[mythtv] Fw: MythTV post

[Henk Poley]

A reaction to my mail about the Toba RV (Dec 21).

Little bit like a commerial, but he seems a nice guy :-)

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> Van: Trevor Lewis <tml@htpcworks.com>
> Aan: hpoley@dds.nl
> Onderwerp: MythTV post
> Datum: dinsdag 7 januari 2003 15:42
> 
> 
>  I just noticed your post on the MythTV list dated Dec 21. Not being a
> subscriber to the list (the article showed up in my referer logs) I
> figured I would respond directly to you. You're welcome to pass on my
> comments if you like.
> 
>  Interestingly enough, you picked up on the Toba RV model, which is
> designed for use in a motorhome. Which is why there is a GPS reciever and
> power inverter included. The specs on the home unit are pretty much the
> same though, minus StreetAtlas and the reciever and inverter.
> 
>  The Toba system is really a pretty damn cool little box. I've been
> building systems for the last 20 years, everything ranging from
> rebuilding an old Apple II to gigantic Sparc clusters. I highly recommend
> it to anyone who is building an HTPC on a budget. Spend the extra $50 for
> the M-9000 it vastly out performs the earlier EPIA boards. Just about
> everything on the M-9000 has been upgraded and it really shows.
> 
>  The TV Wonder card was chosen because of the size. The case we use is
> really small, and it can't handle a larger card. We're going to be
> swapping it out for a different tuner card in the next few weeks which is
> supposed to be able to handle HDTV. The PCI bus can't handle a full HDTV
> stream, so I'm skeptical about its claims in that arena and won't be
> advertising that in bold letters anywhere should my skepticism be
> founded.
> 
>  Live TV on the system is great. I've got the news running in the
> background right now.
> 
>  Progressive scan DVD quality is achieved through software. And I have to
> admit, its really easy to do. Since the machine runs (by default) at
> 800x600, and outputs to the TV (or monitor) at that size, the DVD
> software simply deinterlaces the DVD stream, scales it to 800x600, and
> spits it to the TV. Since every frame the Toba sends is a complete frame
> (non-interlaced), you end up with progressive scan quality. Most DVD
> software out there already does this anyway. Now while it's easy to do,
> it's not easy to do *well*. Real progressive scan requires a lot more
> math than adding frame 1 to frame 2. I could spend endless hours
> discussing progressive scan, 3:2 pulldown, and a whole slew of other
> topics along these lines, but people tend to get really bored, really
> quickly :)
> 
>  Here's the secret to the 40hrs. Recompression. A program which is
> scheduled to be recorded gets dumped to disk as hi-quality DJPEG, and
> then at night it gets passed through a deinterlacer and recompressed to
> DIVX. Not only do you end up with a smaller filesize, you get a better
> picture too.
> 
>  So now to the *real* question. Why Windows? Well, it has a lot to do
> with our main target market. The Toba is really designed to add a full
> blown computer to an RV and replace the stack of DVD player and Tivo that
> is taking up space in the RV. Most of the people buying these systems are
> over 50 years old, and they're overly concerned with having a
> "commercially supported" OS. Unfortunately that means that if it hasn't
> come from the evil empire, it doesn't exist.
> 
>  My original design was based around linux, using a distribution I built
> in house based (loosely) off of SGL linux. I've been using linux since
> before there was SCSI support (Pre 1.0), and I do all my development
> under linux, even if I'm developing for Windows (thank god for Cygwin).
> In fact I've been writing Gtk2 code in both C and Perl all day long
> (which is an incredible pain in the butt). If I could get away with it, I
> would dump XP in a heartbeat, but what with being a very small self
> funded company, I need to do everything I can to get market recognition.
> Often times that comes with a higher retail cost, and more support issues
> for me.
> 
>  I've got one of the earlier model Tobas running linux which is installed
> in my car. It does just about everything that the Toba RV does. No PVR,
> just DVD, MP3, GPS and wireless for wardriving. System boots off of
> flash, and loads itself into RAM in under 32M of space, giving me a
> really resiliant and fault tolerant system. I expect that eventually I'll
> release it as a kit to the linux world once I'm completely happy with it,
> although there are a few distros out there already like this.
> 
>  Eventually we will either offer a specialty linux based solution, or at
> least offer people the option of Linux or no OS installed. One of the
> things thats nice about running a small self funded company like this is
> that there are no agreements with investors that say I have to use XP.
> Trust me, every time I sit down at an XP box, I think of how much easier
> it would be to just use linux.
> 
>  Well, sorry for the long email, but I thought you might like to hear it
> from the horse's mouth.
> 
>  Trevor Lewis
>  CTO, HTPCWorks