[mythtv-users] Myth TV on server

[Robert Johnston]

On 05/11/2010 5:41 PM, Mark wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm hoping to set up MythTV on my a server I bought used. I want to be
> able to capture TV shows to the server and then have any computer on the
> network play those shows. My question for you guys is what sort of TV
> capture card should I be looking at. The server has 3 PCI-X (not PCIe)
> slots available, it only has USB 1.1, It also has a built in serial
> port, and we are using a digital cable set top box. I spent the last
> couple of days reading about capture cards in the MythTV wiki but I'm
> even more confused now! I want to capture the signal from the set top
> box and control it with the server through an IR interface. I think I
> need to use an analog framebuffer card like the WinTV-Go card, but I'm
> not sure, and I don't want to spend the money to find out I cant use it.
> As for the IR control I plan on using the IR Blaster that is recommended
> in the wiki. The server is also running openSUSE as its OS. I would also
> love to capture HDTV at some point, so if I can get a capture card that
> can do that as well then that would be great! Am I going in the right
> direction, or is there something I'm missing?
> Any help would be appreciated.
> Thanks
> Mark
>
> Additional computer specs:
> MOBO: Tyan Thunder K8SR
> CPUS: 2 AMD Opteron 270 Dual core 2.0Ghz.
> memory: 4 gig
> Hard Drive: 1TB drive, 3 empty SATA ports.

Okay, first of all, that is MASSIVE overkill for a backend server! It 
doesn't need anywhere near that amount of processing power.

IIRC, PCI-X is backwards-compatible with PCI, so you could use a PVR 
150/250/500 to capture from your cable box just fine.

With the aforementioned PVR card, it would do the encoding in hardware, 
so there's no issues with using the BT8x8 capture and software 
compression, and also no issues with getting the audio stream right (A 
good thing).

For an IR blaster, you could grab a CommandIR unit, or even use one of 
the serial ports you have to make an IR unit (Like so: 
http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html). This will then tell the cable 
box to change channel.

This will give you Standard Definition recording. If you want High-Def 
(And if your cable box supports it) you could get a PCI Firewire card 
and hook it up to the cable box. Then, in thoery, you would get a HD 
capable feed, and the channel change commands could (if it's a supported 
unit) be sent over firewire as well, making it a self-contained solution.

This server would then be installed as a "Backend" server.

The unit that sits next to the TV can be a small, thin unit (Like a Mac 
Mini (g2), or a Zotac ION box) which then runs just the "Frontend" client.

To make configuration easier, if possible, I'd suggest switching distro 
to something with Myth already built in, like Mythdora, Mythbuntu or 
LinHES (Formerly Knoppmyth). These distros then hand-hold you through 
the setting up of Myth (For the most part) and getting the dependencies 
sorted out.

Hope this helps.