Building An Ubuntu MythTV Box

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Building An Ubuntu MythTV Box

With more and more people assembling MythTV boxes as alternatives to Windows Media Center or going out and buying a TiVO, for this introductory article we will share some recommendations of hardware we had used on a recent MythTV build along with other information to consider when building your next home theater PC.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=10098

[immudium]

Probably the biggest reason that I initially adopted MythTV back in 2004 was because of it's excellent HDTV support. I personally think that anyone spending money on new MythTV hardware should be spending it on HDTV hardware rather than legacy analog to digital Hauppauge hardware that's been around for more than a decade. I suppose reviewers keep using these analog cards because you can always add HDTV hardware later, but why start off in the hole?


The MythTV Wiki has quite a bit of information about HDTV. It's just as easy as plugging in your coax cable or pointing your UHF antenna. I find that 90% of my TV watching comes from HDTV and/or digital sources carried over a HDTV transport stream.

I use both the HD-5500 from pcHDTV and the Technisat Airstar HD-5000. These cards handle HDTV over both Air and Cable. And any recent kernel version has the HDTV drivers for these cards built right in.

[modulok]

in the article, you say that you used a pvr-500mce with mythtv. when I scan for channels I only get channels 5 & 6.

what settings did you use for the pvr-500mce in myth-setup?

thanks

[Michael]

in the article, you say that you used a pvr-500mce with mythtv. when I scan for channels I only get channels 5 & 6.

what settings did you use for the pvr-500mce in myth-setup?

thanks

All the default settings were used with the PVR-500. Are you using the current frequency table for your provider (us-cable, bcast, etc...)?

[modulok]

thanks for the quick reply.

pretty sure I tried both bcast and cable. with feisty I shouldn't have to load any drivers/firmware, right?

I did the firmware for my ati hdtv card but currently don't have access to any HDTV content via cable or OTA. This shouldn't be messing with the pvr500, right?

[Michael]

thanks for the quick reply.

pretty sure I tried both bcast and cable. with feisty I shouldn't have to load any drivers/firmware, right?

I did the firmware for my ati hdtv card but currently don't have access to any HDTV content via cable or OTA. This shouldn't be messing with the pvr500, right?

The ATI firmware shouldn't be messing up with the Hauppauge PVR-500 unless you are selecting it as the video input source.

Additional MythTV + Ubuntu information is available on their community Wiki @ https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV

[modulok]

that is the installation guide I used with my box.

I really just need the settings in mythtv for the capture card and input connections sections.

[Michael]

that is the installation guide I used with my box.

I really just need the settings in mythtv for the capture card and input connections sections.

The box isn't up right now, but they were the default settings and the frequency table was us-cable. In the drop down menu the PVR-XXX (I think that's how it was displayed) was selected. Though depending upon who provides your cable, you may not have us-cable.