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Media Software Linux Entertainment

Screencasts of Installing MythTV Via MythDora 4.0 173

Posted by kdawson from the simple-as-it-gets dept.
peterdaly writes "MythDora 4 is a MythTV 'in-a-box' style distribution based on Fedora Core 6. With the help of a RedHat employee and author Jarod Wilson, MythDora 4 has made great strides in hardware compatibility and ease of installation. It is designed to format your hard drive and install everything needed for a fully functional MythTV System. MythPVR.com has created a three-part screencast of the installation process covering MythDora installation, configuration, and MythTV setup. If you have had problem installing MythTV in the past due to hardware compatibility issues, it might be time to give it another chance."
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Screencasts of Installing MythTV Via MythDora 4.0 More

Screencasts of Installing MythTV Via MythDora 4.0

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  • Fedora? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfr ... om.net minus bsd> on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @05:51PM (#19315559) Homepage Journal
    Having recently fled from the barren dependency hell of Fedora, (to Feisty), I am perplexed as to why anyone wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro of any kind would choose Fedora as their base distro. Hardware detection was... OK, but there were innumerable problems with package management, configurations and yes, software availability. I mean, will the box play mp3 files? DVDs? Fedora is not a distro known for these capabilities.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 )
      I don't disagree, but other people will. Is there any way out of packaging fragmentation lane? Exactly how egregious would RedHat's packaging have to be before people switched to debs? Alternatively, what could possibly get people to switch to rpms?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

        Is there any way out of packaging fragmentation lane?

        Yes. [gentoo.org]

    • Re:Fedora? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by scribblej ( 195445 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @05:57PM (#19315607)
      As someone who has been running MythTV on Ubuntu boxes for years now, I agree. Skip Redhat.

      Installing MythTV on modern versions of Ubuntu is easy:

      apt-get install mythtv-server mythtv-frontend

      That's it, you're done*!

      (* I assume; I run my clients and server on seperate machines and the server is still a few versions behind the Ubuntu curve)

      • Re:Fedora? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:00PM (#19315623) Homepage
        Meh, the same is true of Fedora, which is what I used to build my myth front/backends. Honestly, why all the hate?
        • Well, I'm not a hater... Fedora's package management was atrocious the last time I tried it, abotu seven years ago. To say it is now wouldn't be fair of me.

          What I love about Debian and therefore Ubuntu is ... if it's not in the package manager, I probably shouldn't be running it. Redhat encourages people to download packages from third-parties(*)... which is going to be a real problem if it ever becomes widely adpoted.

          (* because so few things are available as part of a distro. Last time I checked the dif

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
            (* because so few things are available as part of a distro. Last time I checked the difference was something like 16,000 packages in Debian and 1000 in Redhat?)

            Core & Extras (the default setup repos), in Fedora not Redhat, currently have a little over 7,000 packages.

            Plenty more if you enable livna or atrpms for patent-encumbered/restricted things.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mcvos ( 645701 )

            What I love about Debian and therefore Ubuntu is ... if it's not in the package manager, I probably shouldn't be running it.

            Nonsense. Third-party stuff works fine. I'm not sure if you're talking about third party .deb files (like Cedega, which works fine) or software that doesn't come in a .deb (like firefox, which works a lot better than the crippled firefox in Ubuntu), but both are perfectly valid options for Ubuntu users.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gregbaker ( 22648 )
        I just did a fresh MythTV install with Feisty a few weeks ago, and that was it exactly. It automatically recognized my Hauppauge 250, and all was good.

        I had to edit a couple of lines in the LIRC config for the remote, but that was all.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jridley ( 9305 )
        I tried building my myth box on ubuntu last weekend. Ubuntu and myth were trivial, but I spent a good 6 hours and read about a dozen howtos and couldn't get lirc running my pvr150 remote and blaster. Even if everything else is working perfectly, it's a no-go without lirc. This happens to me every time; everything except for one dumb thing works and I'm SOL.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) *
          You might try Knoppmyth; it's a Debian semi-equivalent to MythDora. I have a PVR-150 and I'm in the process of getting it set up with the remote. It's not quite out-of-the-box ready, you still need to do some tweaking for the PVR-150s receiver and blaster, but it's not too bad (or so I've heard).

