New MythTV box: Getting World Cup ready

Drone1

Ok folks, here is the plan.

With just over 3 weeks to World Cup 06', I have $500~(or so) available to build a MythTV box, and get it up and running. My GOAL (no pun int..) is to RECORD EVERY televised match my cable company is broadcasting, which ESPN HAS SAID EVERY GAME.

** I have 2 people as resources for getting the OS/Myth-side up and running by then, 1 of which has VAST amounts of Myth exp., the other not so much. Either way, config-side should be covered... (knock-on-wood)

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Hardware I'm looking at is: (on newegg)

PROC: Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 2000Mhz HTT 512KB L2 socket 939.

Mobo: ASROCK 939Dual-SATA2, 8ch audio onboard (**should I bother??) w/ PCI-X & AGP, 3 PCI (is that enough for tuner cards??)
----or : ASUS A8V w/ AGP , onboard 8-ch sound , and plenty of PCI; which if I get this, I will
-------- will forgoe HDTV Y/Pb/Pr on PCI-X of ASROCK and get AGP w/ S-Video unless I find a AGP w/ HDTV (**Does that exist??)

VIDEO: ASUS EN7300GS/HTD/128 Geforce 7300GS 128MB ; has HDTV out w/ Y/Pb/Pr cable ??? ... (** is HDTV and card Linux compat ??? )

RAM: Corsair 512MB PC3200 DDR 400 (** is 1GB necessary)

HD: WD Caviar RE WD3200SD 320GB 7200 RPM SATA150 (**COMPRESSED Video; 64 matches, 2GB~ per match, yea that should be enough)
- OS/MYTH Front/Back housed on a 40GB 7200 IDE Maxtor (possibly 2 - 40GB drives, mirrored)

Tuners: DO NOT KNOW YET!!! RECOMMENDATIONS WELCOME

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This will be hooked up to a SONY 57in. Projection TV that has plenty of Co-ax, Y/Pb/Pr, RCA, S-Video connections.

Concerns: Should I even bother w/ on-board sound, much less 8-ch?? As ESPN has SAID it will broadcast EVERY game, which Tuner cards should I look at as I need enough to cover at LEAST recording 2 channels simultaneous. In looking at the schedule, none of the games overlap, but I don't want to risk, ESPN botching something and having to stagger a game, so 2 simultaneous recordings will need to be possible ( I also want that in the end anyways).

Beyond getting ALL of the 2006 W.C., I plan on this machine to be my MEDIA PC. It will be my cable PVR, house my Music collection, be a Jukebox, be a Game Emulator machine, DVD player, and eventual DVD storage repository.

Oh yeah, I AM CRAZY ENOUGH TO THINK I CAN GET THIS ALL DONE WITHIN 25 DAYS AND COUNTING!!!!!!!

Huwawa · Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject:

If you want to learn the basics, look at this: http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/
They also have some hardware reccomendations.

Drone1 · Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 4:49 pm Post subject:

Status update:

Hardware:
- Winfast FoxConn 6150K8MA-8EKRS Mobo
- AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice socket 939 1.8Ghz
- 1GB G.Skill (2 512 sticks) PC322 DDR 400 2.5-3-3-6
- Asus EN 7300 GS PCI-x video card
- Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 PCI
- WD Caviar SE16 7200rpm 320GB SATA2

Mythtv is up and running. Had to recompile the kernel a few times due to a few drivers missing or conflicting. As far as getting everything installed with portage, i think the gentoo wiki is somewhat misleading, and unclear about how to set it up, what is needed to set up, and just what you can do with mythtv. I plan on submitting some possible suggestions, but it might go against the grain as far as how procedure or process of a howto is explained. I know, I know. What works for me may not work for somebody else ...

Haven't tested the coax in on the PVR-150 yet as I'm setting this up at work and the 2 vcr's I have, both coax out are toast, it would seem... Did confirm the Component and S-video in on the PVR-150 work though. Plan on testing sound w/ video today, and will look into getting some type of hardware for the onboard spdif audio out.

Anyone know where to get a a 5 pin spdif inline to rca , or optical?

feliperal · Apprentice Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 168

One option, if you have one of those hdtv enabled cable boxes is to get a direct link firewire cable and upload the HD stream straight to your box. The model Comcast is using is Motorola DCT5100. You can buy a firewire-to-firewire cable and connect directing to a fw port. If I'm right, mythtv support downloading of mpeg2 transport streams live.

Hobbes-X · l33t Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Posts: 823 Location: Seattle, WA

Drone1 · Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:20 pm Post subject:

Here is the hardware involved.
-Cable TV (c0x - analog)
-Hauppauge PVR-150 PCI
-Asus EN7300GS - PCIx (DVI/Component/VGA)
-Sony KP46WT510 Projection TV

Here is how my connections are going to be linked.

