Difference between revisions of "User:Jyeh"

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* a Cambridge Soundworks CD 740 which acts as my "sound system" (surprisingly good bass for a tiny system)
 
* a Cambridge Soundworks CD 740 which acts as my "sound system" (surprisingly good bass for a tiny system)
 
* rabbit ears from an old 12" tube TV that serve as my "HD-antenna"  (Note that I'm able to receive more channels and stronger signals using these versus ANY of the RCA or Terk so-called "HD" antennas that cost a lot more and are usually much bulkier; these I can just put in my coat closet.)
 
* rabbit ears from an old 12" tube TV that serve as my "HD-antenna"  (Note that I'm able to receive more channels and stronger signals using these versus ANY of the RCA or Terk so-called "HD" antennas that cost a lot more and are usually much bulkier; these I can just put in my coat closet.)
 +
* a Linksys WRT54GL wireless/wired router connecting everything together (theoretically 54Mbps wireless and 10/100Mpbs wired)
  
 
What can I say?  I have a small place (no room for a bigger TV or sound system), I don't have to pay any cable or satellite company every month, and everything sounds and looks great, in crystal clear HD picture quality.  The only things I'm really missing are 1) ESPN and 2) a DVR.  As good as MythTV is, it can probably only help me with one of those things.
 
What can I say?  I have a small place (no room for a bigger TV or sound system), I don't have to pay any cable or satellite company every month, and everything sounds and looks great, in crystal clear HD picture quality.  The only things I'm really missing are 1) ESPN and 2) a DVR.  As good as MythTV is, it can probably only help me with one of those things.
Line 25: Line 26:
 
** 400W PSU
 
** 400W PSU
 
** 300Gb Maxtor ATA/IDE hard-drive
 
** 300Gb Maxtor ATA/IDE hard-drive
** pcHDTV HD-5500 capture device (the only item I was going to purchase; cost=$129)
+
** [[PcHDTV_HD-5500]] capture device (the only item I was going to purchase; cost=$129)
 
* use an existing HP dv2000t Laptop (with the following specs) to serve as a mobile frontend (cost=$0)
 
* use an existing HP dv2000t Laptop (with the following specs) to serve as a mobile frontend (cost=$0)
 
** Intel Core Duo T2300E 1.66Ghz dual-core processor
 
** Intel Core Duo T2300E 1.66Ghz dual-core processor
Line 38: Line 39:
 
== Here are the things that have happened: ==
 
== Here are the things that have happened: ==
 
* I think I fried my SOYO K7VME motherboard; I got a visible spark from my 4-pin secondary connector which wasn't plugged in all the way and after that, I don't get any video output from the on-board S3 video OR the AGP card I ended up buying (see below)
 
* I think I fried my SOYO K7VME motherboard; I got a visible spark from my 4-pin secondary connector which wasn't plugged in all the way and after that, I don't get any video output from the on-board S3 video OR the AGP card I ended up buying (see below)
* Having fried the original backend candidate (that's not the goodnew, btw), the backup backend candidate was a 600Mhz Pentium III (512 MB PC100 RAM, D-Link 10/100Mbps ethernet card) using the original 300GB ATA/IDE hard-drive (cost=$0).
+
* Having fried the original backend candidate (that's not the good news, btw), the backup backend candidate was a 600Mhz Pentium III (512 MB PC100 RAM, D-Link 10/100Mbps ethernet card) using the original 300GB ATA/IDE hard-drive (cost=$0).
 
* Bought an EVGA Nvidia-based FX 5500 AGP card with DVI output (cost=$50).
 
* Bought an EVGA Nvidia-based FX 5500 AGP card with DVI output (cost=$50).
 
* Had all kinds of problems with multiple PCCHIPS mobos (all DOA) but thank goodness for Newegg and their excellent customer service.  Lesson: don't use PCChips mobos.
 
* Had all kinds of problems with multiple PCCHIPS mobos (all DOA) but thank goodness for Newegg and their excellent customer service.  Lesson: don't use PCChips mobos.
Line 55: Line 56:
 
*  Got the 600Mhz P3 backup backend candidate to work as a backend using both KnoppMyth and Ubuntu Feisty Beta.  It records HDTV fine.
 