          They have some decent support forums too, although unfortunately they're not open to the public (you have to register even to read, for reasons I don't quite get -- bandwidth, maybe). There should be a HOWTO in ther
          • I looked at Knoppmyth months ago but they didn't recognise SATA hard drives during the autamatic installation at the time. If this has changed I'd be more inclined to try it again.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jridley ( 9305 )
            Another remote might be an option but I need a blaster as well since I use satellite. Besides, I *have* a remote and blaster, and they work just fine under Windows and GBPVR so I don't really want to spend money because Linux is hard to set up.
            Of course, if I ever go with Linux on the desktop I'll probably have to spend money due to Linux shortcomings because it looks like there will never be good drivers for my Canon i960. You can argue that this is Canon's fault for not releasing programming info, but i

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zCyl ( 14362 )

          I spent a good 6 hours and read about a dozen howtos and couldn't get lirc running my pvr150 remote and blaster.

          I feel your pain. This happened to me as well for a time, and it's compounded by the fact that some of the pvr150 boards have defective hardware. This page [blushingpenguin.com] has what you need to set it up. If you get all that in place, and it's still not working, try a few cold boots. Sometimes the hardware to process the IR locks itself in an anomalous state, and the only cure is to completely power off.

          Good l

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
        Really, so that installs and configures and sets up the databases for MySQL? Does that set up all your channels, the XML TV feed and all the other stuff that is required. After messing around with MythTV for a few hours and getting no where, I found SageTV and bought that. I've been happy ever since. I'm using the windows version right now, but they do have a Linux version, and if it works even half as good as the windows version, then it beats MythTV hands down. Especially on the ease of setup issue

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by weighn ( 578357 )

          ...sets up the databases for MySQL...set up all your channels...XML TV feed
          I set up MythTV last weekend on Ubuntu 7.04. This article [webhop.net] is a bit dated but helped with everything you mention. Although, in Australia we have limited support for XMLTV (that I can find).
        • http://www.gbpvr.com/ [gbpvr.com] does most of what MythTV does but for Windows PCs. I've used it with a PVR500 twin DVB-T tuner and it's almost flawless. And it's free though obviously donations are encouraged.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jridley ( 9305 )
            I've been running GBPVR for about a year now. I went to it when I couldn't get Myth running (at the time the PVR150 was barely supported). I've tried Myth 2 times since then and keep going back to GBPVR.
            I just downloaded and burned MythDora; I'll try that soon, this will be the first time I've tried one of the dedicated Myth distros. Crossing my fingers.
            GBPVR actually works totally find. I would just rather run Myth because it's a little more flexible, and I have some jobs that I need a 24-hour-on machi

        • After messing around with MythTV for a few hours and getting no where, if it works even half as good as the windows version, then it beats MythTV hands down.

          Since you gave up after a few hours, how on Earth can you pass credible judgement on whether one is better than the other? You talk as if ease of setup is a virtue. On Slashdot. Setting up my MythTV box, even with Knoppmyth easing the process, still allowed me to learn a lot about how the program works. If I had a one-click install solution, I'd be scr

          • It's the same problem I have with Gentoo. If I can't install the product, I'm never going to get to a point where I want to use it. I think that things should be as easy to install as possible so that people who actually want to just use it with the default option can use it. 15 minutes with SageTV and I was up and running, and ready to explore the features. After 2 or 3 hours with MythTV I couldn't even get it to start up correctly. I couldn't imagine how long it would take me to get everything worki
      • For what it's worth, to install the MythTV packages on Fedora 6, the general procedure is:

        yum install mythtv-suite
        The above assumes you've got the ATrpms repository enabled. If you haven't, you can install FedoraFaq.org's handy repo package:

        rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/yum
        Try not to get caught up in the complexity. ;-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawkbug ( 94280 )
          Thank you - I'm tired of all the RedHat hating because RPM sucks by itself. YUM has been a great tool for RPM based systems for about, oh, I'd say 4 years now if I remember correctly. I've been using Fedora and CentOS without issue for about 3 years as a result. I'm very happy. I've also tried Ubuntu, but I just don't know where all the config settings are yet like I do in a RedHat based system, but I don't think Ubuntu sucks at all - in fact, I love all this linux competition - it makes the distros step

