[mythtv-users] mythtv-users Digest, Vol 80, Issue 26

[Nick Rout]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Richard Evans <rp.evans at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm not quite sure how to go about replying to messages on this mailing, but
> here goes my 1st attempt.

Maybe don't subscribe to the digest, then we won't get wonky subject
lines on your replies :)

>
>> Would I be correct in assuming that I could use some sort of DVB-T tuner
>> card, or even a DVB-T2, instead of analogue capture cards. This should allow
>> it to receive and record digital TV without any need to actually encode any
>> video, as the digital TV transmission are obviously already encoded.
>
>
> Yes I do exactly that, in the UK. I use two Hauppauge Nova-T USB2 tuners
> which are fully supported in Linux. No special configuration necessary.
> I'm not aware of any current DVB-2 tuners but I'm sure that as soon as they
> become available, one of the many clever people out there will get to work
> writing drivers.
> Mark
> .......
> Thanks Mark, this sounds encouraging.
>
> Since it is possible to use USB digital tuners, I'm now seriously wondering
> whether I could use my existing music server for the back end (to avoid
> having an additional server burning power all day). It can't take expansion
> cards, but it does have 4 USB ports on the back.
>
> My existing music server is a Tranquil PC (fanless) with a dual core 1.6 Ghz
> Intel Atom processor, 1Gb RAM & 1Tb HDD. (About 500 Gb of hard drive space
> still available). It currently runs Vortexbox (which is an easy way to set
> up a SqueezeCenter music server). As far as I'm aware this all runs on top
> of Fedora version 11. So it might just be a matter of figuring out how to
> get Fedora to run MythTv at the same time. I could probably get some help
> with that from the VortexBox forums. I'm also assuming that the back end
> won't take up a huge amount of the processing power, as it's mostly just
> taking in data from the tuners and writing it to the hard drive.
>
> As for a front end it might also be worth trying to use the same machine, at
> least as an experimental setup. It seems to have audio and video outputs
> built in, assuming I can find drivers for them. If it doesn't cope with the
> load, I could always find an alternative front end later.
>
> I'm not sure where I'm going to find the time to do all this, I'm still in
> the early stages of researching all this, but any pointers on how to go
> about the above setup would be useful.
>

That machine will "do" as a backend, but may have some problems coping
if you want to do a lot of transcoding or commercial detection. It
will do comm detection, but not as fast as you may like.

You'll probably want more storage eventually, 500G sounds a lot. It
was a lot until i started recording TV :)

Personally I run mythbuntu and simply add squeezeserver (or whatever
it is called now) from the logitech supplied software repository. My
music is in /var/lib/mythtv/music, making it available to mythtv and
to squeeze server. Works well.

You could possibly install myth on top of vortexbox, if it is based on
fedora there are good fedora mythtv rpms available from at least two
sources. (ATrpms and another i can't recall right now)