*  Got the 600Mhz P3 backup backend candidate to work as a backend using both KnoppMyth and Ubuntu Feisty Beta.  It records HDTV fine.
 
** I prefer Ubuntu Feisty because I'm more familiar with Ubuntu and I can install other packages to help me debug things.  In KnoppMyth, things broke after I tried "apt-get update/upgrade/install".
 
** I prefer Ubuntu Feisty because I'm more familiar with Ubuntu and I can install other packages to help me debug things.  In KnoppMyth, things broke after I tried "apt-get update/upgrade/install".
* The Ubuntu MythTV Feisty installation guides (for different combos of front and backends) are really quite good for getting nVidia & pcHDTV HD-5500 setup.
+
* The Ubuntu MythTV Feisty installation guides (for different combos of front and backends) are really quite good for getting the nVidia & [[PcHDTV_HD-5500]] cards setup.
 
* Got the 2.5Ghz "main frontend" candidate up with Ubuntu Feisty Beta and got the MythTV and nVidia drivers installed and output to my 30" LCD without too much trouble.
 
* Got the 2.5Ghz "main frontend" candidate up with Ubuntu Feisty Beta and got the MythTV and nVidia drivers installed and output to my 30" LCD without too much trouble.
  
Line 61: Line 62:
 
* Not to belabor the point, but I really wish I hadn't unnecessarily fried my 1Ghz Athlon mobo.  While I did find a suitable replacement, running at 1Ghz would have been nice so I wouldn't be so paranoid that a 600Mhz isn't fast enough to run a full backend (HD-stream capture, MySQL, commercial flagging AND transcoding).  Also the 600Mhz machine was built 1999 so it's BIOS isn't Linux-ACPI compatible, so I may not be able to get the darned thing to shutdown/startup by itself.
 
* Not to belabor the point, but I really wish I hadn't unnecessarily fried my 1Ghz Athlon mobo.  While I did find a suitable replacement, running at 1Ghz would have been nice so I wouldn't be so paranoid that a 600Mhz isn't fast enough to run a full backend (HD-stream capture, MySQL, commercial flagging AND transcoding).  Also the 600Mhz machine was built 1999 so it's BIOS isn't Linux-ACPI compatible, so I may not be able to get the darned thing to shutdown/startup by itself.
 
* 600Mhz may be fine for capturing and HD stream on the backend but I had to turn mythcommflag and mythtranscode off because they were taking FOREVER.  I may turn them back on just to see how long it takes but I was having other problems so I wanted to "unload" my backend as much as possible.
 
