[mythtvnz] Another Intro

[Wade Maxfield]

Well, I'm fairly new to all this.  I'm a first time Linux user, but 
long time Mac guy (Tech support and Web Developer).

My adventure started 6 weeks ago, building a FC4 box, as per Jarod's 
guide.  It's actually my second box, the first being a dry run to see 
if I could get the basics working before I went out and splurged on 
things.  Not being a Windows guy, I didn't have an old machine I 
could reuse for this, so I borrowed an old PIII machine off a friend 
and set to it.

Being totally new to Linux when things didn't quite work it took a 
while to diagnose.  And even longer than it should have since I quite 
often went back to basics and reinstalled if all else failed.  Total 
number of installs to date is 9.
Setup went pretty smoothly once I figured out the reason I couldn't 
pickup any channels was due to the 150 card being faulty (the tuning 
was off by 7MHz - too low). So with card replaced and 3 installs 
down, I successfully set up my first box with FC4 and ATrpms.  Upon 
proving the system to Girlfriend, I went ahead and procured my box 
and gave back the loaner.

After much playing with things, I now have a combined FE/BE with a 
AMD64 3200+ running FC4 64bit and MythTV 0.18.1 via ATrpms.  2 tuners 
(Hauppauge 150MCE and a 350, using remote but not tv-out), nvidia 
5700 AGP for TV-Out,  2 SATA Hard drives (300Gb for Myth, 300Gb for 
media server archives - decided not to try the LVM gig). First drive 
died a slow death after 3 days - so 3 more installs down while 
figuring that out.  Then came the battle with 64bit.  Installed 
FC4_64, hit segfault issues launching the frontend with plugins, 
tried i386 successfully but decided to go back to FC4_64 and just 
endure 0.19 comes out.

I'm using a HTPC case, but I think the manufacturer must have a 
different definition of quiet than I do, when it comes to fan noise. 
Replaced case fans, and replaced GPU fan with CoolerMaster heatpipe 
in the search for less noise.  Both made a noticeable difference, 
just the power supply fan left to deal with.

The machine mainly gets used as a BE, as most watching takes place 
via XBMC with the MythTV scripts in other rooms of the house. I've 
also moved the contents of my old media server - mainly Top Gear - to 
this new machine, and I'm using ccXstream to serve it to the xbox(s).

So all in all, way too much time has gone into getting this going, 
but it had to be done.  8)


Things left to get working/try:
Sky Recording - Pace DSR2000 - I've got an IR Blaster but haven't yet 
sussed the correct profile to use with LIRC
EPG source - in case hairy.geek.nz goes away
Commercial Flagging - I haven't quite figured out the best settings to use
Transcoding - XBMC doesn't seem to like MPEG4 encoded .nuv files, so 
might have to set up a real FE for the bedroom (has to be quiet, 
which the xbox isn't really, and have a remote - tuner not required) 
- any suggestions?
Mac Mini - Have successfully got my PowerMac to connect to the BE 
using the Tiger build of 0.18.1, and I'm going to see if I can borrow 
a Mac Mini to try out as a quiet frontend for the bedroom.

  - Wade