[mythtv-users] Frontend Appliance, Maybe

[Ken Mink]

On 2/5/13 11:39 PM, scram69 wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Ken Mink <ken.mink at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello All,
>>     There's been a number of posts about low power or small frontend boxes. I
>> thought I'd share some info on my current project and get some feedback on
>> the viability of it.
>>
>>     Years ago I used 1st gen AppleTVs as MythTV Frontend boxes. They were
>> small, quiet, and reasonably cheap. They have a NVidia GPU that was
>> supported by XvMC. However, they could only handle up to 720p and there was
>> no support for HDMI audio. With XvMC being EOL'ed in Myth and more and more
>> 1080(i/p) content, I switched to NVidia ION based frontends. I tried,
>> unsuccessfully, to sell my ATV1s and they ended up on the parts shelf.
>>
>>       I recently I discovered that a lot of ATV1s were being re-purposed as
>> XMBC boxes by replacing the Mini-PCIe WiFi cards with a CrystalHD cards. I
>> prefer the MythTV frontend to XBMC(just a personal preference). Since MythTV
>> supports CrystalHD, I figured I give a whirl. I currently have Ubuntu
>> 12.04lts with MythTV 0.25.3 and NVidia 304 running on a ATV1. MythTV is
>> playing SD recordings fine with HDMI audio. I haven't tackled LIRC yet, I'm
>> just using a keyboard.
>>
>>       I haven't ordered a CrystalHD card yet. How is MythTV's support for
>> CrystalHD? I've been googling and there's not too much info. It all seems to
>> relate to XBMC.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ken
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> Ken,
> Looks like there is support for the 970015:
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Crystalhd
>
> I have put one into my ATV1.  It's currently running CrystalBuntu,
> based on 8.04.  What process did you follow to install 12.04 on your
> ATV?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
>
>
I installed 12.04 by using a virtual. I created a virtualbox system with 
a HD sized and partitioned the same as the ATV1. I then installed 12.04 
into partition 4(/boot) and 5 (lvm pv). Once the install was complete, I 
rebooted to a rescue disk and dd'ed the partitions to an external usb drive.
I then used the atv-bootloader recovery disk to boot the ATV1. Once 
atv-bootloader recovery is up, its disk can be removed. I then attached 
the external usb drive and dd'ed the partitions in.
After the dds completed, I installed atv-bootloader to the recovery and 
osboot partitions. I then created a boot_linux.sh script that would boot 
the kernel stored in sda4(/boot).
If the boot_linux.sh script is right and atv-bootloader is set to 
manual, 12.04 comes right up. The only gotcha I ran into is that you 
need to clear out the udev net rules for the nic from the virtual. It 
causes the atv's nic to show up as eth1.

It's not an elegant method, but it does work.

Ken