          • Thank you - I'm tired of all the RedHat hating because RPM sucks by itself. YUM has been a great tool for RPM based systems for about, oh, I'd say 4 years now if I remember correctly. I've been using Fedora and CentOS without issue for about 3 years as a result. I'm very happy. I've also tried Ubuntu, but I just don't know where all the config settings are yet like I do in a RedHat based system, but I don't think Ubuntu sucks at all - in fact, I love all this linux competition - it makes the distros step th

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
      I mean, will the box play mp3 files? DVDs? Fedora is not a distro known for these capabilities.

      Both distros share the same philosophy with regards to packaging patent encumbered things like mp3 and DVD decoders in the main distro and repos. It is very simple on both of these to add them in post-install.

      Fiesty does make it a bit easier, but to be fair Fedora 6 was released quite a bit earlier than fiesty, let's pass judgement next week when Fedora 7 is released.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jddj ( 1085169 )
      That's what KnoppMyth is for.

      Have to say that I wasn't a fan of the look-and-feel of the KnoppMyth setup last time I looked at it (for openers, I'm in the can't-stand-KDE camp...). It -IS- great to have a fantastic bootable-CD of this project.

      Ordinarily this isn't a problem - don't like what your distro provides, install something else, right?

      The thing is, you go for MythDora or Knoppix to pretty much have an appliance. You change something on your own, no telling how you'll get the box like you want it nex

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by caseih ( 160668 )
      What a silly statement. In the case of either distribution, it's a matter of having a good repository. Ubuntu is not somehow magically free from dependency hell. It's just that Ubuntu happens to have very good and very extensive repositories. Likewise, Fedora has a large number of third-party repository that covers a wide range of software needs, including MythTV. The only time I've ever really gotten into dependency hell was some years ago with Debian itself. Honestly there are lots of arguments you
    • With the parent as such a fine example, I look forward to an unbiased, unemotional discussion on the pros and cons of different Linux distributions. I'm sure it will be based entirely on objective facts, supported by careful citations, and not contain any anecdotal evidence or personal opinions.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by msevior ( 145103 )
      As someone who runs both Ubuntu and FC6 distros, I think you have it backwards...

      For FC6 just install the livna rpm's like this:

      # rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm [livna.org]
      # rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY [livna.org]

      and enjoy the benefits of all the grey packages delivered via yum. Personally, I like the Fedora approach of giving totally free products a boost.

      The main benefit of Fedora over over Ubuntu is the actively maintained Fedora Extra's. These are generally updated as soon as the upst

    • Having recently fled from the barren dependency hell of Fedora
      Dependency hell? Do you use yum?
    • How about Fedora even having an up-to-date version of firefox? Nope. The latest Fedora comes with firefox 1.5 preinstalled (everyone else is up to 2.0.0.3), and it's not a matter of simply upgrading from what I've read.

      Instead of figuring it out, I took it as a sign that Fedora still has a ton of issues and switched to Kubuntu Feisty.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )
      I am perplexed as to why anyone wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro of any kind would choose Fedora as their base distro.

      Anybody wanting to install a user friendly Linux distro doesn't know what a "Linux distro" is and doesn't want to learn. They'll install whatever their buddy hands them. (Then, most likely, give up and go back to Windows after a few days.)

      By the time you start talking about distros, much less "dependancies," you're way beyond the user friendly stage.
  • I hope we'll see some good detailed posts by people who've used both MythDora and KnoppMyth. Personally, I've only used KnoppMyth.

    • Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora (Score:5, Informative)

      by biggyfred ( 754376 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:10PM (#19315707)
      I am by no means an expert of any kind. In fact, I'm about as amateur as it gets. Before about a week ago, I had very little experience with linux (edgy, FC3 for about 5 mins). This is my quick take on the three:

      KnoppMyth was way too over my head. I'm certain that it was my inability to grasp knoppix that was the problem. User problem to be sure, but if that counts as an issue... Knoppix did do great with lirc and my remote right out of the box, a sore spot for me with the other distros I used.

