[mythtv-users] Newbie Myth TV questions

[Scott Nicholson]

I can answer a couple of these...

> First of all, I'm moving to a new place and I have the choice of Cox Cable
> or Direct TV. Will MythTV work with either? I'm planning on using the
> Hauppauge cards (see below). Will these deal with all the channels of
> both?

With cable, the Hauppauge cards should be able to tune all available analog
channels without any additional hardware. If your cable package includes
digital channels they will require a decoder box, which you would hook to
the Hauppauge card using S-video or Composite connectors. The same goes for
the satellite decoder you would use with DirecTV.

> Second, I would like to be able to record one channel and watch another.
> How is this done? Do I need two decoding boxes? Do I need decoding boxes
> at all?

You will need two encoders (250/350s) if you want to watch live tv while a
different channel is recording. With only one encoder you will be able to
watch a pre-recorded show while another records.

If all you've got is analog cable, you won't need any additional decoder
boxes. With digital cable or satellite you will want one for each encoder
card you have (so if you've got two 250s or a 250 and a 350 you'll want two
decoder boxes). Most companies (cable and satellite) charge $5/month for an
additional box.

If you're going cable, you might be able to make do with one decoder. That's
what I do. I've got the decoder hooked up to the first 250, and the coax
that carries the analog signal hooked up to the second. Channels 1-99 are
available on both cards, which anything from 100 on up is only available on
the first one. That means that if the first one is recording something on,
say, 539, and I want to watch a live show that's on 225, I'm out of luck,
but so far I haven't found that enough of a restriction to make me want to
pay another $5/month for a second decoder.

> Fifth, since the Hauppauges do all the encoding, everything I've read says
> that the CPU is practically idle during this work. Does this still apply
> when recording and watching separate channels? Will a 2GHZ Intel machine
> be enough for that? Again, I don't want to buy a lot more than I need. I
> don't want to buy a 3.2GHZ machine only to find I never peak past 5% of
> the CPU.

I can only give you my experience, which varies a bit from what you'll be
doing. My backend is a backend only -- I use an Xbox for a frontend -- so
there's no decoding going on on the backend. I've not had CPU issues yet,
though -- the Hauppauge cards do everything, and with two shows capturing
and a third transcoding (from the 250's MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 to save space) I'm
still not maxing out the Athlon 1200 I've got in the backend.

Whether that changes when you throw in the decoding required to watch a
show, I don't know.

> Sixth and final, I'm trying to decide between Mandrake and Gentoo. I don't
> want to start a religious war. I just want the distro that's going to give
> me the easiest setup and preferably be totally compatible with MythTV. Are
> there any issues with one vs. the other that I should be aware of?

Most people seem to like Fedora Core 1. I'm using Gentoo myself, with Myth
built from source (rather than installed as a package -- the gentoo builds
seem to be lagging quite a bit). It took a bit of doing to get all the
dependencies satisfied, but it was all pretty straightforward.

> Thanks for any help you guys can offer. I'm excited about getting this
> system put together.

Good luck. It's an awesome system once you get everything running.

Scott


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