* 600Mhz may be fine for capturing and HD stream on the backend but I had to turn mythcommflag and mythtranscode off because they were taking FOREVER.  I may turn them back on just to see how long it takes but I was having other problems so I wanted to "unload" my backend as much as possible.
* 2.5Ghz Celeron D is *NOT* fast enough to act as a front-end, even with XvMC (see below).  The video and audio stutter quite a bit and it isn't watchable.  As a test, I'm trying to acquire a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 Socket 478 to see if that will have enough horsepower and i'll update this page if it is.
+
* 2.5Ghz Celeron D is '''NOT''' fast enough to act as a front-end, even with [[XvMC]] (see below).  The video and audio stutter quite a bit and it isn't watchable.  As a test, I'm trying to acquire a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 Socket 478 to see if that will have enough horsepower and i'll update this page if it is.
* Could never get XvMC to actually IMPROVE performance.  The main-frontend had a decent amount of stuttering without XvMC enabled but with it enabled, things slowed down to a ridiculous pace maybe 1/4-to-1/8 speed.  At first I couldn't get XvMC enabled (absolutely no difference no matter which value chosen for "Preferred MPEG2 Decoder") but then I found this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/WhatNext/Feisty?action=show&redirect=MythTV%2FInstall%2FWhatNext%2FFesity#head-81c5ddee6432b0f30137b63a25595a9a927a7461
+
* Could never get [[XvMC]]to actually IMPROVE performance.  The main-frontend had a decent amount of stuttering without [[XvMC]]enabled but with it enabled, things slowed down to a ridiculous pace maybe 1/4-to-1/8 speed.  At first I couldn't get [[XvMC]]enabled (absolutely no difference no matter which value chosen for "Preferred MPEG2 Decoder") but then I found this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/WhatNext/Feisty?action=show&redirect=MythTV%2FInstall%2FWhatNext%2FFesity#head-81c5ddee6432b0f30137b63a25595a9a927a7461
After that, I could see it was trying to use XvMC (grey-OSD instead of blue) but things looked (and sounded) much worse.  I concede that I may not have set things up with XvMC, but I am using an Nvidia graphics card and the Nvidia (not nv) driver.  I even tried setting the "NvAGP" option to "true/1" but I think it's still using the AGPGART module, which may be the problem.  I tried adding "agp=off" during boot and blacklisting the agpgart module but it still looks like it's being used.
+
After that, I could see it was trying to use [[XvMC]](grey-OSD instead of blue) but things looked (and sounded) much worse.  I concede that I may not have set things up with [[XvMC]], but I am using an Nvidia graphics card and the Nvidia (not nv) driver.  I even tried setting the "NvAGP" option to "true/1" but I think it's still using the AGPGART module, which may be the problem.  I tried adding "agp=off" during boot and blacklisting the agpgart module but it still looks like it's being used.
* Also could never get HD (with or without XvMC) to display on the "mobile frontend" laptop with its Intel 950 integrated video.  The SD sub-channels look and sound OK (some stuttering but not too much) but as soon as an HD channel was chosen, the screen would turn show a 16x9 block of blue, although I would still get sound.  On note is that I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on this mobile frontend laptop; perhaps upgrading it to Feisty would help.
+
* Also could never get HD (with or without [[XvMC]]) to display on the "mobile frontend" laptop with its Intel 950 integrated video.  The SD sub-channels look and sound OK (some stuttering but not too much) but as soon as an HD channel was chosen, the screen would turn show a 16x9 block of blue, although I would still get sound.  On note is that I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on this mobile frontend laptop; perhaps upgrading it to Feisty would help.
  
 
== Things I've learned: ==
 
== Things I've learned: ==
* if you have a pcHDTV HD-5500 digital/dvb capture card (or any cx88-based card), don't even try with an Linux kernel less than 2.6.18.  Currently, Dapper and Edgy don't meet this requirement and it could never find my HD-5500 and I didn't feel like building stuff from source.  I'm assuming that's the main reason that KnoppMyth RE50 and Ubuntu Feisty worked.
+
* if you have a [[PcHDTV_HD-5500]] digital/dvb capture card (or any cx88-based card), don't even try with an Linux kernel less than 2.6.18.  Currently, Dapper and Edgy don't meet this requirement and it could never find my HD-5500 and I didn't feel like building stuff from source.  I'm assuming that's the main reason that KnoppMyth RE50 and Ubuntu Feisty worked.
 
* frying a mobo is easier than I would have thought...
 
* frying a mobo is easier than I would have thought...
 
* I think 3Ghz is the rough minimum clockspeed for HD playback of MythTV content without using XvMC.
 
* I think 3Ghz is the rough minimum clockspeed for HD playback of MythTV content without using XvMC.
Line 74: Line 75:
 
== Things I still can't figure out: ==
 
== Things I still can't figure out: ==
 
* still can't get a definitive answer on what are the minimum specs needed for a HD-capable front-end.  For instance, 2.66Ghz Pentium Ds (dual-core) are cheaper than 3.2Ghz Pentium 4s.  But I've read that 64-bits doesn't really help much (if any) over 32-bit processing.  And I've read that having dual cores doesn't really help MythTV because it's not multithreaded.  While I know that to display MythTV the front-end is certainly running more than one process, I'm assuming that the main process for displaying HD-content isn't multithreaded.  So I guess my quesiton is, which would be better, a 2.66Ghz dual-core 64-bit Pentium D or a 3.2Ghz single-core 32-bit Pentium 4?  Something tells me the answer is the latter.
 