      Whereas KnoppMyth felt like swimming in a ocean of misunderstanding, MythDora felt like death by a thousand cuts. It was pretty, but I kept feeling like I ran into hurdles over... and over.. and over. I used Jared's guide, but like all things, the book can only take you so far..

      I ended up throwing Feisty on my HTPC and loading up a full backend/frontend/desktop. Biggest problems were my Avermedia A180 (DVB issues) and lirc. The level of user generated documentation with Ubuntu made the difference for me.

      Feel free to disagree with me. I can't defend any of this with anything more than my personal experience.

      • Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cesman ( 74566 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @07:02PM (#19316107) Homepage
        My goal with KnoppMyth is to make it easy. Obviously, it wasn't for you. In what ways can we improve KnoppMyth to make it easier?

        Regards,

        Cecil

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          It would be nice if extras like exporting to DVD-R, webbrowsers, etc were easier to find. And, when found, install. Finding things on the forums is a pain.

          Also, last time I tried, changing your zip code/postal code was broken if you put in a Canadian postal code (They go like this X0X 0X0). That was about a year ago though.

          And dealing with things like two IR outputs + one IR input using different methods with LIRC would be nice. As it stands I had to compile LIRC by hand with differing module names to d

          • Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora (Score:5, Interesting)

            by cesman ( 74566 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @08:19PM (#19316767) Homepage
            In terms of finding programs, etc. Those are all accessible via the MythTV menu. But I can see where better documentation came come in handy. A while ago, I started on a much updated pamphlet, but it is disheartening to work on something and people doesn't read it. A lot of the question I get in IRC (freenode.net #knoppmyth), are covered in the pamphlet. If only people would RTFM.... But I digress. More work is due on the pamphlet, I've just been busy with my professional life.

            In terms of MythTV related issues... Those are MythTV issues and not KnoppMyth specific. Ironically, one of the areas we try and make it easier for users is in MythWeather. Your zipcode is automatically retrieved from the db and entered for you.

            I don't ever recall reading or hearing about issues w/ multiple LIRC. When issues like this occur, if you want to see it fixed in a future release, you should bring it to my attention of the forum or via PM or email. The development team isn't very large. We don't have all the hardware that is out there. Even our testers may not have the hardware you have. So, if you want to see something fixed, the best way to bring it to our attention and provide details. Same thing goes if you fix an issue. Provide details and ask to test.

            Thanks for the feedback.

            Regards,

            Cecil

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Ngarrang ( 1023425 )

              If only people would RTFM.... But I digress. More work is due on the pamphlet, I've just been busy with my professional life.

              Cecil, you are living in a dream world. Most people don't RTFM. Even when asked. Even if it brought world peace, turned lead into gold and allowed cars to run on water.

              Easy to use means not having to open the manual, that the screen tells you everything you need to know, such that a 5 year old can learn to use it. It is this very familiarity that keeps Windows on top, because it is what people know. Linux has to fight this mentality. It is a shame that so many Linux enthusiasts don't understand t

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by cesman ( 74566 )
                I think if you were to install KnoppMyth, you'd see that is "like cattle". I personally think MythTV is easy to use. Granted, if can be difficult to install, hence my work on KnoppMyth.

                When KnoppMyth was first introduced, the manual was sparse. The pamphlet now stands at about 40 pages. Now, the reason that came about is because people asked specifics and I wanted to provided a great understanding of the different parts of KnoppMyth.

                Frankly, I think the attitude of not reading or not wanting to read is

                • Frankly, I think the attitude of not reading or not wanting to read is wrong. That is part of reason we have a monopoly in Redmond. Open your eyes and your mind....
                  Cecil, you are preaching to the choir. I am simply pointing out that you if you want wild ubiquity, then you need think like a 5-year old when designing the interface for a system. That is the sad reality of today's world.
              • No, people do RTFM. But only once.

