[mythtv-users] Cheap Possible Frontend

[David Whyte]

On 5/11/06, kanetse at gmail.com <kane.tse at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> As someone who is currently using an XBox as the primary frontend for
> a MythTV-0.19 setup, I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with it.

I have two, they are cool.  Not as good as a full blown PC FE, but great.
>
> 1) The XBox has a lot of trouble decoding MPEG-2 streams if you want
> to use time stretching feature on recordings made on a PVR-250.  I get
> all these pre-buffering pauses if I try to use my default setting of
> 1.5X.  My other remote frontends don't have this issue.

True that!  It is good up to about 1.2 or 1.25 though.

>
> 2) Updating the XBox to the latest release of MythTV is extremely
> difficult, because there is no repository like atrpms available.  So
> you're pretty much limited to compiling it yourself, or sitting there
> with an old copy of MythTV.  I'm stuck with MythTV-0.19-121, which has
> a bug with not being able to detect the commercial flagged in
> real-time.  If I could only get XFedora working on it, then I could
> make use of atrpms.

Not true.  Whilst I had a lot of trouble getting my second one going,
as soon as I found the Xbox page on the wiki, I had it all installed
and working in < 1 hour.  I need to update the wiki though, with some
info I got from the mailing list.

>
> 3) The XBox doesn't have the horsepower to do HDTV, which has
> basically prevented me to going to an HDTV configuration.

HDTV, well, I don't have a HD set so this is no problem for me,

>
> 4) The 6mm fan isn't exactly the quietest fan out there; eventually I
> had to replace mine with an 8mm fan.
>

Just did mine last night.  Put in a silent (i.e. 21dBA) 80mm fan and
it is much better.  Photo's and writeup of the mod will be on the web
soon.

My only issue with the Xbox is that it sometimes takes some time (~1
to 2 seconds) messing with swap.  I haven't tried to tweak. it though.

I am a little worried that the cool new UI might be too much for the
Xbox when it comes in 0.20 though.  I hope it can be disabled!

IMHO the Xbox is a great FE for in the bedroom, dayroom, rumpus room,
kids room, kitchen, whatever.  If it is for your Home Theatre room, I
would go a little more expensive and get a fully fledged silent PC.

HTH's,
Whytey