linux PVR's

[Brian Kelsay]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

>Thanks for the info on this project.
>
>On Friday 10 October 2003 1:36 am, Brian Kelsay wrote:
>
>>For the video capture card you can use any BT8x8 (bt848 or bt878)  chip
>>based card.  Some of the Conexant based cards work, but you are in for
>>more headaches.   The best recommended card for a PVR box under Linux is
>>the Hauppage PVR-250, because of its hardware MPEG encoding and decoding
>>capability.  It save you some CPU.
>>    
>>
>
>Ok, this means seperate capture and video cards, correct?
>
>When we did the project that resulted in the left-over All-In-Wonder a couple 
>years back, they were saying 700MHz was adequate for DVD playback, but we 
>couldn't get consistent full-screen synchronous playback.
>  
>
Yes, you want separate video and video capture cards.  You may actually want playback while still 
recording or time-shifting, just like TIVO.  If you put in multiple video capture cards, you can 
watch live video and still capture or capture two shows at the same time.  Figure 1 GHz of CPU for 
each card at minimum in this mode.  If you use multiple cards, use two of the same model to save 
headaches.  Others will work, but how much is your time worth.

I am able to get live streams on my video capture box w/ a P-III 500MHz and also play DVDs.  DVD 
playback is slow to start up and if you move the video playback window around it may pause or you 
get no video for a time while the system redraws the window.  YMMV, I was doing the DVD playback 
under a minimal Linux called MoviX2 that is a bootable CD Linux that includes just Mplayer and 
hardware detection stuff and puts a cmd line mixer in the second TTY.  It may have improved.

Final helpful info. I can think of:  Read the DOCS!!  Skim through a couple of times and follow 
them as you build your machine.  I did that and still missed some points and discovered I had the 
wrong hardware or had cut corners.  You can use several different distros as long as you install 
the right packages.  Use Debian, Gentoo, Red Hat 9, Mandrake 9.1, and I think a few have tried 
Slackware (bring the pain).  The guys that used SuSe had problems.  Something with the way packages 
were built and some not included on the distro.  You could search the archives and find out.  
Again, this is with MythTV.  The default environment works w/ KDE.  Follow the docs and save 
yourself the pain.  There were a couple of schmucks that wrote in to the mail list that obviously 
didn't read or follow key parts of the docs and then wanted help getting it working under Gnome, 
didn't realize you had to compile some modules (Oh no, I have to compile something!!) and other 
blatantly dumb questions.

If you use Gentoo, someone is making ebuilds of all packages required.  There are .debs available.  
Slackware users compile by hand anyway.  And Mandrake and Red Hat 9 users have a REAL nice RPM 
archive avail., but it is tricky to setup, install per the docs and then follow Axel Thimms 
instructions for installing apt4rpm and connecting to his archives.  I set up apt4rpm on my own 
before I discovered his site and never could get connected to the archives.  I had to start over 
anyway, because I decided to put in a bigger drive and rearrange the partitions.  There is probably 
enough other things you should do for me to write a whole new set of docs or something, but I just 
wanted to point out the important parts that will save you a ton of headaches.

http://www.mythtv.org/
Docs: http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInstall
Hardware database of known working configs: http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/
Searchable mailing list archive: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Dev_F10/
Red Hat 9 archive site: http://atrpms.physik.fu-berlin.de/dist/rh9/mythtv-suite/
There are also hardware centric installation guides for PVR-250:
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250
http://www.tylerbutler.com/projects/mythtv/
 <http://www.tylerbutler.com/projects/mythtv/>
*NOTE*: The ATI All-in-Wonder cards (which are not the same as the ATI
TV Wonder, TV Wonder VE or TV Wonder Pro) /will not/ work as a MythTV
capture device, as the GATOS <http://gatos.sourceforge.net> drivers that are available provide only 
a limited subset of the V4L API. 
The TV Wonder series of cards are supported by the Bt8x8 Video4Linux driver.

Brian
------------------------------------------
By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed,  hands 
acquire shaking,  the shaking becomes a warning, By caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion.  
 And you will need caffeine on this project.