* still can't get a definitive answer on what are the minimum specs needed for a HD-capable front-end.  For instance, 2.66Ghz Pentium Ds (dual-core) are cheaper than 3.2Ghz Pentium 4s.  But I've read that 64-bits doesn't really help much (if any) over 32-bit processing.  And I've read that having dual cores doesn't really help MythTV because it's not multithreaded.  While I know that to display MythTV the front-end is certainly running more than one process, I'm assuming that the main process for displaying HD-content isn't multithreaded.  So I guess my quesiton is, which would be better, a 2.66Ghz dual-core 64-bit Pentium D or a 3.2Ghz single-core 32-bit Pentium 4?  Something tells me the answer is the latter.
* somehow a 2.5Ghz Celeron D is just a bit too slow to display MythTV HD-content, even though it can sufficiently playback the recorded HD mpeg file using xine (with a few frames dropped here and there).  So what's making the MythTV playback so choppy in comparison to playing the same mpeg file locally using xine?
+
* somehow a 2.5Ghz Celeron D is just a bit too slow to display MythTV HD-content, even though it can sufficiently playback the recorded HD mpeg file using xine (with a few frames dropped here and there).  So what's making the MythTV playback so choppy in comparison to playing the same mpeg file locally using xine? I wouldn't think that the 100Mpbs connections to the router would be the source of the bottleneck.  Strange...
 
* similarly, the 1.66Ghz Core Duo can playback an HD mpeg file in Windows, so why can't it work as the MythTV frontend?  (Note I couldn't try using xine to playback that same HD mpeg file in Ubuntu Dapper because there is a known bug about that; when I upgrade this laptop to Feisty I'll try playing an HD mpeg using xine and report my results.)
 
* similarly, the 1.66Ghz Core Duo can playback an HD mpeg file in Windows, so why can't it work as the MythTV frontend?  (Note I couldn't try using xine to playback that same HD mpeg file in Ubuntu Dapper because there is a known bug about that; when I upgrade this laptop to Feisty I'll try playing an HD mpeg using xine and report my results.)
 +
* from what I can gather MythTV doesn't use [[NFS]] (at least not anymore) for streaming Live TV or recordings from the backend to the frontend.  Instead it uses its own "[[Myth_Protocol]]".  It does use [[NFS]] to allow for "diskless" front-ends (like KnoppMyth's front-end option) and for serving video and music using MythVideo and MythMusic.  I wonder if the [[Myth_Protocol]] is more efficient than [[NFS]] for streaming Live TV or recordings.  I don't think I can easily switch from the [[Myth_Protocol]] to [[NFS]] as the streaming protocol (at least not without severe tinkering and possibly building from source).

Revision as of 20:28, 11 April 2007

My current setup:

  • 30" PowerSpec LCD wall-mounted display
  • an LG ATSC OTA HD-tuner with built-in upconverting DVD player
  • a Cambridge Soundworks CD 740 which acts as my "sound system" (surprisingly good bass for a tiny system)
  • rabbit ears from an old 12" tube TV that serve as my "HD-antenna" (Note that I'm able to receive more channels and stronger signals using these versus ANY of the RCA or Terk so-called "HD" antennas that cost a lot more and are usually much bulkier; these I can just put in my coat closet.)
  • a Linksys WRT54GL wireless/wired router connecting everything together (theoretically 54Mbps wireless and 10/100Mpbs wired)

What can I say? I have a small place (no room for a bigger TV or sound system), I don't have to pay any cable or satellite company every month, and everything sounds and looks great, in crystal clear HD picture quality. The only things I'm really missing are 1) ESPN and 2) a DVR. As good as MythTV is, it can probably only help me with one of those things.

My goal:

  • use as many parts and machines as I had lying around (or could get for cheap) to setup a MythTV PVR. Ultimately, I don't care if that means having a single backend/frontend combo machine or separate machines for each.
  • high WAF; system has to be easy to use, relatively quiet and most of all not too time consuming to set up (guess I'm failing that last requirement)
  • if circumstances dictate that I have a separate frontend and backend, I would like to not have the backend running 24/7 and wasting energy (for both financial and ecological reasons) but I'd also like the backend to turn on and record by itself without having to have someone around to push the power button.

