[mythtv-users] Cheap, powerful, quiet, small front-end: problems getting it running!

David Levine curiouskangaroo at gmail.com
Sun Jan 9 11:36:47 EST 2005


Hi, all.

I recently bought an HP eVectra on eBay for $90 for my second
front-end.  I figured this would be a very cheap solution - cheaper
than my XBox front-end.  It's a P3-933MHz with 128 Megs of RAM, and a
20 GB hard drive.

It's not something I would use as a general purpose computer because
it has limitations: no PCI slots at all, for example.  However, for a
MythTV front-end, they aren't needed.  It's VGA-out only.  So it can
only be watched on a monitor, or with a VGA-to-TV converter (which I
have).

If I can get this to work, it seems like it would be a great low-cost
front-end in general for anyone else that is interested.  It is very
small form factor, very quiet (it has a separate power-brick rather
than an internal power supply).  Not totally 100% silent the way a
fanless machine would be, but pretty darn good.  It seems like it
should be a perfect machine for a MythTV ffront-end to sit by a
television: cheap, small, quiet, but of decent power.

Here's one on eBay right now currently at $99.99 if anyone is interested:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51119&item=5155161019&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

However, before you buy, you may want to read the about my problems
getting it set-up:

I decided to try KnoppMyth first (R4V5).  I didn't do an install, just
tried to run the front-end from the CD.  However, KnoppMyth apparently
couldn't recognize the built-in videocard because once it got past
text screens onto graphical screens, it was unable to drive the
display, and the screen was completely garbled.

So next I tried Fedora and Jarod's guide.  My back-end was easily set
up this way, on FC2 (thanks, Jarod!).  I decided, after seeing some
apprehension on this mailing list, to stick with an FC2 install on the
eVectra, rather than FC3.  Install was fine, and Fedora doesn't have
the same display problems that Knoppix had.

I installed at 640x480, since my VGA-to-TV converter can only do
overscan adjustments at that resolution (although it can convert all
the way up to 1024x768).

MythTV menus are much snappier than on the XBox.  Watching Live TV
from off of my back-end worked fine.  Watching my recorded TV did not.
 I got a blank screen but with audio okay.  I searched on the mailing
list (and the net in general) and it seems that memory or video memory
was implicated in the problem.  I switched the display to 800x600 to
test, and now Live TV had the same problem (blank screen, audio only).
 I switched back to 640x480, and changed the Myth TV GUI size to
320x240.  Success!  Now I could see both Live TV and recorded TV. 
However, running at 320x240 is obviously not a solution.

Thinking that I could reduce in-use resources, I tried installing
IceWM to use instead of KDE.  No help, there.  I was able to get IceWM
running with no problem (a lot to say for a Linux novice like myself),
but I still had the same problems in Myth.

The eVectra has 128 megs of memory.  My XBox only has 64.  Now, I know
the XBox has "shared video memory" - does that mean it uses main
memory?  The eVectra uses Intel 810E integrated graphics with Direct
AGP and "Dynamic Video Memory" - I'm not sure if that's the same thing
or not.

It seems to me that if my XBox can run a MythTV front-end, this
machine (which has a better CPU and more memory than the XBox)
shouldn't have any problems.

One thing I've thought of doing is using a completely different
distribution, like Debian.  And perhaps using a window manager like
blackbox, the way myth-xbox-0.4.4 does.  i.e. basically I want to set
it up exactly the way my XBox is, thinking that if the XBox can do it,
so can this PC.

Can anyone suggest anything else before I do this?  Or can anyone shed
insight into whether or not it will even work?  I can upgrade the
memory of my PC to 256 megs (an eVectra is supposed to be
un-upgradable, but I did find a website explaining how to upgrade
memory) but it seems like it shouldn't be necessary.

Thanks in advance for any help.

David


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