                Face it. Most documentation is horrible. Between the unspoken assumption that the reader has at least as much technical experience as the writer and the general inability of most documentation writers to express themselves in written communication most first-time users wishing that they'd never picked up the FM in the first place.

                Good Tech Writers know that they need to write to their audience - if the users are consciously avoiding reading documentation, maybe the problem

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by cesman ( 74566 )
                  I'm by no means a technical writer. In terms of writing the pamphlet, I attempt to follow the KISS method. If there is a technical writer out there that is willing to help the project, please step up.
            • I just wanted to say "Thank you".
        • Remote configuration (lirc) is the scariest part for a lot of people. If you had some kind of prominent compatibility list for remotes, that would be extremely helpful. That's mainly what keeps me from Myth...that I have to format my system and install another OS just to see if my Snapstream Firefly remote will work.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tarwn ( 458323 )
            While not quite as good as a compatibility chart, the KnoppMyth TV forums have three forums specifically for hardware comaptibility. They are called Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Tier 1 posts are things that just plain worked out of the box. Tier 2 are things that required a little bit of tweaking. Tier 3 is things that just wouldn't work.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by King_TJ ( 85913 )
          Cecil,

          I've been a KnoppMyth user for quite a while now, and I've been through several major upgrades as they've been released. I love the distro, overall.

          I consider myself an "on again, off again" occasional Linux user. In the past, I've gone in "phases" of trying to run Linux as my primary OS on one PC or another, but I've generally settled on using an Apple Mac Pro as my primary PC these days, with a Windows XP based PC as a secondary "gaming computer". So basically, I can "get around" in most Linux di

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbr439 ( 214107 )
        How well is the Avermedia A180 working for you? I was thinking of getting one for OTA HD, so any feedback you can provide would be appreciated.

        FWIW, I run one front-end and 2 back-ends on Debian/Testing.

        Thanks

        Jim

    • Re:Knoppmyth vs MythDora (Score:4, Interesting)

      by spisska ( 796395 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @08:57PM (#19317043)

      I've run MythTV since 0.14 on Knoppmyth [mysettopbox.tv] and Fedora -- starting with FC3.

      When I started, Knoppmyth was way over my head -- particularly the finishing touches to get everything running properly. It was my first real hands-dirty experience with Linux and I appreciated for all I learned. I did did manage to get an ancient K6-3D system running Knoppmyth -- not well enough to put in my livingroom, but well enough to prove the concept and that it was worth the time and effort to build a new system on more capable hardware.

      My second system was a P3 700 built on FC3 following Jarod Wilson's definitive guide [wilsonet.com], mainly because I felt that following the guide to transform a generic install into a MythTV appliance would teach me a lot about what the Myth components were, how they all fit together, how to make them all fit together in Linux, and what to do when something went wrong. I was right.

      I built a third machine (my current master beckend/frontend) on FC4 also following Jarod's guide but this time on a P4 2.5 machine.

      By this time I was ready to start adding FE capabilities, but I already knew the process of installation, knew about the components and dependencies, and no longer felt the need for yumming or smarting in kernel modules and so on. I used Knoppmyth to turn my old P3 700 former-backend into a frontend.

      This setup worked well through several upgrades -- FC on the backend, Knoppmyth on the frontend with the only caveat being that both machines have to be running the same version of Myth. Upgrade one, you have to upgrade the other.

      Even though this was about two years ago, the Knoppmyth install was easy and painless, and I was prepared to deal with irregularities like tweaking xorg.conf. I also really appreciated that the Knoppmyth CD would let you run a frontend off the CD -- allowing you to instantly test hardware without touching the drive.

      Last weekend, I finally retired the P3. It's currently on holiday, but will soon return to service as a file server. Instead I built a new frontend on an Athlon 64 4000.

      I decided to give Mythdora a whirl since I know it's been under heavy development including the involvement of Jarod. I was really impressed with how smoothly and quickly the installation went, including post-install scripts to handle things like IR hardware and binary nvidia drivers (I know, I know, but the binary driver really works better for Myth than the Free one). I went from having a pile of boxes at 4 pm to a working Mythtv system at 9:30. It might have been quicker but I had to run to the shop when I ran out of beer.

