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MythTV or Freevo?


sitor
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Hi,

 

My brother just moved out of our parents house to live alone. I advised not to buy a Tele, HIFI, VCR, DVD player, etc. but to buy a well equiped PC. Purpose would be to make it into a multimedia center with capabilities of jukebox, TV, Radio, VCR, DVD player, DIVX player, etc.

 

I proposed him to installed Mandrake on the box (my brother has no Linux knowledge at all, and though I'm still a newbie, I'm fan enough to try to convert him as well :cheesy: ).

 

I googled some to find info on how to do this, and found Freevo and MythTV are projects that might help us. I have a lot of questions remaining though, so I was hoping some of you guys might have some answers:

 

1. Which of the two is the most mature?

 

2. I found some rpms for MythTV (as I said, I'm a newbie, so I want start with kernel recompiling and stuff), but not for Freevo. Does anyone know rpms that work on Mandrake 9.2.

 

3. Could I install both at the same time, so that we can try them both?

 

4. I heard that the XMLTV way of working would be a very USA centered thing, and that it would not really work that well in Europe. Anyone in Europe who has experience with that?

 

5. Anyone that has experience with the Belgian XMLTV grabber (seems to be bèta for the moment)?

 

6. That grabbing with XMLTV is apparently organised per country. Does it work with any cable provider, etc. Will it work in both parts of the country (French and Dutch)?

 

7. A machine that should be used as such a multimedia center should boot very fast. My own Mandrake machine does this in 70 secs, which is way too much for this. Any tips on how this can be done (it should still be possible to be used as a normal PC and for accessing the net via ADSL)?

 

8. Apparently it is possible to control such a box with a remote using LIRC. Can you then use the remote to switch the box on as well?

 

9. It would be great that when the box is launched, automatically the MythTV or Freevo GUI is up. Is that possible? Is it then still possible to exit that GUI to use the PC as a regular PC?

 

All other tips regarding the subject are of course very welcome. In return I will try to take the time to write a Howto on this. :headbang:

 

Ciao,

 

Sitor

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I have tried both and found that there are things to like and hate about both. MythTV is a real pain to install, makes you rpm at list of files as long as your arm. If you get them all in and setup, it seems to be a well integrated suite. As for Freevo, it's a heck of a lot easier to install but relies on third-party apps such as MPlayer for its suite of apps. Personally, I got my own setup and use TVTime for TV viewing.

 

In the end I would suggest mythtv if your brother wants a "home-theatre" style suite.

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I investigated this also some, becauseI also want to make such a device. I live (also) in Belgium and now that there are some sites that deliver XML-listings about Belgian channels. Btw I thought taht XMLTV is a standard, so it shouldn't matter in which country you live ..but I can be wrong since I don't kbnow much about XMLTV :).

 

You can make bootin faster, by lookign which services you can start in parallel.

 

Ofcourse disable as much services as you can.

 

Another thing is trying to use fb (dramebuffer) ,instead of X. It doesn't use so much resources I believe..:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Frame...r-HOWTO.html#s5

 

 

 

It's also important to buy the right hardware.

Btw, someone said (don't remember who) on this forum or somewhere else...that making a pvr isn't so expensive ...(or something like that). Ok, it is expensive, but else you haev to be a radio, tv, dvd-player, .... It depends on how expensive you buy these things ofcourse ..but with your own pvr you can integrate what you want and ok it can be mroe expensive :). You can also modify stuff a lot easier and play any film/audio-codec that is supported under linux .... It all depends on your creativity, money, can it be done, ...

 

about the hardware ..you don't want a device making a lot of sound ..., but on the other hand you need some processing power. Certainly if you would like to encrypt to codecs taht aren't hardware-supported. I read 2 gigahertz is ok, but I've seen people do it wit 800 Mhz. There is also something liek powerconsumption ...

 

2 brands I can think of: via epia motherboards/processors, transmeta (but don't know so much about it ..) and maybe you can investigate athlon mobile processors or so. Anyway, uyou don't want to much noise while listening to a song ... and powerconsumption is also good with these boards ..The transmeta are even better than the epia I believe, but don't know how they perform. You still need that processingpower. A very silent fan maybe?

 

A tv-capture card ..you probably heard about the winhaupage pvr 250/350, ... but these 2 look to be very good. You can also check out ATI, ...cards. I read that some people like some ATI-cards, others less IU believe, you'll have to see. You have to see which kind of hardware-encoding-decoding they support and if linux supports them. The more can be done in hardware ...(the more expensive ..)..the less you need to put load on your processor.

If I would build my system a card for recieving radio wouldn't be bad ...too, else you need a radio or you can listen to internetstreams.

 

enough ram is always good.

Ofcourse, like you would think, ..enough harddiskspace. I would rather buy 2 disks of 60 MB, instead of 1 of 120 MB. If possible you can put them in raid or maybe on 2 controllers what also help I suppose.

