[mythtv-users] Is there a MythTV ISO image w/ "universal"hardware support?

Jim Paris jim at jtan.com
Fri Jul 4 12:58:53 EDT 2003


> 1. Are you running to TV out? If so, what video card, and how did you get 
> it working without downloading and compiling anything special (like the 
> nvidia stuff, which includes a kernel module)? My own experience says that 
> this is the step that most demands difficult, time-consuming customization.

I use a nVidia TNT2 Ultra.  The TV out is literally plug and play.  If
the card is only plugged into a TV and not a monitor when the computer
is turned on, then all video goes to the TV and everything just works.
You can work on specific tweaking later (via nvtv or something).

> 2. What did you do about sound? Are you running the standard kernel sound 
> driver, or do you have a kernel that has alsa modules pre-compiled?

Getting sound working should not be difficult, and is just a matter of
following the directions for your distribution.  Even Redhat back to
5.0 had a "sndconfig" script IIRC, and I'm sure it hasn't gotten worse
since then.

> 3. What did you do about video? Did you find a kernel that includes all the 
> required V4L stuff? I assume you are not using an IVTV card, since that too 
> does seem to demand the more complex approach Vernon sketched out.
> 
> 4. Were you also able to get a kernel that had LIRC pre-compiled for it? If 
> not, how did you get a remote working?

Both of these depend entirely on what kind of hardware you're using.
Standard distributions should likely come with support for bttv cards
if you really don't want to compile your own kernel for some reason.
And LIRC may not even need kernel modules, depending on the IR
hardware.

> 5. Where are you located (what country, I mean, not your street address)? 
> If you are in the USA, how did you dodge the recent XMLTV bullet without 
> updating to the CVS version?

Myth 0.10

> 6. As a general matter, what Linux distro are you using? And what version 
> of MythTV? I assume you are using a version that was pre-packaged as 
> binaries for your distro, but please correct me if that asumption is wrong.

Debian, and yes, the packages work very well.

> I've learned over the years that words like "good" and "bad" (and
> "easy'" and "hard") often say more about the writer than what he or
> she is writing about. You and Vernon might easily be looking at very
> close to the same sequence of work but judging its difficulty
> differently. Or you may have different standards for "fully working
> MythTV box".  Or you may be much more expert in Linux generally than
> Vernon and forgetting what it is like to be more of a novice.

Or it's just a matter of one person who's willing to sit down for a
few hours and follow documentation versus someone who doesn't want to.

-jim


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