[mythtv-users] (no subject)

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Thursday 27 May 2004 14:39, Mark Andrachek, Jr. wrote:
> Greetings.  For quite some time now I've been thinking about
> building my own PVR, and my recent experiences with comcast,
> and the need to save a little money have been pushing me
> harder and harder in that direction. Cutting ~40/month for
> digital cable + PVR, should pay for itself pretty quickly.

Welcome!

Just for future reference, don't start a new thread by replying to a 
message.  It ends up burying your message inside the existing thread, 
so anybody not reading that thread might ignore your message!  (Plus 
some people get annoyed...)

> I'm not a newbie to pvr's, linux, or video, 

That's definitely a plus...

> but I am a 
> a complete and total myth n00b. I've been very impressed
> by the screenshots, as well as the level of community
> support and involvement of this project.
>
> I've had my wife using Linux for about the past 3 months,
> and she's hooked.

Wish I could say the same...

> I can't get her off shishen-sho (kde 
> game). :)  I've been given permission to fully convert
> our machine to Linux, and since she and our 3 month old
> went to visit his grandparents for the week... I've got
> room and time to make a mess and geek out - a 3 day
> weekend no-less!
>
> So, I picked up a pvr-250 and got the hardware installed
> and functioning under 'doze last night, and I've got a few
> questions before I go any further.
>
> The machine is a 1.4 Ghz Athlon, 512 Mb RAM 2x120Gb seagate
> 7200 drives, on-motherboard audio, sb live! pci, geforce2
> with composite out, and a dvd drive. And the PVR-250 of
> course.
>
> The computer is, and will continue to be on the second
> floor of our townhouse, and will still need to be used
> for light word processing, email. Oh, and Shishen-Sho,
>
> :)
>
> We have 2 tv's, primary downstairs, and secondary upstairs.
> In getting the output to both tv's, I've come up with a couple
> of options, but I'm leaning towards running about 50' of rca
> cable to the downstairs receiver. Since I have two soundcards,
> I should be able to dedicate one to myth, and one to pc audio.
> I hope. Of course I'm worried about the quality of the video
> after such a long run. Would I be better off with svideo
> over such a distance, with an svideo->composite adapter at
> the end?

Heh... well, first of all, you might run into dual-head or Xinerama 
issues, hopefully nothing unsolveable.  You might want to search the 
archives for more specifics.  Also, some video cards (don't know if the 
GF2 is one) only support Xv scaling on the first head, meaning that to 
get Xv on your TV-out you'd have to set up the VGA as a mirror display; 
not what you want.  Like I said, search the archives & ask around; 
there are quite a number of people with GF2s, so odds are you should be 
OK there.

As far as the cabling goes, S-Video is always better, but I don't know 
if you can go 50' with it.  A couple of people have reported success 
doing this on the list, IIRC.  Of course, you'd still have to run RCA 
cable for the sound, I guess.

>
> For the tv in the upstairs bedroom, I've got an xbox that's
> pretty much just collecting dust that I can network and
> set up as the frontend. With this setup would the xbox
> be able to watch live tv? Or would I need to run coax in
> for that?

You'll be able to watch LiveTV on the Xbox as long as the tuner isn't 
busy recording something else, or someone isn't using it for LiveTV 
downstairs.  You can only encode 1 stream at a time per tuner, and 
Recording & LiveTV are equivalent in that respect -- LiveTV is just 
recording & watching at the same time, for a simple view.

>
> I had thought about getting a UHF transmitter like this:
> http://www.accessorywarehouse.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&S
>tore_Code=AWI&Product_Code=501015&Category_Code= That would allow any
> tv within 300' to tune in, but I don't
> think it's stereo, don't know how good the reception would
> be, and I don't know if I want my neighbors to be able to
> know my viewing habits. ;) Still, a neat bit of kit.
>
> Lastly we come to the issue of control.  With the PC
> upstairs, and the output down, I'm wondering if a
> 50' audio extension cable would work to extend the
> length of the IR receiver that was bundled with the
> pvr-250... has anyone ever tried it? I already have
> 2 learning universal remotes that can easily learn
> the hauppage remote. Should I bite the bullet and
> get a remote extender? Would it even work with
> 802.11g, 2 2.4Ghz cordless phones, and a 2.4 Ghz
> baby monitor? Recommendations?

Don't know about RF interference issues.  You could run some serial 
cable along with your A/V cables.  You might be able to use CAT-3 or 
CAT-5 wire, using DB-9 (serial)<->CAT-3/5 adapters at either end.  
Again, it's been done, so search the list archives.


Good luck!

-JAC