Original plan:

  • use an existing machine (with the following specs) to serve as my OTA HDTV backend (cost=$0)
    • 1Ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird processor
    • 512MB PC2100 DDR (1 DIMM)
    • Soyo K7VME motherboard
      • VIA KM400 Northbridge
        • S3 Graphics Unichrome 2D/3D video
        • 4x/8x AGP slot
      • VIA KT8235 Southbridge
        • On-board 10/100Mpbs Ethernet
        • AC97 audio
    • 400W PSU
    • 300Gb Maxtor ATA/IDE hard-drive
    • PcHDTV_HD-5500 capture device (the only item I was going to purchase; cost=$129)
  • use an existing HP dv2000t Laptop (with the following specs) to serve as a mobile frontend (cost=$0)
    • Intel Core Duo T2300E 1.66Ghz dual-core processor
    • 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300
    • 14.1" WXGA built-in LCD (1280x800)
    • Built-in 802.11g wireless
    • Intel GMA 950 (integrated, 128MD shared)
  • perhaps consider buying some parts to build a main front-end (with DVI output) to watch live HDTV and HD-recordings on my 30" PowerSpec LCD (cost=~$200?)
  • if possible, use an existing Unslung NSLU to serve as the "master backend" MySQL db server and to "wake-up" the "slave backend(s)" as needed (cost=$0).

Here are the things that have happened:

  • I think I fried my SOYO K7VME motherboard; I got a visible spark from my 4-pin secondary connector which wasn't plugged in all the way and after that, I don't get any video output from the on-board S3 video OR the AGP card I ended up buying (see below)
  • Having fried the original backend candidate (that's not the good news, btw), the backup backend candidate was a 600Mhz Pentium III (512 MB PC100 RAM, D-Link 10/100Mbps ethernet card) using the original 300GB ATA/IDE hard-drive (cost=$0).
  • Bought an EVGA Nvidia-based FX 5500 AGP card with DVI output (cost=$50).
  • Had all kinds of problems with multiple PCCHIPS mobos (all DOA) but thank goodness for Newegg and their excellent customer service. Lesson: don't use PCChips mobos.
  • ended up buying the following (along with the above FX500 video card and the 400W PSU from the machine-that-was-to-be-my-backend-but-was-fried) to create the "main front-end" (cost=$155)
    • BIOSTAR P4M80 Micro ATX Mobo
      • VIA P4M800 Northbridge
        • S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro IGP
        • 8x AGP slot
      • VIA VT8237 Southbridge
        • AC97 audio
        • VIA VT6103 10/100Mbps Ethernet
    • 1GB DDR-400 (PC3200)
    • 2.5Ghz Celeron D (Socket 478) (no HT or EMT64 support)*

The good news:

  • Got the 600Mhz P3 backup backend candidate to work as a backend using both KnoppMyth and Ubuntu Feisty Beta. It records HDTV fine.
    • I prefer Ubuntu Feisty because I'm more familiar with Ubuntu and I can install other packages to help me debug things. In KnoppMyth, things broke after I tried "apt-get update/upgrade/install".
  • The Ubuntu MythTV Feisty installation guides (for different combos of front and backends) are really quite good for getting the nVidia & PcHDTV_HD-5500 cards setup.
  • Got the 2.5Ghz "main frontend" candidate up with Ubuntu Feisty Beta and got the MythTV and nVidia drivers installed and output to my 30" LCD without too much trouble.

The bad news:

  • Not to belabor the point, but I really wish I hadn't unnecessarily fried my 1Ghz Athlon mobo. While I did find a suitable replacement, running at 1Ghz would have been nice so I wouldn't be so paranoid that a 600Mhz isn't fast enough to run a full backend (HD-stream capture, MySQL, commercial flagging AND transcoding). Also the 600Mhz machine was built 1999 so it's BIOS isn't Linux-ACPI compatible, so I may not be able to get the darned thing to shutdown/startup by itself.
  • 600Mhz may be fine for capturing and HD stream on the backend but I had to turn mythcommflag and mythtranscode off because they were taking FOREVER. I may turn them back on just to see how long it takes but I was having other problems so I wanted to "unload" my backend as much as possible.
  • 2.5Ghz Celeron D is NOT fast enough to act as a front-end, even with XvMC (see below). The video and audio stutter quite a bit and it isn't watchable. As a test, I'm trying to acquire a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 Socket 478 to see if that will have enough horsepower and i'll update this page if it is.
  • Could never get XvMCto actually IMPROVE performance. The main-frontend had a decent amount of stuttering without XvMCenabled but with it enabled, things slowed down to a ridiculous pace maybe 1/4-to-1/8 speed. At first I couldn't get XvMCenabled (absolutely no difference no matter which value chosen for "Preferred MPEG2 Decoder") but then I found this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/WhatNext/Feisty?action=show&redirect=MythTV%2FInstall%2FWhatNext%2FFesity#head-81c5ddee6432b0f30137b63a25595a9a927a7461