      I didn't try a Knoppmyth install on this hardware, but have no doubt that it would have gone just as smoothly. Cecil deserves a lot of respect and credit for the fantastic job he has done with Knoppmyth over the years.

      Of course I did have quite a bit of Myth-specific experience behind me and knew from the start to buy hardware that was rock-solid compatible -- like an nforce board, nvidia gfx card, turtle beach sound card, on-board 10/100 LAN, etc.

      The point is that by last weekend I was a lot more familiar with Fedora than with Debian, so I was really happy to be able to so painlessly migrate my FE to Fedora. I have no doubt that those more familiar with Debian will be just as happy with what Cecil has done in Knoppix.

      And more than anything, lot of credit is owed to the folks behind MythTV -- from Isaac Richards, the original creator, and all the key developers, to folks like Jarod, Cecil, and Dennis for enormous contributions in making Myth more accessible, to all the numerous active and helpful folks on the mailing list. They've made MythTV into a product that truly is a world-beater -- by far the most powerful, most flexible, most extensible, and downright most pleasurable media engine on the planet.

      Here's looking to 0.21.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dashslotter ( 1093743 )
      I installed knoppmyth on my first myth box about 2 years ago. At the time it was the distro. of choice for easy, automated installations. It worked well on my "lowrider" (underpowered, ancient) system. The problem that ultimately killed that box was that the automated installation program set up a small (~4gb IIRC) partition for applications by default, and gave the rest to the AV partition. I wanted to install _every_ app. that had to do with multimedia, so this became too restrictive ultimately.

      For my

  • PS3? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:05PM (#19315673) Homepage Journal
    I wanna see someone port MythTV's codecs to the PS3's Cell [psubuntu.com] DSPs so I can use it as my PVR direct to my HDMI TV and 7.1 surround.
    • If you can deal with component video (which supports 1080p) and optical (TOS-link) audio, then you can just pick up an original Xbox, mod it, and install Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and you'll be all set. There's a plugin called xbmcmythtv which is simply a MythTV frontend written in Python that's easy to configure and works with various versions of Myth. Alternatively, the Xbox Linux ports also have MythTV packages available (but make involve more work).
      • How does the XBox support record TV shows? Isn't that the whole point of MythTV? I know it supports other stuff like MAME, and watching videos you may have downloaded, but if you're just going to do that, then you hardly need a special program.
        • With the app I mentioned, xbmcmythtv, you would want a backend MythTV server (which you'd want with a PS3 anyway since it's limited to a 60-80GB HDD at the moment). If you wanted an all in one box, you can throw in a much larger HDD into your Xbox, install Linux and MythTV locally to it (which I mentioned as an alternative), and have it act as a standalone box.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by tji ( 74570 )
        The XBox can not support playback of HD video (broadcast HD, 1080i or 720p MPEG2). So, aside from being fairly large, and fairly loud, it's too slow to do HD.. not exactly the ideal myth frontend.

        The best one I have found, albeit quite a bit more expensive, is the Mac Mini. It rans a full Myth Frontend app, with full support for HD video and surround sound.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tji ( 74570 )
      MythTV's frontend app has already been ported to run on the PS3. MythTV doesn't have a special codec, it uses MPEG2 for most video (e.g. broadcast HD in the U.S. is MPEG2).

      But, it doesn't support HD playback. The problem is not CPU power, it's video hardware. Linux runs in a VM on the PS3, which does not offer virtualized accelerated video playback, so it cannot do HD. If Sony ever improves the video support for Linux, the PS3 would make an excellent frontend.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
        Linux runs on the Cell's embedded Power RISC, which is not very fast running Linux apps, especially at video processing, especially compared to its lightning-fast DSPs. That's the point of running Linux on the PS3, unless it's just a geek trick. Porting the codecs to the DSPs will make a PS3 an excellent $600 HDMI PVR, with many picture-in-picture features, and even plenty of previously unseen editing features.

        Sony won't be improving Linux's video support, but rather it's up to us to port apps to the parall

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tji ( 74570 )
          > Sony won't be improving Linux's video support, but rather it's up to us to port apps to the parallel DSPs Sony sells us so cheap.

