User:Nargule

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About Me

I watch TV. TV is good. Most of the problems we have in society today are directly linked with people not watching enough TV.

Seriously; I work in television as a master control operator. This position used to be a glorified button pusher but with today's automation we don't really even need to push buttons.

My System

Old System

At first I was running both my frontend and backend on a single "spare parts" machine. I started out with a PVR-350 but later added a PVR-500 to bring the total number of tuners to three.

I wasn't sure how well this project was going to work since I have such outdated hardware but I am happy to say the machine performs very well. I can record three channels at 4.5mbps each and playback another without any glitches or dropped frames.

Hardware

  • Asus P5A-B motherboard BIOS version 100.7B
  • AMD k6-2 450Mhz
  • 256mb RAM
  • 80gb Maxtor HD
  • 320gb Hitachi HD
  • Hauppauge PVR-350
  • Hauppauge PVR-500
  • No Soundcard
  • AGP card (not really used except during install)

Software

  • Gentoo Linux
  • Kernel 2.6.17.6
  • ivtv-0.7
  • MythTV 0.19
  • Mythweb plugin

New System

As well as the "spare parts" worked, it wasn't an ideal setup. The user interface was slow and the machine would sometimes lock up when stopping and starting three recordings at once (Three 8pm shows ending and three 9pm shows starting, for example). I installed my MythTV hardware and hard drives in a new system that I had all along but was being used elsewhere.

Hardware

  • Asus A7A266 motherboard
  • AMD Athlon 1400Mhz
  • 512mb RAM
  • 20gb Seagate HD (System)
  • 80gb Maxtor HD (Video)
  • 320gb Hitachi HD (Video)
  • Hauppauge PVR-350
  • Hauppauge PVR-500
  • No Soundcard
  • AGP card (not really used except during install)

Software

  • Gentoo Linux
  • Kernel 2.6.18-gentoo-r6
  • ivtv-0.8
  • MythTV 0.20
  • Mythweb plugin

HDTV System

As nice as it is to have tv on demand, nothing beats HDTV on demand. This time, I decided to invest the money in the hardware to do this right. When it comes to HDTV, a spare parts machine won't cut it.

Hardware

  • Biostar 945GZ Micro 775SE motherboard
  • Intel Pentium 940D 3.2Ghz
  • 2x 1024mb DDR2 RAM
  • 4x Samsung 250g SATA HD (raid 5)
  • 3x pcHDTV-5500 dvb tuner cards
  • On Board Video (Intel GMA 950)
  • On Board Sound (ALC861VD)

Software

  • Gentoo Linux
  • Kernel 2.6.20.7
  • MythTV 0.20

Building My Box

I ran across several problems when building my machine and I am currently working on a document explaining the problems I ran into and what solutions I took to overcome them. Some of the problems were:

  • MythTV not changing channels on PVR-350 (this was before my PVR-500 was installed)
  • Remote control not working after I installed lirc according to online documentation
  • Mythweb telling me it couldn't access the MySQL database when the .htaccess file had the correct parameters set
  • Unable to enable DMA on the hard drive
  • PVR-500 not recording when MythTV said it was
  • Second tuner on PVR-500 appearing snowy
  • Video continues to play at normal speed for approx. 2 seconds after hitting jump ahead button while the hard drive runs furiously

Building the HDTV System

The HDTV system went together painlessly. I compiled all the system binaries optimized for the nocona processor family and the kernel optimized for the Intel Core Duo. Setting up MythTV seemed more simple than ever before and the pcHDTV-5500 cards worked perfectly with the cx88-dvb driver that's part of the Linux 2.6.20.7 kernel tree. The only way I could get smooth video was to use XvMC and despite what many websites say, XvMC works with more than just Nvidia cards. The MythTV wiki Optimizing Performance has extremely useful information on getting HDTV working flawlessly.