After that, I could see it was trying to use XvMC(grey-OSD instead of blue) but things looked (and sounded) much worse. I concede that I may not have set things up with XvMC, but I am using an Nvidia graphics card and the Nvidia (not nv) driver. I even tried setting the "NvAGP" option to "true/1" but I think it's still using the AGPGART module, which may be the problem. I tried adding "agp=off" during boot and blacklisting the agpgart module but it still looks like it's being used.

  • Also could never get HD (with or without XvMC) to display on the "mobile frontend" laptop with its Intel 950 integrated video. The SD sub-channels look and sound OK (some stuttering but not too much) but as soon as an HD channel was chosen, the screen would turn show a 16x9 block of blue, although I would still get sound. On note is that I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on this mobile frontend laptop; perhaps upgrading it to Feisty would help.

Things I've learned:

  • if you have a PcHDTV_HD-5500 digital/dvb capture card (or any cx88-based card), don't even try with an Linux kernel less than 2.6.18. Currently, Dapper and Edgy don't meet this requirement and it could never find my HD-5500 and I didn't feel like building stuff from source. I'm assuming that's the main reason that KnoppMyth RE50 and Ubuntu Feisty worked.
  • frying a mobo is easier than I would have thought...
  • I think 3Ghz is the rough minimum clockspeed for HD playback of MythTV content without using XvMC.
  • a 600Mhz Pentium III should work fine as a headless HDTV backend and unless you don't mind keeping that backend running 24/7, you should probably turn off commercial flagging and transcoding

Things I still can't figure out:

  • still can't get a definitive answer on what are the minimum specs needed for a HD-capable front-end. For instance, 2.66Ghz Pentium Ds (dual-core) are cheaper than 3.2Ghz Pentium 4s. But I've read that 64-bits doesn't really help much (if any) over 32-bit processing. And I've read that having dual cores doesn't really help MythTV because it's not multithreaded. While I know that to display MythTV the front-end is certainly running more than one process, I'm assuming that the main process for displaying HD-content isn't multithreaded. So I guess my quesiton is, which would be better, a 2.66Ghz dual-core 64-bit Pentium D or a 3.2Ghz single-core 32-bit Pentium 4? Something tells me the answer is the latter.
  • somehow a 2.5Ghz Celeron D is just a bit too slow to display MythTV HD-content, even though it can sufficiently playback the recorded HD mpeg file using xine (with a few frames dropped here and there). So what's making the MythTV playback so choppy in comparison to playing the same mpeg file locally using xine? I wouldn't think that the 100Mpbs connections to the router would be the source of the bottleneck. Strange...
  • similarly, the 1.66Ghz Core Duo can playback an HD mpeg file in Windows, so why can't it work as the MythTV frontend? (Note I couldn't try using xine to playback that same HD mpeg file in Ubuntu Dapper because there is a known bug about that; when I upgrade this laptop to Feisty I'll try playing an HD mpeg using xine and report my results.)
  • from what I can gather MythTV doesn't use NFS (at least not anymore) for streaming Live TV or recordings from the backend to the frontend. Instead it uses its own "Myth_Protocol". It does use NFS to allow for "diskless" front-ends (like KnoppMyth's front-end option) and for serving video and music using MythVideo and MythMusic. I wonder if the Myth_Protocol is more efficient than NFS for streaming Live TV or recordings. I don't think I can easily switch from the Myth_Protocol to NFS as the streaming protocol (at least not without severe tinkering and possibly building from source).