 

Well, there are quite some stories and pictures about people putting their own linux-pvr together. If you search slashdot, you'll encoutner certainly 1 article about it.

 

Space can be important ..via epia, ... are for mini-itx motherboards ..They are smaller than your normal motherboard.

 

I don't know, but some shuttles(shuttle is a brand if you wouldn't know) can also be good..but this is a wild guess ....

 

I hope this helps some

Edited by Michel
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Hello guys,

 

Thanks a lot already to all of you for all of the info.

 

Michel,

 

in what part of Belgium do you live? If you plan to build such a muchine as well, it could be interesting to share as much info as we can (were good HW can be found, etc.).

 

I found something on a Belgian grabber for XMLTV on this page:

http://membled.com/work/apps/xmltv/

If I understand correctly XMLTV as a DTD is indeed standard, but the actual content of the XML file, is of course dependent per country. I think the grabber is an application that goes to a certain source for that country and processes that info to the XMLTV format so that it can be used by apps like MythTV, but I'm not at all sure.

 

About HW: VIA EPIA stuff seems to be good (-> low noise) and consume very little power, but they are quite limited in speed (up to 1GHz). According to the sources I found about it, it is quite sufficient for an HTPC (e.g. this TweakTown review). By accident I found a store that sells them in Holland and they do ship to Belgium: MyElectronics. They build them in some nice cases. But it seems that they standard use Matrox Hard Drives, and those are way too noisy for an HTPC (Seagate Baracuda is the way to go there).

 

Still have to find out if it is possible to include all that is required (TVTuner card, FM tuner card, ...).

 

I did not read anything about Transmeta being an interesting choice for an HTPC yet. Is it even for sale in Europe? What about Mandrake compatibility? OK, Linus worked there, but that does not make it 100% sure that it is Mandrake compatible (and before I buy anything I want to be).

 

Godflesh,

 

my spoken French is not too bad, but my mothertongue is Dutch, and when it comes to writing, I strongly prefer English over French.

 

Ciao,

 

sitor

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About a shop. I once bought sonething here:

 

http://shop.forcom.be/index.html

 

Maybe you already know it. I'm not so pleased about their support or not sure I'm still leaving it open, but I bought the NEC 1300A with them and it seems ok. You can pay when they deliver it to your home or you can pick it up. Ooh, it's not that I really needed support. The NEC functions very well. Not problems. It was just that they also mentionned + NERO on their site and I didn't get it. I emailed them (yeah, I know I should have used the phone .... ) and didn't get a response. Anyway, sinceI work under linux this doesn't matter, but my brother uses windows. Anyway, I do all the burning for him, so it doesn't actually matter, but they at least could have responded. They removed it finally I saw. I didn't really buy it because of the + NERO. The price was also good without it, but still. It lowered my confidence in them. I'm giving them amother chance and consider this as a serious mistake(I think it can be seen as false advertising), but I won't like a bit if this happens again.

 

I live in Limburg btw.

Edited by Michel
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There is goind to come a 2ghz version as the successor of teh via epia's, but I don't know how long this ill take. And if you have enough hardware support for some things, you can do enough with a 1 gig cpu, but that depends what you want, .... ofcourse I would like some flexibilty towards future needs if I would buikd someting like this. Especially if you want to encode to MPEG-4, ...

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O, if you woudl like to use directfb for graphics instead of x11 ... I would suggest buying an ATI-card.

Why?

 

http://www.directfb.org/projects.xml

 

Directfb only seems to support ATI now and I doubt if thgey will supprot nvidia, because nvidia has binary-only drivers and there isn't an opensource version..so if you would like 3d accelleration .... ATI I suppose.

Edited by Michel
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I think directFB is not so good because there is no hardware acceleration.

 

Here is some info about this project:

Haupaugge PVR is the card to have for video recording (mpeg all in hardware).

With this hardware solution, one doesn't need a strong processor. A 400MHz is enough !

 

You only need a strong processor to convert mpeg2 to divx, but this can be done on another computer with the network.

 

One needs a good HD. A dedicated partion for data is recommended. XFS is the best for handling large files.

 

Mythtv stores info in my sql database, whereas freevo does not.

Mythtv use a front end and a backend that can be on separate computers. for example you may have the tv tuner card not in the computer where you watch tv !

 

Mythtv PLF packages are broken right now on cooker, but a new version is on the works.

 

What have you fond on your side ?

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about haupauge cards:

there is a radio tuner inside.

 

The pvr 350 has build in hadrware compression and uncompression for mpeg2.

this is the one to buy !

the 250 doesnt have hardware decompression, and is only usefull as a sister card of the 350 for recording 2 things at one time

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I had confirmation from a colleague who has one that the Haupauge PVR indeed does not need a very fast CPU. That has set my mind to go with this probably in combination with VIA EPIA motherboard and processor. I read that both are quite well supported under Linux. For motherboard and processor, I'm going to check still on Transmeta though (heard that they would be more interesting price wise). Will post something if I find out more.

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