[mythtvnz] MythAccount: one man's attempt at a MythBox.

[AlanP]

Just thought I'd do a writeup on my experiences so far. Critique as you=20
will. If this is horribly off topic for this list, let me know and I won't=
=20
post any follow ups to it.

I read in Atomic MPC Magazine about this Myth thing, having encountered a=20
similar beast in a flatmate's media PC, which had no television=20
capabilities beyond playing back DiVXs. Atomic included a bootable custom=20
Knoppix CDROM, which booted up into MythTV. Once I had bought a Hauppauge=20
PVR150, I immediately booted up the 'AtomicTV' CDROM again. The fact that=20
it had no drivers for anything other than a el cheapo BTTV capture card=20
came up almost immediately. This didn't dull my desire for a HTPC, however,=
=20
and Dad was completely behind me, since we are currently subscribed to Sky=
=20
Digital (DVB-Satellite) for better reception on TV1-3, and to get Prime.=20
The thought of losing the monthly subscription to Sky sounded like a very=20
good idea to Dad.

My initial desires for my MythBox was to have expandability in terms of=20
peripherals, cheapness, relative power, and independence of a telephone=20
line, since we are on dialup and tying up the telephone line downloading=20
listings isn't really an option at all. In terms of expandability, I wanted=
=20
as many PCI slots as possible to enable me to have five or six tuners if I=
=20
wanted, so that I wouldn't encounter recording conflicts. Cheapness is=20
obvious =96 traditionally, the best value for your money seems to be the=
 most=20
underpowered system possible. For relative power, I wanted a system that=20
could eat Standard Definition and happily spit the bones out in two seconds=
=20
dead. High definition isn't a priority for me, as no one in New Zealand=20
broadcasts in HD. I've heard the reason for this is the local TV production=
=20
studios, as they are only set up for SD. As for independence of the 'phone=
=20
line, I wanted to avoid tying up the telephone downloading the week's EPG.=
=20
When I found that the EPG that the Sky Digital box uses was received over=20
the satellite, I immediately wanted to have a satellite tuner in my future=
=20
MythBox. This had an additional bonus in the quality stakes, even if it is=
=20
just for TV 1 and 2. (TVNZ and CanWest will be broadcasting more channels=20
when Optus' new satellite goes up.) As for software, my initial plan was to=
=20
have a Debian system, getting packages from the Marillat site. My laptop=20
runs Debian, and has done for many years quite reliably and easily. This=20
changed.

First thoughts hardware-wise were Via C3 for low power, until I found a=20
lack of PCI slots, lack of 'keeping up' power, and high price. The second=20
option was an AGP/PCI system, since they tend to always have a lot of PCI=20
slots and a bottom of the food chain FX5200 should be plenty cheap. I=20
ordered the absolute cheapest CPU (Celeron D 331) and motherboard (Asrock=20
775V88+) from my usual supplier, only to find that the Socket T system=20
didn't work, and nothing could coax it to work. This is usual with my=20
experiences of building Intel systems, and frustration led me to a purchase=
=20
of an AMD Sempron and an Asus motherboard, since every AMD system I have=20
built has worked on first pop and Asus have a good reputation. Intel=20
systems always produce various anglo-saxon words from me, eventually. The=20
Sempron lived up to my expectations =96 the only flaw in the physical build=
=20
was me plugging the power LED into the power switch pins by accident.

My physical build wound up being the following:

CPU:    AMD Sempron 2600+
Mobo:   Asus K8N (nForce3)
Ram:    512MB TwinMos
GFX:    Gigabyte FX-5200
HDD:    Seagate 300GB SATA-II
PSU:    3R 400W I had lying around
Tuners:
   Analog - Hauppauge PVR-150MCE-OEM
   DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D
   DVB-S - Technisat Skystar2 2.6D

The next step was installing an operating system. The fact that it was=20
Linux would be a given, preferably with a 2.6 kernel since they seem to=20
support DVB-S and Skystar2s better than 2.4. I dutifully downloaded the=20
Debian NetBoot CD image over dialup (180MB), and popped it into the=20
Sempron. It failed to detect my SATA harddrive, and nothing could make the=
=20
2.6 image talk to the Seagate. The 2.4 kernel on the CD worked with the=20
Seagate, but I didn't want 2.4. It also couldn't detect the K8N's onboard=20
ethernet port, and I didn't want to sacrifice a slot to my spare 3Com NIC.=
=20
I decided to get a DVD set of Fedora Core 5 from Dick Smith, since $10 for=
=20
a DVD sounds better than umpity zillion hours downloading Debian on a 56k=20
connection that may or may not work. This turned out to be the wrong=20
decision in the end, despite the ethernet and hard drive issues.

The Wilsonet guide helped immensely in getting the downloading part of the=
=20
install working, with the only road blocks being my own inexperience with=20
Fedora, which seems to be highly attached to the Gnome packages. I removed=
=20
the GDM package, only for X to die and refuse to come back up upon reboot.=
=20
I therefore SSH'ed into the box, upgraded it via yum, and tried to get a=20
=93yum install xdm=94, or =93yum install kdm=94. I should be so lucky. For=
 some=20
reason known only to God, Fedora had decided to nuke xsm as well as gnome,=
=20
resulting in any attempts at logging in via the console resulted in the=20
would-be user landing right back at login after X failed to find xsm.=20
Luckily, SSH still worked. A quick "yum install xsm" fixed that issue, but=
=20
my Fedora install, having lost Gnome, wasn't letting me use any window=20
manager other than "twm" in retaliation. twm is horrible. Just for=20
reference, I put a http proxy on my main desktop and downloaded the rpms=20
through this machine to avoid shuffling modem cards around all day.

A yum install mythtv-suite worked a lot better, and I actually got a gui=20
working. A quarter working gui. It would scan my PVR150, and failed on the=
=20
Skystar2s. On the second attempt, it scanned the channels okay. Despite the=
=20
scan working on the PVR150 immediately, and on the second go around for the=
=20
Skystar2s, MythTV refused altogether to go into 'Watch TV'. A reboot=20
resulted in mythtv-setup, mythbackend, and mythfrontend all dying at the=20
first database lookup. Running mysql manually resulted in zilch.

Fedora is not something I would recommend. Debian's 'dselect' package tool=
=20
is a great deal better in how it presents dependencies to you, and I never=
=20
had problems like this on Debian. At this stage, I was prepared to dump the=
=20
lot, install Windows, and settle for MediaPortal, even if the interface=20
wasn't as good as Myth.

A plea for help on the mythtvnz list resulted in someone with a similar=20
hardware setup recommending knoppmyth to me. I asked a relative with=20
broadband to download the CD image for me, and am currently waiting for=20
them to bring the image to me.

--
Alan Podjursky                  ICQ 24423014
"Yay, evil evil! Happy torture!" -- Gwyneth
"When in doubt, use brute force." -- Ken Thompson
http://www.fanfiction.net/~mercva=20