My MythTV Box
My MythTV box has finally come together. After My Big Bad PC sold I purchased myself a Hauppauge PVR350 (TV Tuner Card, MPEG Encoder/Decoder), Chaintech AV710 (Highly rated sound card w/ 5.1 surround), and an Antec Overture II (PC Case designed for Home Theatre Systems). I ended up using my general purpose server for the task, which has plenty of juice. I followed the Gentoo MythTV HOWTO, which was incredibly helpful. And it would have been an easy upgrade if it wasn't for Gentoo going through a pretty significant GCC upgrade (3.3 to 3.4) and my server install is about 4 years old and some old orphaned libraries were hanging around.
Now that its setup and running I'm really happy with it. Watching live TV, setting up and watching recordings, it's all a breeze. The only complaints I have are (1) changing channels takes a few seconds and (2) when going into mythtv while a recording is in progress you can't just go to watch live tv and pick up the recording from there, you have to go to the recordings menu, but if you are already watching live tv and a scheduled recording begins you don't have to go back through the recordings menu, you can just continue watching.
A really neat thing is you can manage your recordings from a web interface so even if I'm not home, as long as I can get to the internet, I can setup recordings.
Now that its setup and running I'm really happy with it. Watching live TV, setting up and watching recordings, it's all a breeze. The only complaints I have are (1) changing channels takes a few seconds and (2) when going into mythtv while a recording is in progress you can't just go to watch live tv and pick up the recording from there, you have to go to the recordings menu, but if you are already watching live tv and a scheduled recording begins you don't have to go back through the recordings menu, you can just continue watching.
A really neat thing is you can manage your recordings from a web interface so even if I'm not home, as long as I can get to the internet, I can setup recordings.
posted by Joe at
11:56 AM
4 Comments:
I forgot to mention in my post that while my new PC case is really quiet, my CPU fan is a roaring beast. I finally got a new CPU fan, a Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu, a bit expensive, but super quiet and effective CPU cooler. I also got a neat wireless keyboard/mouse combo, an IONE KBP20.
By
Joe, At
12:34 PM
How do you like the IONE KBP20?
Especially the mouse function.
By
Anonymous, At
7:25 PM
Overally I'm pretty happy with the the IONE KBP20. It's light and small; really convenient. I'm glad I got it.
The mouse is a little weird though. I mean, it does the job, but it's a little slow getting around. I would prefer an eraser style or touchpad like on laptops. But since I don't really use it that often it is not a big issue for me.
And I have never had any problem with the wireless connection. I have a wireless network too and they haven't affected each other.
By
Joe, At
10:16 PM
I'd probably use the mouse function quite a bit.
It's for a HTPC.
So if it's a pain to use, maybe I'll just pick up a logitech wireless trackball, and continue using my laptop and VNC for keyboard stuff.
By
Anonymous, At
11:52 PM
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