[mythtv-users] newbie w/ some questions... (long)

[Dave Caplinger]

Hopefully I can help with a few of your questions:

On Tue, 2003-04-29 at 09:31, gary.mui at sungard.com wrote:
> - Intel P4 - 2.66 ghz (533mhz FSB)
> - 256 DDR2700 Ram (Do I need to upgrade to 512 for dual channel encoding?
> - 30 gig drive (I might swap this out for a 10 gig drive for the OS and
> then much bigger drives for video storage once I verify recording quality)

All look fine.  If you plan on a PVR-250 then I imagine this will be
serious overkill, actually.

> - DVD+R/RW drive - Can MythTV / Linux burn DVD's?

MythTV does not *directly* support burning to DVD-anything or
CD-anything, but Linux certainly supports CD-R(W) and I assume DVD-R(W),
so it's "possible."  There is already some work done to support burning
to VCD or SVCD, but it's command-line driven at the moment.  In any
case, you could certainly *play* DVDs by adding a menu option to call a
DVD viewer.  Others have done exactly this (you may be able to find the
script with a list search).

> - ATI TV Wonder (PCI) - I currently have this card in another machine using
> Snapstream. It seems like this should work for now so I will put it into
> the new machine when I get it.  If the WinTV PVR-250 works better, I will
> probably get this for sure for the 2nd encoding channel.  If it does work
> better (mostly concerned w/ recording quality, not drive space) then I'd
> love to see the ivtv drivers support 2 of these in 1 myth-tv box.  If the
> ATI card works well though, I might try to use two of these and assume that
> 2.66 ghz should be enough to handle encoding 2 channels.

Should be fine; you can always play with the encoding resolution to make
sure you have enough CPU to do this.  This is purely anecdotal, but for
example: I have analog cable TV and I see no visual quality difference
between recording at 480x480 MPEG4 and 640x480 MPEG4.  While recording
at 480x480 my system is 60% idle, so I'm confident that when I add a 2nd
tuner I'll be fine.

> - Sound card - integrated sound - I'm not sure if this will do, but if not,
> what would people suggest?  I've heard that SB Live works ok and I've got
> this in a couple other machines, so I might start cannibalizing then.  For
> 2 channel encoding, do I need 2 separate sound devices?

Yes, you need 2 sound devices, however some capture cards will give you
a sound device "for free."  If your TV Wonder works with the 'btaudio'
driver, you can get sound directly from the capture card and not need a
separate sound card (try a list search; there are lots of people using
the TV Wonder I think).  The PVR-250 encodes both video and audio
directly to an MPEG2 stream, so in that case also you don't need a
separate sound card.  (And of course, since the card is doing the
encoding, you need much less CPU.)

> - TV out - The machine will come with an nVidia 64mb geforce 4 card w/ TV
> out.  I also have a gforce2 card w/ TV out - would that work better?  My 65
> Mitsubishi also supports a 640x480 vga input - is that also an option?  I'm
> basically looking for best possible quality w/ 'normal' components.

You can try them both of course, but just off the cuff I'd recommend the
GeForce2 because the 'nvtv' utility (which will let you adjust overscan,
positioning, etc.) doesn't yet support the TV-out chip on the GeForce4. 
On the other hand, you may not be bothered by a black border around the
picture on your TV and maybe the GeForce4's TV-out quality is better. 
The nvidia drivers are going to be the same regardless, so this will be
easy to swap around so you can see for yourself.

> Linux - I haven't built a Linux box in like 10 years, so I'm totally out of
> touch w/ the latest distros.  I was assuming I'd go with RH9 (probably
> easiest to install and I'd figure on getting the latest version).  But
> since most people seem to use RH8, should I go with that?  I can go w/
> others (Debian, Gentoo) if people say it's less problematic, but I'd rather
> not spend a lot of time pulling out hair over setting this up.

I believe there are still some issues being worked out with RH9 (QT
version? Gcc issues?  I'm not completely sure - do a list search I
guess.)  RH8 will definitely "work" so that might be the safest bet. 
Personally I use Debian, but use whatever your most comfortable with.

> MythTV - Should I get the .8 version or build from CVS?

Start with the .8 version, by all means.  You have enough work in front
of you getting the capture card working, getting ALSA configured for
your sound card, etc.  Once you have a working system it's very easy to
update to CVS if you want to take the plung and start hacking the code
yourself.

> Another general question is whether the web interface allows me to control
> what the myth backend(s) has scheduled for recording.  Would this be one
> website where I can pick shows to record for both encoding channels? Or do
> I need to go to a different website / URL for each recording channel or for
> each myth back-end?

Yes, MythWeb lets you see what recordings you have on disk (and delete
them), as well as what recordings you have scheduled.  And of course,
you can see the TV listings, search for programs, and schedule new
recordings as well.  The web interface is independant of the number of
backends and the number of tuners you have.  (If you have multiple
backends, then one of them is the "master" and handles scheduling for
all of them.)

Good luck!

-- 
Dave Caplinger <dent at cox.net>