DVB = Digital Video Broadcast. DVB-T is terrestial, DVB-C is cable, DVB-S is satellite.
With the basic terminology out of the way, have fun looking for good cards. Reviews are limited. You might enjoy these handy posts for tutorials on installing MythTV and selecting cards:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO.html#toc5 [Installing MythTV]
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Video_capture_cards [Capture Cards]
There are a lot of pre-requisites, including some that aren't listed. The big one is of "Qt3MySQL" [why they don't list it as an actual pre-req, I don't know]. The ones listed in the tutorial include:
mysql, gcc, freetype2-devel, xorg-xserver-devel, qt-devel and lame.
Also required:
qmake, Xv, QT3MySQL, mplayer, ffmpeg, transcode, many others
Pro Tip!
If while making a program you get lines that show...
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lMERPMERP
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Do a search in your package manager for MERPMERP. Many times, that will resolve it and you can resume MAKEing your program.
Anyway, when you go to MAKE the program, assuming you have everything, it will take about 30+ minutes to compile with a pretty decent CPU, so I recommend a good lunch.
Once everything is installed, run mythfilldatabase to populate your SQL backend with channel data from your card. If you don't like something you've done during the initial setup, don't worry... you can always run mythtv-setup again.
As a last note, MythPlugins is worth installing at least for MythArchive. Unless you want to purchase a nice JBOD system for harddrives, install it and play around with the "Archive" [burns recorded shows to DVD]!
As I hear more about cards, plug-ins and more, I'll keep you posted.
Regards,
Brandon
For those of you who are unfamiliar, MythTV is the Linux DVR project. It also has a lot of optional plug-ins (installed seperately) for things like Weather, News, NetFlix queuing, etc. Not having a digital capture card makes my success thus far limited, but allow me to tell you what I have learned.
First of all, for those who are interested in different types of cards out there, here are the different terms that get thrown around:
* NTSC [in terms of broadcast] = analog/"your grandmother's television". Think the TV with two knobs, the first one you turn to "U" to make the second knob work.
* ATSC = new, hip digital broadcast TV [officially taking off Feb 2009]
* Clear QAM = The "free" broadcast channels your local cable provider gives out. Usually includes the ATSC channels in your area. For those who are interested, my research shows that Cox Cable has a whopping 6 Clear QAM channels available in Norman, OK.
* DVB = Digital Video Broadcast. DVB-T is terrestial, DVB-C is cable, DVB-S is satellite.
With the basic terminology out of the way, have fun looking for good cards. Reviews are limited. You might enjoy these handy posts for tutorials on installing MythTV and selecting cards:
http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO.html#toc5 [Installing MythTV]
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Video_capture_cards [Capture Cards]
There are a lot of pre-requisites, including some that aren't listed. The big one is of "Qt3MySQL" [why they don't list it as an actual pre-req, I don't know]. The ones listed in the tutorial include:
mysql, gcc, freetype2-devel, xorg-xserver-devel, qt-devel and lame.
Also required:
qmake, Xv, QT3MySQL, mplayer, ffmpeg, transcode, many others
Pro Tip!
If while making a program you get lines that show...
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lMERPMERP
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Do a search in your package manager for MERPMERP. Many times, that will resolve it and you can resume MAKEing your program.
Anyway, when you go to MAKE the program, assuming you have everything, it will take about 30+ minutes to compile with a pretty decent CPU, so I recommend a good lunch.
Once everything is installed, run mythfilldatabase to populate your SQL backend with channel data from your card. If you don't like something you've done during the initial setup, don't worry... you can always run mythtv-setup again.
As a last note, MythPlugins is worth installing at least for MythArchive. Unless you want to purchase a nice JBOD system for harddrives, install it and play around with the "Archive" [burns recorded shows to DVD]!
As I hear more about cards, plug-ins and more, I'll keep you posted.
Regards,
Brandon
Labels: brandon mythtv dvr linux
posted by Brandon Bagwell # 20:19 
