[TriLUG] Myth TV - need some pointers

[David A. Cafaro]

I've happily been watching MythTV in HD and SD for a few months now.   
Here you can read up on the specs of the machine:

http://www.cafaro.net/2007/08/28/mythtv-in-hd-now-working/

To directly answer your questions:

1. What ever distro you are most comfortable working with.  You will  
have to play around with the guts of it, besides mythdora and  
knopmyth there isn't an "easy" install.  And those two don't work all  
the time.

2. Yes, you'll have to either find a screen scraper or pay  
$15/6months for listings.  ScheduledDirect (a non-profit org setup my  
several open source developers including the MythTV folks) stated  
goal is to get that down to about $20/year for listings.  I have no  
problem paying that small amount for reliable listings.  Much cheaper  
than TiVo and mine does a lot, lot more than TiVo does.

3. You want cool and quite.  Do some research.  Also depends on if  
you are going to do HD content.  HD content takes horse power and  
hardware acceleration to do well.  My setup supports HD very well,  
though I do need more HD space (yes 400GB really doesn't cut it for HD).

Cheers,
David


On Sep 21, 2007, at 10:54 AM, Greg Brown wrote:

> Hey everybody.  I'd like to build a Myth TV box, two actually.  I'd  
> like to
> have one box at home in Raleigh and one on the outer banks.  Here's  
> the
> catch - I'd like the box in Raleigh to be able to send contact to  
> the OBX
> box via some kind of encrypted tunnel or so I can watch shows  
> recorded here
> out there.  And vice-versa.  I imagine this is possible with Myth  
> but I'd
> like to the definitive answer if anyone knows.
>
> Other Myth questions:
>
> 1. What distro is "best"?  Debian?  Redhat?  By best I'm looking  
> for the one
> that "just works".  The Myth box will likely be a dedicated machine  
> (perhaps
> a ssh and squid host as well, but that's about it).  Thoughts?
> 2. I read somewhere that the TV listings were going away and this  
> was going
> to affect Myth boxes.  Has this been addressed?
> 3. What kind of hardware am I looking at?  Being a dedicated  
> machine I'd
> like something that looks like it belongs next to a television.  A  
> fat disk
> is a must, but I have no need to burn content so an included DVD  
> burner
> isn't necessary (besides I could hook one up via USB I suppose).   
> However if
> the thing already comes with a DVD burner that's cool.
>
> Any other info you can provide is great,  Thx.
>
> Greg
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