[mythtv-users] Hauppauge MVP as a frontend

[Christian Hack]

> >>Has anybody thought of using this as a frontend?  It looks
> >>perfect -- cheap, quiet, and built specifically for this
> >>purpose.
>
> >>I contacted Hauppauge but I they have not responded.
>
> >> b
>
> I contacted Hauppauge and the response I got was that they were
> not planning on supporting Linux server-side software.  Here is
> my actual response:
>
> "Dear Sir,
>
> As our developers are only Windows based we often find third party
> developers will more than likely have something. I would recommend you
> scour the web which I am sure someone will already be looking into.
>
> Best regards"
>
> Rather strange considering that the software on the MVP box
> itself has Linux as its OS...
>
> Alex
>

I just picked up one of these things in Singapore (Got it for S$165) and it
should be able to do roughly what I want. I am only looking at playing back
MPEG2 (DVB) files right now. The software doesn't support MPEG4 or RTJPEG
although the hardware should be capable.

The box is very cheaply made and I actually broke a screw (yes a metal screw
and not the plastic boss it screwed into) pulling it apart. It has an
STB02500 PowerPC based STB chip, 1 megabyte of flash and 32 megs of SDRAM in
it. There's a DAC and a powersupply and thats about it. There's a connector
for PCMCIA slot I think and some empty SMT IC positions. I think I have
figured out where the serial port is at least. Unfortunately IBM's site
doesn't give a whole lot of info about the STB02500 apart from a marketing
type brochure which mentions it's a 405 based core and has some dedicated
MPEG decoding hardware.

This is what seems to happen:
The box TFTPs (I think or maybe just loads) a special kernel/fs image
(2.4.17) from the main PC. This means you don't need to upgrade the box
ever. Only the PC software needs upgrading which will in turn upgrade the
box. One thing I was very impressed with was how it detected the network
settings it needed. It somehow magically picked an IP to suit the PC server
via some sort of broadcast message. No it's not DHCPing it. It probably
doesn't have the gateway correct though.

>From what I can see so far they are essentially using VNC (telnetting to the
port looks like VNC). i.e. the box is a special sort of VNC client to a
server on the PC. The PC draws all the menus and box simply displays them.
Because of this, the menus can be a bit sluggish. When the box plays a file
it's simply streamed from the server.

I'm not terribly impressed with the software as it is but that's OK, since I
may not use it. However in theory it should be possible to setup an pretty
basic mythfrontend (no OSD etc) without changing anything to do with the
actual box. All we would have to do is emulate the server then.

I don't have heaps of time but I will be looking in to it in the coming
weeks

CH