Thinking about setting up MythTV and want advice

[Gates1026]

I have looked a little bit into setting up MythTV for my Slackware 9.1 machine at home. I have yet to buy the tv tuner card because I wanted to see if I could get some advice on the difficulty of setting it all up. The card that I am thinking of going with is the HAUPPAUGE WINTV-GO PCI TV TUNER. It looks to be well supported as far as I can tell (using bttv drivers).

First I was wondering how hard it will be to get the device installed and running using an app like xawtv? I have had problems in the past installing new hardware on an exisiting system. Has anyone had any luck grabbing a new tv tuner (or anything of the sort) and getting the device settings up and running on an exisiting install? I have never had to dabble with creating devices (ex: /dev/video) and dont know how difficult it can be.

Second has anyone dabbled with MythTV setup and would like to give any advice?

Any help on either topic or any opinions would be very much appreciated Thanks in advance for any posts!

[JoeyJoeJo]

I used knoppmyth (knoppix + myth distro) which was easy as heck. The downside to that is you can only use if for myth. I have a myth set top box that I run as my frontend and backend using knoppmyth. It works very well and is easy to set up.

[Gates1026]

I dont think I have the resources to use another computer for a backend, being the poor college student that I am :( I didn't know that there were distros used only for this, pretty cool idea. Have you had any troubles setting up the tuner card? Or did it recognize it on install? I have a feeling that setting up the card could be the biggest hurdle.

[JoeyJoeJo]

Just to let you know, the same computer can be used for the frontend and backend. Yes, the tv card is the hardest part. When I did it, I spent days trying to figure out the problem. I finally read that I had to delete /dev/fb0 and recreate it. However, I don't know if this is a knoppmyth only problem or not.

[Mythstory]

I have spent a couple of weekends setting up a MC pc .
Running linux & Myth TV on my new pc.
I have played with the following linuxes my favorites first.
OpenSUSE 10.3, Mandriva 2007.1 (old Mandrake user), PCLinuxOS 2007, Fedora 6(hardest to install on my hardware), Ubuntu
I have also tested F.First MythDora (Easer to install than Fedora) works but see note *1.
....Mythbuntu works but see note *1 ...and also knoppmyth which I could not get running,
Note 1. I have been able to record 2 HD channels at the same time one on each winfast DVT1000 T But my mythtv front end will not show HD Channels or play HD recordings,
Have successfully used Windows XP and Winfast software to watch and record HD .
On same PC with the screen downsampled (lower resolution) as using 1024x768 on old vga screen. But before I go out and by a new 26 or 32' LCD display .. with HDMI,VGA and component imputs I would like to know if any one else has got the DVT1000 T's working in high Def on MythTv.
Cheers for any feedback or help / Sugestions
Hope this helps you out.
Mtyhstory

[gamblor01]

A buddy of mine setup Myth and it was really nice. At the time it didn't do HD recording though (not from a cable box anyway. If you wanted to record HD you could only record HD coming over the air). I'm not sure if they can get that working yet or not.

In any case, there's a great how-to for Fedora and MythTV. It's probably a bit dated, but even if you don't wind up using Fedora it still has a bunch of great information in it. Hope this helps:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

[Konan]

I had a Myth setup on Knoppix a year or so ago, but it wasn't stable. Was almost like Win98 in that it would just hiccup and freeze on occasion. I was too busy on business stuff back then to play with it, not to mention to have time to watch what it recorded, so I never tried to make it stable. But it was very easy to set up.

The main downside for me was that, being on dial up, I had no way to get any program listings.

As far as my two cents goes, the Happuage line of capture cards (150, 250 and 350) are the best, since they work just fine with Linux, are recognized by MythTV and don't have that macrovision crap built in.

Konan

[Sixstrings]

There is no way for Myth to do digital yet. You might want to wait for a bit fot the digital tuner cards because in a year the box will become useless.

[trilarian]

I am currently setting up a MythTV box and can post back my expierence once completed(should be in the next day or so, just need some free time). So far, it has not been that big of a pain(minus one hiccup, but now that I know is minor...). I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150 MCE card and am using Debian as the distro. For Debian, it is nice in that I can run "apt-get build-dep x" where x is the program I want to compile and the package manager will install any dependancies. I opted for compiling, but there are pre-built packages you can use. My suggestion is get a Hauppauge PVR(150/250/350/500) as Hauppauge is very good about helping the Linux community so the drivers/firmware work very well.

There is no way for Myth to do digital yet. You might want to wait for a bit fot the digital tuner cards because in a year the box will become useless.

This is somewhat true, but you can take steps(if you are building the box and not just asking about a tuner card) to build with the future in mind. What I mean by this is, while HDTV cards are not completely supported yet, they will be in the future. So look at what they require now. If you are going to be recording HD, you will want a dual-core CPU or better, as much RAM as possible, and lots of hard drive space(will want to RAID SATA drives for speed if you are planning multiple HD recordings at the same time).

On the other hand, if you don't really need HD or your PC is already built and you just want to add a Tuner card, then you don't need so much hardware. You can grab a cheaper card and be content with standard definition until you have the means to upgrade. At that point, you can use two cards - one for HD and one for SD - which would allow you to record multiple streams at the same time.

[lazybird]

Sounds good.

[rjhythloday]

This would be a good resource for you to check out first supported capture cards (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Video_capture_card)