[Cialug] May Meeting Notes

[Theron Conrey]

timwilson011 at mchsi.com wrote:

>Here are the meeting notes for May 2005.  Thanks Theron for giving me additional
>information.
>
>Meeting Notes 05/18/2005
>
>MythTV presentation by Theron Conrey
>
>The Hardware:
>Case – The case in this project is a Silverstone SST-LC02.  It can be purchased
>from New Egg at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811163006
>for $150 + S&H.  This case has a bay for a CD/DVD Drive/Burner.  Editor’s note:
> While looking for information on this case, I found other Silverstone cases
>that might also be suitable for a media center:
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811163046
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811163040
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811163025
>
>Motherboard – A CHAINTECH 7NIF4 Socket A (Socket 462).  It is an NVIDIA nForce2
>IGP chipset, Micro ATX form factor.  This too can be purchased from New Egg at
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813152051 for $72 + S&H.
>Presenter’s Note: This motherboard does not allow over-clocking.  An ideal
>solution would be to get a board that does, and an AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ (35W)
>266MHz FSB Barton Processor. 
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103440.  They over-clock
>well, and when not over-clocked, the heat produced is much less (better for
>smaller cases, quieter, etc.).  The XP-M Barton processors ship under-clocked. 
>If you put this processor in this board, you’ve got to be able to adjust the
>voltage to get the correct clock speeds.
>
>Processor – Athlon XP 2800+ 333MHz FSB.  Probably doesn’t need to be this
>powerful, unless you are running both the MythTV front-end and back-end on the
>same box.
>
>Video Capture/Tuner Card – The Retail Box version of the Hauppauge PVR-250.  It
>has S-Video In, Composite In, and RF In.  Infrared remote included.  See
>http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/products/data_pvr250.html for more info.
>
>Memory – 512MB DDR
>Hard Drive – Western Digital 160GB
>
>Video - It is extremely important to have a very well supported video card for
>video out.  Nvidia seems to be really good.  NV18 GeForce4 MX – nForce GPU has
>video out that is supported.  You must use the Nvidia accelerated driver for Linux.
>
>Video from the Capture card and video from the SVGA port can be run simultaneously.
>
>Software:
>This box is using Debian as the Linux distro.
>
>NTP is pretty important for MythTV to keep your clock at the correct time. 
>Otherwise, recordings could start too early or too late.
>
>The biggest problem was getting the IVTV drivers running.  Hauppauge cards can
>be difficult to get running.  Grab the latest CVS of the IVTV drivers.  Instead
>of doing make install, put into a Debian package and install it.  See
>http://ivtv.sourceforge.net/. 
>
>Once you get snow on the display, then you can start installing MythTV.
>
>MythTV – http://www.mythtv.org 
>Start by running mythbackend.  Then run mythfilldatabase to get the listings
>from http://www.zap2it.com (requires a survey to allow downloading of listings).
>
>MythTV uses MySql as the database.
>
>To start the interface, run mythfrontend.
>
>You can add in the DVD module.  It allows you to rip a DVD.
>
>There are a bunch of modules that can be retrieved via apt-get on Debian.
>
>There are other menus to get to change the default MythTV menu.
>
>Fast-forwarding can cause pixelation.
>
>You can program recordings remotely via the web.
>
>Other related information:
>KnopMyth installs a lot of stuff by default.
>
>Hardware encoder cards are suggested so you can record a program and watch a
>recording at the same time.
>
>It is recommended to use XFS as the file system.  Theron is using ReiserFS.
>
>You can get a Hauppauge PVR-250MCE for about $85.  A PVR-500 is $200 from
>Hauppauge.  You can probably get it for about $170.
>
>Mythfrontend can be run on X-Box, Windows, Linux, Mac, and others.
>
>Running the front-end on a separate box will allow you to put a less powerful
>machine in your entertainment center, and running the backend somewhere else,
>where it requires more power (and makes more noise).  Programs are sent over the
>network.  HighDef programs do not stream well over anything other than Gigabit
>Ethernet.
>
>There are people using EPIA motherboards, with an MPEG-4 encoder for HighDef.
>
>What about 64-Bit processors?  There have been threads, but not sure if there
>would be any benefit.
>
>There is a good write-up by Jared Wilson on installing MythTV on Fedora.  Add
>MythTV to the yum.conf and it will install it.  See http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/ 
>
>Broadcast flag has been temporarily struck down.  However, congress can pass a
>law to implement it for the FCC.
>
>Related info from last month’s notes:
>Hauppauge cards are supported by most modern distributions.
>See http://www.hauppauge.com for more details.
>The Hauppauge PVR-150 is newer and cheaper than the PVR-250.  The PVR-350 has an
>MPEG-2 hardware encoder and decoder, where the 250 and 150 decode in software. 
>The PVR-150 and 350 have a hardware Video CD encoder, the 250 does not.
>PVR Cards are best for slower machines, but any TV tuner card will work with
>MythTV, as long as there are Linux drivers for the card.  Without a PVR card (or
>equivalent), you would probably need 1GHz or more.
>MythTV Features:
>Basic video editing
>PIP support with more than one tuner
>Rip and play music in MP3, OggVorbis, and other formats.
>Picture Viewer
>There is a front-end to play MAME, NES, SNES, and other games.
>Weather module
>For more, see http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures 
>
>Check out http://www.afterdawn.com for transcoding information.
>
>Other tidbits:
>NeoOffice for Mac.  Basically OpenOffice, but replaced C with Java.
>
>
>
>--
>Tim W.
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>
>  
>
"It is recommended to use XFS as the file system. Theron is using ReiserFS."

Thanks for reminding me :)