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The Mini-ITX Linux PVR Project
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:33 PM
from the stuff-to-hack-on dept.
from the stuff-to-hack-on dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Home theater PCs have taken many shapes and forms, perhaps none more interesting than this Mini-ITX PVR. In part three of its Mini-ITX project, XYZ Computing has turned its Mini-ITX box into a Linux PVR, using Ubuntu and MythTV. This is a lot of computer in a very small package and designing it, putting it together, and then getting it to work was an interesting process. The article is a great guide for people who are interested in their own Mini-ITX Linux PVR, but also goes over the problems and pitfalls of a build like this."
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One line summary (Score:5, Interesting)
One word reply to you ;-) (Score:5, Informative)
Knopmyth [mysettopbox.tv]
Parent
Re:One word reply to you ;-) (Score:2)
Re:One word reply to you ;-) (Score:3, Informative)
" What is KnoppMyth?
* Short Answer: KnoppMyth is Knoppix optimized for MythTV.
* Long Answer: Our vision is a distribution that makes it trivial to setup a set-top box.
We've included everything that believe is needing to reach this goal.
And, in fact, the developers use this distribution on their own PVR's.
What is Knoppix?
* See http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html [knopper.net]
What is MythTV?
* See http://mythtv.org/ [mythtv.org]
Cool! So do
Re:One line summary (Score:2, Redundant)
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html [mysettopbox.tv]
It's not perfect but it's close to out-of-the-box.
It helps if you are careful when selecting your hardware to make sure it is well supported ahead of time (hauppauge is a good call).
How loud is the dvd drive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Otherwise it's a pretty neat little thing, and seems to work well w/o much hassle. I'm still skeptical of those slimline DVD drives in media computers, though...
Re:How loud is the dvd drive? (Score:3, Informative)
1. Archive all DVD's on hard drives in another room. (That's what I do, not just to avoid the noise... Having my media library archived like this is pretty sweet in general.) On OS X, Mac the Ripper is probably the best tool. (Make sure to get a hold of the version 3 beta to get around newer DVD copy protection schemes.)
2. Plug a big external DVD drive,
Alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a (slightly more expensive) alternative for non-geeks:
1. Buy a Mac Mini
2. Plug a USB2 or Firewire tuner and the Keyspan USB remote sensor into it.
3. Install EyeTV software & Keyspan remote software (both included with the hardware.)
4. Set up your universal remote (your TV and/or receiver remote might be a programmable one. Otherwise there are plenty out there to choose from for about twenty bucks) to control both the TV tuner and all your Mac media apps.
Done.
Site is dying. First page: and my thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
Wednesday, 22 March 2006
Page 1 of 7
By: Sal Cangeloso
For the past few months I have been spending a lot of time using my Mini-ITX computer. This was originally a project system which I put together so that I would have something small and silent for my living room, on which I could do a few very basic tasks, like check my email and get on the internet. The first part of the project featured a system which booted Puppy Linux off of a flash USB drive, a solution which was simple and quiet, but not very powerful. In the second part of the project the system was given a new case, improved cooling, and it booted off of a LiveCD and could save to a CF card. As I used the system more I decided the best course of action would be to make a few more changes and increase the system's functionality, despite the impact that this could have on its silent operation.
This time I had some big plans in store for the Mini-ITX box. The plans were, roughly, to install a hard drive, move to a more powerful Linux distribution, and add PVR capabilites to the system. Because the computer was already situated in my living room, making it into a personal video recorder was an obvious choice, though doing this on a Mini-ITX Linux system would surely take a bit of finesse. "
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I wish that they said what "ITX" means.
PVR is Personal Video Recorder which describes a digital device like a TIVO or MythTV software for a computer system with TV input.
I've used an All In Wonder 8500DV to record TV onto my computer, but my biggest roadblock has been poor ATI drivers for Windows that disabled Hibernation, crashes XP, and fails to work well in Linux even as a video card never mind as a TV system.
