[mythtv-users] PCChips Geode MoBo?

[Brian Wood]

On Mar 29, 2006, at 3:09 PM, Nick Rout wrote:

>
> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:21:21 -0500
> Warren wrote:
>
>> I have had no problems running mythtv with a PVRx50 card on both an
>> EPIA-M10000 (
>> http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_76/ 
>> products_id/32 )
>> and an EPIA-SP8000 (
>> http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_76/ 
>> products_id/306
>> ).  The M10000 is far cheaper (almost 30%) but will not do
>> hardware-accelerated MPEG4.  The SP8000 will do MPEG4 (when the  
>> drivers
>> support it) and is fanless.
>>
>> I am hoping to get my hands on an EPIA-EN board board from the epiOS
>> guys soon, but I have to talk them into it first :)
>>
>> I am not endorsing the site whose URLs I posted, they were just handy
>> and have the specs readily available.
>
> OK I have an M9000 with 256M Ram, PVR 150 and gentoo with mythtv 0.19.
> It is totally useless for live tv or even recording now. In my efforts
> to get XvMC going I seem to have completely borked the whole thing  
> and I
> am considering rebuilding the whole thing, (software-wise).
>
> I am a great gentoo fan, but unsure whether I want to go through
> installing gentoo on it again.
>
> Do you have a recommendation for a distro to use on it, where I  
> will get
> XvMC working out of the box, with smooth livetv and actually have a
> usable PVR with high WAF (which is about zero at the moment).
>
> My box works fine most of the time for watching videos etc via
> mythvideo, in fact that is 99% of its life. I would like to do the PVR
> thing, but am not allowed to spend too much more money.  The local  
> (NZ)
> sky tv now have an upgrade available (for $600) to a hard drive  
> recorder
> with two tuners. Now I don't particularly want their box, with no  
> simple
> ability to transfer recordings to other formats or storage, but its
> looking popular with the rest of the household!


I am a dyed-in-the-wool Gentoo fan as well, so my first attempt at  
getting a working Myth system running was with Gentoo, of course.

So was my second, third, fourth and ...., you get the idea. I wanted  
Gentoo so my amd64 CPU would be running 64-bit code for one thing,  
something I have since concluded does not matter one bit with Myth.

I finally decided that, since this was going to be a dedicated box,  
the particular distro didn't matter, as long as it worked.

I tried Knoppmyth and MythDora, both of which worked *much* better  
than my attempts with Gentoo. (note that I listed them in  
alphabetical order so as not to show favoritism).

I am now running a MythDora installation, it seemed a little better  
to me for my particular hardware and personal wants and needs. This  
is not to say it is "better" in any real sense, but it was the first  
to release a version with 0.19, which I wanted for several reasons  
(Knoppmyth now has a 0.19 version). I'm sure a lot of folks would  
conclude that KnoppMyth is better for their particular situation,  
Debian folks especially.

There is also the Amicus release, which seems to be aimed more at a  
minimal installation on older hardware, and should be a help to those  
on a budget or re-using old gear (though it should work on something  
more modern too). I have not tried this product and so don't know  
much more than that.

So I now have a dedicated myth machine and a Gentoo box with all the  
recordings and videos NFS mounted from the Myth machine, so I can  
edit, transcode, burn etc. to my heart's content without disturbing  
the Myth box too much. I certainly wouldn't want to try running  
Cinelerra on a working Myth box. The best of all worlds IMHO.

Assuming your Myth box will be a dedicated machine, I personally  
think the "one-piece" distros have a lot to be said for them, large  
installed bases that are more or less identical and good support.  
Truly no two Gentoo boxes are ever really the same, there are too  
many variables to make it easy to support such installations,  
although I will quickly add that a lot of people run Myth on Gentoo  
quite well and happily.

Just my $0.02US.