Input:
-Cable TV (c0x..)-->
--> Haupp-PVR150 -(PC)

Output:
-EN7300GS-DVI-->
-->Sony DVI in
-EN7300GS-Cmpt-->
-->Sony Cmpt in

Setting up X to use DFP-0 (DVI) @ 165Mhz (what Xorg.log shows), 24 bit depth, 720p @ 1280x768, H-sync, V-refresh, NoVesaModes, & DPI 75x75. EDID could not determine correct DPI so it defaulted to 75x75.

This resolution causes myth to extend beyond the borders though. I still need to try some other resolutions (1920x1080, any others??), as well as see what the tv is set to (zoom, wide zoom, normal, etc...)

Trying to locate what the best way to produce highest video quality.
Not sure where to start w/ H-sync, V-refresh, Modelines, EDID, DPI, and any other NUMBER specific settings in the xorg.conf.

For the past few days, I've been reading everything I can find in this forum, avsforum, nvnews.net, HTPCnews, and of course google, about DVI/HDTV/Nvidia/Linux.

Suppose I'm just gonna have to continue punching in some more numbers and see what works, hopefully not killing my tv.

Am posting this from work, otherwise I'd post my xorg.conf & relevant Xorg.log information. Will update later when I continue working on it.

Drone1 · Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:32 pm Post subject:

Having a few lingering problems ...

I'm splitting this into 2 sections, so please read to the bottom.!

The first is video. I'm runing 1280x720 at 720p settings, but have major 'overscan' problems (where image is larger than display area).
I've done quite a bit of testing w/ display size, DPI, non-metamode, and am not quite getting the results I had hoped. I PREFER to use 720P as
to stay away from Interlaced video altogether... Unless someone can convince me otherwise!!!! ........ AM going to try 480p later today.

Here is my xorg.conf.

Drone1 · Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:51 pm Post subject:

Status update:

Turns out I was getting some ivtv driver errors in dmesg, and in the mythbackend log . The ivtv was emerged from the portage tree at vs. 0.4.2. After doing some quick googling w/ errors and vs. checking, turns out I needed to manually upgrade to vs. 0.6.2.

So I 'emerge -C ivtv' and get that outta there, dl the ivtv-0.6.2 tar, unpack and install the new driver ..... and forget to install the FIRMWARE. ..... OOPS!!!!!! Install the firmware, and tail dmesg......Looks good, but getting '0-0061 tuner type not set' repeating. hmmm......... ok, quick googling, need to set cardtype or tuner.... I will end up trying both, eventually. Go ahead and get start w/

01mf02 · Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:48 pm Post subject:

Drone1 · Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject:

I was actually referring to more detailed Mythtv (myth/gentoo wiki's) setup and walkthrough. IMO, they seemed lacking considering I have yet to read where a fair linux user (see ametuer like myself) went from screwing in hardware to recording shows without at least issues that required a decent amount of troubleshooting.

As far as the ivtv driver and ebuild, I will look into that. Thanks for the suggestion!!!!!!

Drone1 · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:26 pm Post subject:

As far as ebuild, it looks like its intended for kernel introduction at some point according to bugs.gentoo.org and the ivtv driver site....

As for myth right now, everything is mostly working, however I'm having a problem which has appeared on other peoples boxes, and was apparently fixed with myth 0.19, which I'm running.

Programs set to record, i.e. scheduled recordings appear to drop or disappear randomly after a scheduled recording completes. I think its a problem with the backend only, since if I restart mythbackend, they appear back in 'Upcoming Recordings' and everything functions as normal. The catch is that it will happen again at some point after a recording finishes. I haven't narrowed it down to see just what the problem is exactly, but I think it has something to do with the default storage option "Do not Allow Expire" (or whatever). I have all the World Cup matches set to 'Not Expire'.

Here is the output of the error twice from the mythbackendlog:

Drone1 · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 4:26 pm Post subject:

Well, no solutions yet to the DB error in the mythbackend.log.

Cron is still restarting mythbackend 30 minutes before every match, and 30 min. after the last match is recorded. It appears to be a temporary defense in combatting the error, but I'm going to eventually track down the problem (after World Cup is over, of course )

I'm thinking its the ivtv driver as I can not 'Watch TV' once it has errored, so I'm planning on trying several other 'tuner=#' options w/ modprobe. There are some error messages concerning ivtv in dmesg, and ev../current but I don't have those in front of me to post.

I think ivtv works with it set at 50, but its not as stable as it needs to be.

I'm also trying to figure out why the color of 'ANY' show seems a bit light in 'colour'. I can do a side by side with the show I'm recording, and live through cable, and there is QUITE a color diff.... almost like its been 'washed' or something.... just not as vivid in color. I don't think its an X thing as I have messed with xgamma and did a DVD comparison between my XBOX and playing the DVD in myth. They are DAMN close in color, so that would point to ivtv for the show color issue......

I'll look into that next. As always, thoughts are welcome.