          The minimal support for a decent PVR is video overlay support. Without that, the PS3 will never be a good HD video platform, no matter how fast the cell processors can crank through the video data. Rather than mess with a platform with limited support, I looked for a system I could do whatever I needed with. I ended up with the Core Duo Mac Mini. It's small, quiet, a
          • But the point of the Cell architecture is that the PPC doesn't paint the video - the DSPs do that. There's no reason the DSPs can't pipeline to mix video layers into the resulting frames. In fact, their parallel architecture is very well suited to exactly that. The PPC doesn't even have to ship the frames to the framebuffer: the DMA and bus do that without any compute overhead, and practically no latency.

            Your Mac might indeed serve well as a PVR at about the same price as a PS3, without a lot of effort para

  • Fedora Myth(TV)ology (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @06:07PM (#19315683) Journal
    For those who already have Fedora installed, there's an excellent guide available at http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php [wilsonet.com] which is simple to follow and worked for me on the first try (I went with a Hauppage 150 card). Personally, I preferred installing it the software myself, so I have a better idea of where to look when something breaks. I have yum cron'ed to run nightly, and so far I haven't had the install broken by any new packages since the install (4 or so months ago).
  • As usual with open source projects, it is assumed that everyone has a considerable amount of knowledge already. They could have told people what Mythdora is and what MythTV is, for example.

    This should not have been the first sentence on the first page: "The new and much improved MythDora 4.0 is finally ready. As you will see, things have improved greatly."

    However, other than that it is looking excellent, for people who have a lot of background knowledge.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tji ( 74570 )
      Yeah, you're right.. That's the problem when the people doing everything are developers, they are so focused on the bits & bytes they become a bit myopic and need to step back and look at thing from a normal user's viewpoint. That's why software companies have marketing people, which OSS projects could benefit from.

      MythTV is an open source PVR -- Think completely open version of Tivo. Slap as much disk as you want in it, add more tuners; export video to DVD, transcode to iPod video, automatically sk
  • Really, with tens of channels, never mind hundreds, I've long since given up trying to find stuff worth watching, that's what computers are for.

    Tivo was great, but it's no longer available in the UK and my hardware's been disassembled and the big drives recycled.

     

    • Really, with tens of channels, never mind hundreds, I've long since given up trying to find stuff worth watching, that's what computers are for.

      I don't know if it's Bayesian or not (maybe some other machine learning technique), but there's MythCollaborative [mythtv.org].

  • I tried installing mythtv about a year ago but realized my error in judgement after searching usenet to figure out why mysql was not working. Why should I have to troubleshoot a database app to record fucking tv programs? Spend the money and hack a tivo instead.
    • If you're already searching usenet, why not just get your programs there?

      Oh, damn, right...first rule of usenet. Sorry.

  • Just like..... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 )
    Knoppmyth.

    I only hope that Mythdora has a better group of maintainers than knoppmyth does. the releases are incredibly far apart and honestly get's out of date quick for hardware issues.

    Another thing I hope it supports out of the box is the Microsoft MCE remote and MCE keyboard. as those are hands down the best remote designed for a media center. every time I use Knoppmyth I haveto spend 1 hour hacking in support for those two devices as well as updating xmltv to the recent build and fixing the ivtv driv

    • Re:Just like..... (Score:5, Informative)

      by cesman ( 74566 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @07:08PM (#19316191) Homepage
      Sorry if my personal and professional life gets in the way of making a release for you. The day you have to pay for KnoppMyth is the day you can stop bitching about releases taking too long.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by teachinggeek ( 771610 )
        While I don't personally use your distribution I want to thank you for making it available.

