Best HTPC setup (2 Viewers)

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sweet... i've got to try this out next season and see if I can get the saints games for free... they have the fox channel in new orleans, good picture quality...it's a very small screen, but it might be one step closer to being able to go down to only an internet connection...
 
Well, I just went through the whole ordeal of setting a streamming server, so I can watch TV (which is D*), play movies, music, etc. anywhere, and here are a couple of pointers:

1.- If you are going to use a Hauppauge TV card, make sure that your motherboard is Intel, or at the very least has all Intel chip sets. There are known issues with Hauppauge cards and non-Intel chipsets, namely VIA and SiS. nVidia, I don't know. But for the sake of minimizing problems, I went with an Intel board and CPU.

2.- I'd stick with Linux, especially if you are going to be streamming TV to say, work -not that you'd do something like that :) -. It makes it easier to change channels and change media remotely.

3.- Big CPU.

4.- I didn't go with MythTV because frankly, is too complicated and too bloated for what it is used for. There are many players out there that will play the TV stream (or movies, music, etc) and If you know some basic commands in LInux, you can program your own DVR.
 
Thanks for the input. Right now i'm strongly leaning to doing an all-in-one system using linux initially -- I'll partition it so that if i switch to windows i won't have to re-rip my dvds...

i also forgot to post the link to what i was talking about in my last post:
http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

pretty cool... i can watch fox in new orleans, so i don't have to pay to watch the saints. granted, not as nice as a full screen, but i imagine it's only a matter of time...
 
oh... SS -- what do you use to control your D* stb? An IR blaster or did you make your own serial control cable?
 
interesting... i don't have a usb on my stb.... i've seen sites that teach you how to make a serial cable to control your stb -- i do have a serial type port on the back of my stb, so i think i could do that...
 
UncleTrvlingJim said:
interesting... i don't have a usb on my stb.... i've seen sites that teach you how to make a serial cable to control your stb -- i do have a serial type port on the back of my stb, so i think i could do that...
Click to expand...

My STB doesn't have a serial port. All D* STBs are going to USB. A friend of mine gave me 2 serial adaptors, so I connected them to each end of a regular network cable , one goes in the back of the PC, the other connects to a netgear serial to USB adaptor, then the USB into the STB.
I control it with the directv.pl script that you can find online.
The hardest part is the script needs some module for perl loaded, so the script can communicate with the serial port, but again, you can find it online. I believe you still need this script for serial to serial.

If you are going to be streamming outside your home network, this is really cool because you can have a very small connection into your home network so you can change the channels without taking up bandwitdh that you can use for the actual streamming.
 
Looks like I missed out on all the fun, stinking flu!

Jim, since I know you like to stay as 'educated' as possible, I will insert links as much as I can find as I go.

What I usually do when building MythTV boxen is spend all the $$'s on the "Backend" system. Then use whatever 'Frontend' that you want.

For the Backend server, I recommend not just a monster of a CPU, but 2 of em and 64bit. I will be building mine in the spring and will be using 2 dual core Opteron, but mine will also be my main server and fun. Will also have around 4Tb of drive space when those TB drives get rolling. yummy!

For the Frontend system, you can have that run on just about anything. Myself, I will use an older Xbox (READ HOW) w/out a harddrive and it will be a PXE/NFS setup. It's really not that complicated to make happen.
I haven't messed with it, but they have a MythTV Frontend for Windows, as well.

You will hear about how hard MythTV is to setup and that is a valid statement. I can honestly tell you, though that MythTV has come a long way in a short time and the setup is nowhere as complicated as it used to be. Severum pointed you KnoppMyth. Good stuff it is and it eliminates most all of the pain. Most of the questions I receive are related to MySQL and IVTV setups and not with MythTV itself.

You may like KnoppMyth and will want to stick with that or you may want to use another. Personally, I would go with Ubuntu and follow THIS guide (cool site, eh?) BTW, Ubuntu and KnoppMyth are BOTH Debian based and are very very similar.
As far as performance, you are not going to beat Gentoo. I love Gentoo and place it in a league of it's own in linuxland. The learning curve of Gentoo is rather steep, but learning how to drive race cars never is easy. :hihi:
IF learning Linux really well is what you're after, go w/Gentoo.
(BTW Severum, MythTV/FreeBSD is slowly coming along.)

As far as offsite streaming is concerned, that is a book in itself. With MythTV there are some really cool methods. My favorite is MythStreamTV. You can even stream via Flash sorta' like Youtube following THIS guide. I have not tried the Flash method, myself.

You had also mentioned the Netflix thing. I set MythFlix up for a friend of mine a couple/few months back. It was really easy, but he later told me that he just kept using the normal web browser method w/Netflix and didn't care so much about MythFlix. Your opinion may be different?
 
