[mythtv-users] Sell mythtv "set-top" boxes

[Ben Bucksch]

Ray Olszewski wrote:

> (since I don't have the upstream bandwidth to set up a Web site here)

I can help you with that, if that's the issue.

> Amount of hard-disk storage. Whether or not the box includes a CD or 
> DVD writer.

Well, that's pretty obvious, not? All you need to know is generic 
information of the sort that's already in the howto or could be there 
(storage/hour, if transcoding is possible etc.). For MythTV, it doesn't 
matter at all which HD you use, and there's no problem to set them up in 
Linux either, is there?

For a CD writer, there is no special requirement by MythTV or Linux 
either, they prettty much all work, but it might be a bit more problem 
to set up.

> Possibly multiple frontends for multiple TVs. Maybe WiFi versus 
> wireline networking. Probably more.

Well, yes. We don't need to cover every edge case, just the most common 
setups would cover 90%. And many of the requirements are modular or 
semi-modular.

> due to vendor slipstreaming, like Hauppauge's recent change away from 
> a bt878 chip in the WinTV Go. Part of the former is imprecise 
> designation of card make and model;

Yes, that totally trips me off. That's a wrong behaviour by the card 
makers even independent of Linux, because all personal advises and 
magazine tests are void when they change the hardware. I actually looked 
for reviews in the magazine archives before buying a card just to find 
out that the card I bought had different hardware. I could at least give 
it back, but didn't get my lost time covered, of course. I was extremely 
pissed. I feel like sueing these marketing bastards (call-action suit, 
anyone? ;-P ).

> another part is vague "it worked for me" reports unaccompanied by 
> configuration details

yup.

> 1. With Debian, you need to pick either Stable (Woody) or Unstable 
> (Sid) to sync with. Stable achieves stability by being woefully slow 
> to update to current upstream versions of packages (this is an ongoing 
> lag problem with xine, for example). Unstalbe is ... well, unstable.

Yup, exactly my problem, but that's a general Debian problem, see the 
flamewar a month ago.

> And, on top of that, there are things like the nVidia proprietary 
> driver, which you have to get from nVidia and you (often) have to 
> compile locally.

Similar with the kernel. The kernel (and nvidia stuff) would probably 
have to be dealed with differently.

> You mention a Debian config. (Woody or Sid?)

unstable=sid

> Perhaps you would consider taking the time to turn it into an install 
> script that a user can run

hm, maybe. If I can remember which steps were needed. (The desktop 
install was like 2 years ago, the server maybe 2 months, a long time to 
remember *every* step). It would have to be dead-simple for me to be 
capable to write such a script, no user interaction, but I guess the 
Debian installer already does everything needed there (network config, 
timezone, keyboard layout etc.)

> The next step ... making a customized Debian install iso (or floppy 
> set) would be fairly easy once the install script itself were written.

Actually, the install image would probably be a lot easier (both for the 
creator and the user) than the install script, but I fear the bandwidth 
required. With "install image", I mean a tar.bz2 with the root 
filesystem, to be extracted from a working Linux system, possibly a 
Debian boot disk or Knoppix or whatever you like.