[mythtv-users] A few basic questions on mythtv usage

[JCA]

   I have just got my mythtv box up and running, and so far things
look terrific. I am particularly pleased because I had far fewer
problems getting it to work than I thought I would. In case anybody
might be interested, my setup is a Slackware 10.2 box, with an Athlon
XP 2600 processor, 512 MB RAM, 2.6.16.22 Linux kernel, an Nvidia
FX5200 video card, and a Hauppauge PVR-150 MCE TV capture board, with
the latest ivtv drivers.

   Anyway, I have some questions about the usage of mythtv:

   1) When I watch live feed TV, I notice that mythtv creates MPEG
files in the appropriate directory, and then plays the files on my PC.
I.e., there is a slight delay in what I see with respect to what one
sees on my TV. This is OK; it's what I expected. My question is, how
are those files managed? That is, at what point does mythtv decide
that one such MPEG file can be deleted? Is this configurable? Or do
users have to remove the files themselves explicitly?

   2) Is it possible to configure mythtv so that it won't create files
larger than a certain size? The idea is that when I am watching or
recording something, once the maximum file size has been reached
mythtv would simply create another file. This would be convenient for
burning video material to DVD; see next question.

   3) I would like to burn captured material to DVD, so that the
resulting DVD can be played on an ordinary DVD player. Now I know how
to do that (with Gimp + dvdauthor + growisofs) provided that the MPEG
files that contain the video are in the right format for DVD burning.
Is it the case that the MPEG files created by mythtv already are in
such a format? I am capturing my NTSC input with 720x480 resolution.
When I use the tcprobe utility (part of the transcode suite) to find
out the characteristics of the captured MPEG files, the outcome is
that they seem to be in the right format. However, since I have been
bitten by similar issues in the past, I wonder if somebody could
confirm it?