Price (Score:2)
But I think this will cost at least a few hunderd. Then why not just use a provider who offers video on demand, you might need to pay a euro per show but that would be hunders of shows before you spend the same amount. Maybe if you watch several recorded shows a day it might be usefull but I think most people (me atleast) dont watch that much.
I may be mistaken... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, the article's a good one, but it seems like the focus of the summary is "They have MythTV on MiniITX now" - haven't we been doing this for months, if not years?
Re:I may be mistaken... (Score:3, Informative)
Most people want a pretty box, and many of the mini ITX cases meet that description. I think the mATX is quite small enough, but standard ATX just looks bulky. The last one I built used a Silverstone LC11M and I would say that's borderline too big.
500MHz - 1GHz is arguably a little slow, especially for the OSD. If you're recording a lot of TV, you might not be able to transcode overnight with that CPU either. I tend to use a 754-based sempron which is overkill but offers n
Cables, cables, cables (Score:2, Informative)
P.S. VDR is a much better solution than Myth in countries with DVB-S and DVB-T.
pre-emptive coracl cache (Score:4, Informative)
PVR-350 - Bad Choice for this application (Score:5, Informative)
The major difference between the PVR-350 and the PVR-250/150 is that the 350 has video output (MPEG2 decompression). Seeing as the board he selected has video out built in (and a processor that is plenty-capable enough), the PVR-350 was an unnecessary added expense. Also, the PVR-350 is slow at outputting X-menus, cannot do OpenGL or any acceleration except for MPEG2, DVD decoding is slow, games won't work, etc. Basically, the PVR-350 is useful ONLY for MPEG2 TV output.
ALSO - the current stable version of MythTV (0.19) has a bug where fast forwarding and rewinding greater than 3X don't work properly. There is no timeframe for fixing the bug, as not all that many people are using the 350.
A better choice would have been to get a PVR-500 to get dual-tuners, or at least a MCE version of the 150 (take up less space in the teeny case) and use the onboard SVideo out (or VGA out converted).
For the windows farts like me (Score:5, Informative)
So what i did in the meanwhile is installing my hauppauge 350 on my own PC, a winxp box, with GB_PVR) http://www.gbpvr.com/ [gbpvr.com]. Its free, its windows-based (.net) and it works great. As far as i understand from it, its the closest thing to mythTv on the win platform.
in fact, it work so nicely that i dont even feel the rush of building my ubuntu pvr.
MiniITX is not worth it (Score:3, Informative)
As it is already mentioned in the article, you pay a decent premium for the small size. But that's not the main issue. The biggest problem is cooling. Sure the EPIA processors are quite tolerant, but for a media center silence is the main issue. The cooling fan, 40x40mm is non-standard as is the whole cooling unit. So you can't buy one of the many excellent standard silent coolers.
He replaced it with a custom 40mm fan, but I personally highly doubt that it is really silent with 3000rpm. Plus one has also to consider the airflow compared to the original fan. When I built my system, I was unable to find a similar fan with the same airflow, even considering Papst and Verax.
Another thing is, that the 1GHz CPU is really slow. I ran into problem when playing DivX or XVid movies. Then under Linux (at least at the time I was building the system, dunno where they are at this point) there were no drivers for the Hardware-MPEG2 accelerator, so DVD playbay wasn't possible.
My conculsion is: If you go for MicroATX instead, you'll have just a slightly bigger case, however Standard components. There are zillion of cheap, reliable and silent CPU coolers, Power Supplies etc. Plus any decent CPU, even a Pentium III 1 GHz is faster than this VIA processor.
Why not using epiOS? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=Conten
Mini-ITX? Not for the backend, IMHO (Score:5, Informative)
One of the big advantages of Myth is its support for transcoding the recordings after they're done, removing commercials automatically, and archiving them to, say, DivX or XviD format. You're not going to be doing that with a 1 GHZ processor on a Mini ITX board.
Much better to get a real box for the backend, which does the recording, and network it to the Mini ITX box to use as the frontend, which runs the user interface.
