[mythtv-users] Ambition...

[Michael Laccetti]

I've used MythTV before, but in a very small way: I connected a simple cable
feed to my ATI TV Wonder, and watched it on a monitor.  Recently I picked up
one of those Shuttle XPCs and want to take things to a bigger scale:  build
myself a little PVR.  I thought I had all the parts I needed, and started
installing things.  The first problem was the fact that I'm using an AMD64
chip.  Took me a while to get around that.  Hopefully mythmusic will get
ported to it soon (nudge nudge).  Aside from that, I've run into a few other
issues.  The first is the fact that I've got a digital cable box (Scientific
Atlanta Explorer 3200).  I'm trying to figure out how to get the channels to
change on it.  Is there any 'simple' way to do this?  Or will I need some
sort of IrDA system?  The second stems from the whole IrDA thing.  I've got
a USB dongle that I'd like to use to either receive commands (from a remote)
or pretend to be one (if I need to do something for the digital box).  Is it
possible to use the USB dongle, or do I need the serial one?  The last
problem is that of watching TV:  when I run the front end, and I go to the
TV part, I either get a nice green screen, or a black one.  I'm not sure
what that is, any ideas?  Also, after a few minutes, suddenly the hard drive
will turn on, and the entire system will basically lock up.  Can't even do a
ps to kill a process, the HD spins so much.  It's almost like it's trying to
swap out a huge chunk of data.
 
Sorry for the monstrous length, but I'm very excited to get this going, and
these hurdles are somewhat frustrating.
 
Mike