[mythtv-users] Question -- Attempting MythTV Build with LFS

Sasha Z kleptophobiac at gmail.com
Wed Oct 13 10:05:35 UTC 2004


If you're making a backend only, the TV out on the box itself should
be irrelevant, making a 350 vs a 250 a moot point. If you have a 350
already, it will work fine.

I personally would go for an Arch linux install. It gives all the
benefits of a real distro in being easy to install new software,
update, and being readily available. It also has a very active
community, and allows you to use i686 precompiled packages or rebuild
your whole tree. It is much snappier than knoppmyth or fedora. I
compare it in speed to be somewhere between stage 1 and stage 2
gentoo. If you compile the whole tree, it feels faster than gentoo can
be. Arch is just easier to install than a LFS solution, and still
provides incredible flexibility. Arch isn't made to hold your hand.

If you can pull it off, I'd also go for a faster processor if you want
to do concurrent recording and transcoding or commercial flagging. The
Athlon 1.1 will be more than adequate for any one task, but it will
take a long time to transcode things and may "cramp your style" as you
get used to mythtv's functionality.

Also, just because the DXR-3 is a creative card, it means you should
run away as fast as you can. :)


On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 20:20:20 -0700, Yan-Fa Li <yanfali at best.com> wrote:
> David Collett wrote:
> >>The only PVR system which has DXR3 support is Freevo via FFMPEG.
> >
> > Not quite, "VDR" is a very nice PVR project for dvb cards, it can output
> > to DXR3 (also via FFMPEG), which works very well.
> >
> 
> Cool.  I didn't know that, sadly I only have analog cable :(
> 
> >>Freevo is somewhat slower because it's written in Python vs compiled C++
> >>for Myth.
> >
> 
> This perception was from about 9 months ago, so it may be much quicker
> now.  It was also extremely fragile and required a huge number of
> modules to be installed which made it a pain to set up.  Of course that
> was before I discovered ATRPMs. :)
> 
> >
> > I must try Freevo, being a big python fan myself. I like the Freevo
> > philosophy. Freevo is just a lightweight gui and is completely dependant
> > on other applications such as mplayer for media playback. I wont comment
> > on "slowness" except to say... no.. I wont say anything :) In any case,
> > hardware requirements should not differ between mythtv -> freevo,
> > certainly not because of python :)
> >
> 
> Not going to get into a Python vs Compiled C++ argument.  I work with
> Java for a living so I know what SLOW is. :D  While Freevo may be light,
> it's dependencies weren't at the time.
> 
> > I use mythtv obviously, so dont take the above as 'anti-myth'. Myth
> > seems to be more mature atm, and will always be more integrated (at the
> > expense of greater complexity). I'm gonna keep one eye on Freevo tho :)
> >
> >
> >>The DXR3 support is buggy but it works and has the same
> >>drawback running non mpeg2 video through a PVR-350 does.  You have to
> >>transcode non-mpeg2 on the fly to mpeg2 which is pretty CPU intensive.
> >>The DXR3 guys also don't seem to be going anywhere fast due to a serious
> >>lack of documentation for the chip thanks to the crappy support from
> >>Sigma for open source.
> >
> 
> Glad it's working better now.  When I tested it, the display took a long
> time to switch between menu's and live video.  It also seemed to hang.
> I used a DXR3 for 3 years as my main DVD player, so I know the hardware
> output is superb as you can turn off Macrovision.  That's why I was so
> disappointed in Sigma.  I even bought their new card, but it remains
> unused in a draw because of the crap Linux support and the lousy Windows
> client.
> 
> >
> > Once I got the module parameters right, I never had a problem with my
> > dxr3. TV-out (svideo) quality was much much superior to NVIDIA
> > tv-out(svideo). Still useless for mythtv mind you.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> 
> So you're saying it's snappy now ?  I must dig my DXR3 up again and give
> it a try.  Like I said, when I tried this before, it was pretty slow
> navigating and there was a noticeable second lag between video switching
> and menus.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Yan
> 
> 
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