[mythtv-users] I just want to make a wife-friendly MythTV system

Marc Barrett mnealbarrett at cox.net
Sun Nov 23 06:10:02 UTC 2008


I have a mostly-working MythTV setup involving a DCH-3200 and 
a firewire connection.  For the unprotected channels, it works 
OK, but if you try to record from a protected channel, the 
backend will hang or crash.  With these problems, it just isn't
anywhere close to being "wife-friendly".  I can't teach her how to
use it, because invariably she'll try to record a protected
channel, crash it, think she wrecked it, and not want to touch
it for the rest of her life.

I just want something that will let me record ANY channel
-- SD or HD -- period, without hangs or crashes.

Right now. I am thinking about the HD-PVR from Hauppauge.  I would
likely have to get a new system, though, because my existing one 
is just a 3Ghz Pentium 4.  I am a bit confused about what I would need,
though.  The documentation on the Hauppauge web page says that
a 2Ghz dual-core would be sufficient to play back HD-PVR programs,
but I have seen it said elsewhere that Linux has greater requirements
(something about HD playback not being threaded on Linux, so a 
faster core clock rate is needed).

I also saw mention, recently, about something called VDPAU.  With
this, I could buy a slower system, stick in a fast nvidia card, and be
happy.  Of course, all this would depend on how soon VDPAU could be
supported by the MythTV development community.

At this point, I don't know which way to go.  I might wait until the HD-PVR
suport has migrated to the release versions of MythTV.  From what I 
can tell, to get HD-PVR supported, you have to get the SVN, apply 
patches, and compile it.  This is a bit too "bleeding edge" for me.
 




More information about the mythtv-users mailing list