        Your hard work IS appreciated.
      • Hey Cecil,

        Forget the whiners. KnoppMyth is awesome. I just installed version R5E50 from scratch in my dedicated box. Lots of people here are talking about problems with lirc and the Hauppauge PVR remotes in from-scratch installs. I had the whole system up-and-running in an hour. My system has a Hauppauge pvr350 and pvr-150 with the pvr350 silver remote and lirc worked just fine right off the bat. It didn't work with earlier versions (I installed version R5A16 some months back and had to recompile lirc an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tarwn ( 458323 )
        Cecil, your time and diligence are incredibly appreciated. Your list of released versions is impressive and I have found that you actually release new versions _more_ often than I want to deal with upgrades, not less :)
        There are a lot of Myth users whose lives are easier and possibly would not be using MythTV if you hadn't decided to start building and maintaining KnoppMyth. I personally appreciate your hard work a great deal, as does my wife who was initially a nonbeliever in PC-based set-top boxes ;)

  • Overrated (Score:4, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Tuesday May 29, 2007 @07:41PM (#19316425) Homepage
    I tried MythDora, but frankly I got tired of the "Swiper, no swiping!" popups every time I tried to record a show. I've heard there's a MythBusters plugin to get around them, but I don't think the walrus mustache is an acceptable tradeoff.
    • That's the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in months. Made me laugh for about 5 minutes. Somebody mod this guy up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 )
      Yeah, Swiper is a little annoying but the Map UI is awesome. To get rid of the Swiper popups, follow these instructions:

      1. Bridge
      2. Mountains
      3. Gooey Geyser

      Then you're set.

      So what was your favorite part of this post?

      [Eerily long pause]

      Me, too.

      Boots' favorite part was talking about Map.

      My favorite part is a big fat cop out because it's always the goal of what we set out to do (which in this case would be getting rid of the Swiper popups).
  • I use Gentoo 2007.0, Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty, and Fedora Core 6 on a daily basis and Fedora Core 6 is rock solid. If you following the instructions at http://www.fedorafaq.org/ [fedorafaq.org] you can have MP3/DVD and what ever play back you want in no time. Fedora is just as easy to use as Ubuntu and personally I think the default skins look a hell of a lot sexier then Ubuntu's.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )
      It's disguised anti-Red Hatism from those who resent a company making money out of Linux. Mostly ungrateful fucks who don't realise just how much Red Hat's money puts back into the system. There are also a lot of lazy buggers out there who can't be bothered to figure out how to make it work and talk shit about yum and rpm. Add in those who don't seem to realise that Fedora eschews non-Free/possibly patented stuff by default and haven't figured out what a third-party repository is: "I can't play MP3s!" "MP3

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tarwn ( 458323 )
      My problem with Fedora Core is the annual major version upgrades. For servers I don't care, as I rarely want to install anything except possibly security updates, but for a desktop I don't want to have to do a major version upgrade once a year, with all th pain that entails.
      So basically instead of doing the major upgrade I end up putting it off...which lasts until I want to install a newer version of a piece of software and find out that for some reason the only version available on my 1 year old distro is
      • I have to agree that upgrading Fedora is a pain in the ass and they really need to fix it, but is Ubuntu any different? I know on Ubuntu you can switch the repos from an older version to a newer version but can't you do that in Fedora as well? Personally this is why I switched from Redhat 9 to Gentoo on my personal machines a long time ago, but then you run into all the problems Gentoo has. I guess each distro has it's own problems but it seems everyone loves to bash Fedora more since it seems everyone star
  • It's a 3 part video on how to click "next" a bunch of times. It shows how to set up the box if you have exactly the hardware that guy happens to have. I had that figured out a year ago, but it's been 3 tries since then and I still haven't gotten Myth working. Always it mostly works but some damn thing stops me. Last time I couldn't get LIRC working right. I don't even remember what the previous ones were.
  • I've got a few nice boxes laying around that used to be for testing various Win & Lin stuff, which is now mostly done with Parallels. Glad I didn't get rid of them all yet! I last looked at Myth a year or two ago, and even with Knoppomyth, I still got stuck.
  • I decided that seeing as I didn't record much TV, I'd change to running Xbox Media Centre, and use its MythTV scripts to control another backend if ever I needed. Today, it seems they've announced a Linux port, which might be an excellent way for all the people who want a Linux media centre, but just don't like MythTV for one reason or another, to contribute. [xboxmediacenter.com]

    Fluendo are also working on a media centre called Elisa [fluendo.com], built on their GTK/Gstreamer platform.

    Things are looking up overall on the Linux media centre

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