Thanks for the info! You're system sounds a little $$... what are the benefits of going with a separate backend/frontend setup? I didn't know you could stream to an XBOX from MythTV.... could you suggest an upgrade path starting out with an all-in-one box and then moving to a separate backend/frontend solution? I wouldn't mind have a separate backend server, but I'll have to pull cable to my office, and I hate doing that, although I guess I could go with an hdhomerun solution.

I tried throwing on Ubuntu on an old P3 I had... it only has 128MB of ram, but I figured it should be good enough to play with. Unfortunately using the LiveCD was pretty much impossible, so I'm going to try just installing it and seeing if I could at least use it... otherwise, I'll see if I can't score a free 128mb stick of RAM from some people around here with old computers.

I have a friend who is a big Gentoo proponent but told me since I have a 2 year old and a baby on the way I probably wouldn't have time to really learn it so I should stick with Ubuntu.

The big downside to going with Linux for me, is probably zero possibility of getting a DirecTV PCI card, but who knows if that's going to happen anyway or how restrictive that's going to be. The bigger downside is uncertain support for legally downloading and playing high definition movies... but if that ever becomes a big deal for us, i can always switch to windows...
 
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Agree with you on the DirecTV PCI card, be lucky if they even allow it to be sold separately from certified Windows systems. Dish can be done in Linux, but they won't authorize cards on the hardware so it isn't an ideal/legal solution.

I'm thinking of getting a HD QAM card since Suddenlink finally stepped into the HD world. Waiting on the selection to improve, they currently carry 7 channels and just one network (CBS).
 
Severum said:
Agree with you on the DirecTV PCI card, be lucky if they even allow it to be sold separately from certified Windows systems. Dish can be done in Linux, but they won't authorize cards on the hardware so it isn't an ideal/legal solution.

I'm thinking of getting a HD QAM card since Suddenlink finally stepped into the HD world. Waiting on the selection to improve, they currently carry 7 channels and just one network (CBS).
Click to expand...

I'm fortunate that I have a pretty decent selection of OTA HD options here, so I wouldn't really need a QAM card even if I had cable. What I want is to see ants and other bugs in glorious high definition though -- DiscoveryHD looks pretty cool. And I'd love to get NFL Sunday ticket in HD.... that would be great... but it ain't cheap.
 
Severum said:
Agree with you on the DirecTV PCI card, be lucky if they even allow it to be sold separately from certified Windows systems. Dish can be done in Linux, but they won't authorize cards on the hardware so it isn't an ideal/legal solutiion.
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It's all politics and it's really disgusting!
It's equivalent to buying a car and the manufacturer telling you that you can only use Goodyear tires. Then the manufacturer (lobbyist) pays the lawmakers to make it a friggin law.......AND THEY DO! Now it's illegal to put any other tire on your car. Just forget the fact that you already paid the car off years ago and there are 40 more tire makers out there that have superior tires. Ahhhh, good ole' USA, Inc.

Anyhow,
My earlier post may have been somewhat misleading, If used for a frontend, that Xbox will no longer be an Xbox except for the words Xbox on the front and the green and black colors. It's also using the older Xboxes not the 360's. Not only that, but that Xbox is JUST strong enough to play back mpeg2-video. Not the most ideal solution, but good enough for me.

The benefits of a Backend server (at least for me) is that I can have it in another room and perform all the information crunching on it and have my Frontend be a little QUIET box just for viewing whatever media comes down the pipe. Remember that, in my case, that same Backend will also be serving many other functions other than MythTV capturing/storing.

You could run Ubuntu on a system w/128Mb Ram, but the default window manager (Gnome) will hog it all. I would recommend at least 256Mb or go with Fluxbox or something as a window manager.
 
My main point in running linux on my older desktop is to just mess around and see if I can use it for the media server and be comfortable with it. I don't mind if it runs a bit slow. I was thinking about just using XUbuntu, but after reading around, I figure if I go with a linux box, I'll probably be using Ubuntu with Gnome, so I'll probably stick with that for now and see if I can't snag another stick of ram...

I figure I can build a pretty quiet HTPC to be both my front end and back end.... I don't need it to be too powerful -- I'll probably go with both onboard video and sound until I go high def... if it is too loud I can always move it later. I will build a file server later that will go in my office.

My wife is pretty amused with this latest venture of mine... she's sold on the concept, she just thinks it'll take quite a bit of messing around to actually get it to work.
 
I don't want to sound like a Hauppauge salesman, but they have a card now that takes both cable/Directv inputs as well as an OTA antenna for HD.
 
System Shock said:
I don't want to sound like a Hauppauge salesman, but they have a card now that takes both cable/Directv inputs as well as an OTA antenna for HD.
Click to expand...

One card? I take it, that it will only take an analog signal from directv, right? which card is this?
 

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