Personally, I got sick of seeing my 2.8 GHZ P4 Hyperthreaded Sony desktop being used as the family web browser/email machine (such a waste!) so I replaced it with a nice little 2.4 GHZ Compaq EVO from Ebay and am building Myth 0.19 on Ubuntu on the Sony. It's big, it has space for two hard drives, it has a DVD burner and a CDROM drive built in, and it's SILENT, even when running 3+ hour video reencoding jobs at 100% CPU. Got a 300 GB Samsung drive for it, with room for another before I need to go external.
Today my PVR-350 comes, so that'll get me really going on the build. I'll try and use its video output, but I'm starting to see a lot of limitations with that, as the author mentions. I may get a cheap NVidea card with TV out instead. But the PVR-350's are the same price, if not cheaper, as the 250's right now, so why not get one?
Next thing to check out is getting a cable box with Firewire output from Comcast to record some HDTV on, even though I only have a standard TV. Supposedly they're required by the FCC to give me a box with Firewire that outputs at least all "must carry" (read: local broadcast) stations unencrypted, we'll see.
I currently have a Panasonic Showstopper (also known as a ReplayTV first generation) which has worked well for going on five years, but the Myth user interface simply blows it out of the water - killer searching and recording options, a remote REAL-TIME web interface (Replay has one, but the box only dials up once a night - wanna record something now when you're at work, you're out of luck). Plus weather, RSS, and a general video storage area that will also mean I can move my XBox running XBox Media Center to another room.
Once this is all happy, I may look into getting some Mini-ITX boxes with monitors for the kids' rooms and load Ubuntu on them - voila, web surfing and email that I can control and monitor, and Myth frontend machines for them to watch shows on, which I can also monitor.
Geek family nirvana!
Re:Geek family nirvana! (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried putting PCs in their rooms, and ended up taking them back out again when I moved into our current home.
Now I have a long benchtop across one wall of the den, which I can easily see from kitchen, den, or dining room (the places my spouse and I spend most of
IR Blaster complex? Bah! (Score:4, Informative)
Nah, just get this: http://www.mytvstore.com/product_id_004.html [mytvstore.com]. The MyBlaster/Serial eliminates needing LIRC for the IR Blaster (which the article's author could then leave for just his PVR-350's remote, as I have). Use the excellent Perl script that is found here: http://www.mytvstore.com/mythtv_linux.html [mytvstore.com], set the device smack in front of your cable/sat boxes IR reciever (I find a small patch of double sided tape lasts for over a year, at least
And did I say that this requires *no* LIRC fiddling? OK, just making sure.
Re:NEWSFLASH: (Score:2, Funny)
Nobody cares. Now go back to watching TV on your DRM crippled system that crashes twice per week.
Re:Impressive, but not really an all-in-one soluti (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not? Many games can run just fine on a 1Ghz Processor. Maybe not the latest and greatest FPS but throw Mame, an NES emulator, SNES emulator, a Sega Emulator, a Commodore 64 Emulator and maybe an Amiga Emulator and you have a LOT of very fun casual games that you can play.
Parent
Re:Go LAN young man. (Score:5, Interesting)
The cute little box that serves as my MythTV front-end is real quiet because there is no:
a) Hard drive
b) Fan
c) Optical drive
It *does* have a GbE connection to a noisier box in a closet. This one has room for lots of large hard drives and a DVD-RW. The little box boots via PXE (only because I wanted the experience), but has a 1 Gb USB 2.0 thumb drive for "local" storage or caching, just in case.
The down side? The little box is almost useless without the network connection to the big box. This can be fixed by booting from the USB flash drive, if you want.
The up side? I have over 300 DVDs and 100 CDs all ripped to the big box. Movies, recorded TV and music is all available at any PC in the house. I have room for a couple hundred more movies and CDs before having to buy more hard drives. It is super-silent since there are no moving parts.
[Note to the MPAA/RIAA: I have the originals of ALL of those DVDs and CDs boxed away nicely, in storage, to avoid scratches and deterioration.]
Parent
Only in the US (Score:3, Informative)