[mythtv-users] Re:Nupplevideo, why?

Jeremy Oddo joddo at apixels.net
Mon Jul 7 14:33:06 EDT 2003


Nathan Poznick said:
> Thus spake Keat Lim:
>> You have got to be kidding me... How long did it take you to install
>> MythTV? Look at the pain and suffering you had to go through just to
>> install it... The only one that was painless was the nvidia video
>> driver installation... that actually looks sane and didn't tell me to
>> ./configure;make;make install... other than that you might as well
>> take two shots of painkillers before even attempting to install MythTV
>> and hope to finish by the next day...
>
> Err.  From the time I got the last bit of hardware for my MythTV machine
> (the CPU) until the time I scheduled my first recording to make sure it
> worked, about 4 hours elapsed.  A goodly portion of that time was spent
> upgrading to sid, and letting mythfilldatabase run for the first time.
> Soldering together an IR receiver from radioshack parts and getting that
> working took another 5 hours on a different day (what can I say, I'm not
> too good with a soldering iron so it took me a couple of tries, and then
> there was the "plugged it in to the wrong serial port and couldn't
> figure out why it wasn't working" problem).
>
> It's not *that* difficult to get set up.
>
Give me a freakin' break Nathan!  If you upgraded to sid and built an IR
receiver, you ARE NOT an average computer user.  Hell, most of us on this
list are not "average users".  He said that this is definitely a "hacker's
TiVo"...and he's right.  Most of us are hackers to some degree.  Most
people can get Linux installed on this computer...perhaps even make a dual
boot, but getting MythTV running is not an easy affair.  In a way, I think
part of the fun IS the hacking part.  It's not a simple "double-click to
install" windows-type project (and I'm not saything that it should be).

The biggest problem is NOT MythTV but the unlimited flavors of Linux and
how to get all the requirements running under said distro.  Video out
problems, XV problems, ALSA problems, bttv problems, poorly documented
linux drivers, LIRC confusion...it's a lot to deal with.  Many of these
issues are DISTRO specific, compounding the difficulty.

It took me a while (probably 2-5 hours a day for a week) to get MythTV
running the first time.  Now I can build a machine pretty quitckly, but
the first install was a mess!

OK, enough of my ramblings....
Jeremy





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