Its been a few years but I am intrigued about the MythTV project in particular plus all of the hype around Ubuntu, so I figured I would give my HTPC one last go as a Linux box before buying an appliance to replace it.

I know for a fact there's a fair few Open Sourc / GNU Linux fanboys around here haha so if anyone has a few pointers on where to start setting up a MythTV box I'm very open to suggestions.

I have a basic AMD budget box with ghetto integrated intel video, a dying SB16 clone PCI sound card and a generic USB tuner, logiech wireless usb keyboard & mouse. No remote or anything flash. If this works I am considering replacing some hardware so suggestions also welcome there.

I also have a shiny new Thecus N5200Pro with ~1.3 TB of storage that I have set up as the media file server. This apparently can boot a Linux distro from USB so that might be an option, although with no video or sound on board I am going to need a seperate front end in any case.

I am moving the media data off one of the drives onto the NAS and intend to install Linux there in its own dedicated drive. Should I just go torrent a Ubuntu linux ISO and plonk it on? Any suggetsions on flavour?

imo The hardware is a bit weak to do anything worthwhile.

Well its currently managing to do everything as a media centre in Windows - playback encoded media etc. I'm just over the interface.

Hell, it does that with Windows Server 2003, domain controller and SQL server all running on it (one of the reasons I need to change is that I don't have am msdn subscription anymore and need to drop the OS).

Are you saying that Ubuntu has heavier system requirements than Windows?

First of all, don't torrent anything if your ISP has a local mirror of Lunix!

Second: there are a bunch of pre-wrapped media lunixes that might better suit than a default Ubuntu. MythBuntu seems a common one (at least based on requests I get for mirros); a MythTV thing built off an Ubuntu core.

There's also linuxMCE but I've heard some negative comments about this, even though it looks cool. It's in RC stage for a new release so might be worth a crack soon.

More acurate system detail:

AMD Sempron 1.79GHz
1GB RAM
VIA/S3D DeltaChrome onboard video (not intel as I thught, still s***)

I've seen people saying on forums that Linux runs fine as a NAS or media centre on parts "thrown together" from random spares with P3+ CPU and 500MB ram as the baseline entry - maybe I was too vague in my opening post?

trog - cool, just what I was after! MythBuntu sounds like the win.

My ISP is lucky to have a web page, let alone fancy-schmacy file mirroring, they're about as ghetto as my HTPC ;)


last edited by Hogfather at 11:30:53 27/Jun/08

that setup is more than adequate for a media centre hoggy

What is your goal for the HTPC ?

SD content, view or record 1 channel, playback of sd content ? Should be fine.
The channel changing speed will more then likely suck, but if you are only using it to record you won't care.

Don't think it'll handle HD, unless you got a decent video card (even then ?).


I tried MythDora a few weeks back after it got mentioned on here and was unimpressed (gave up after a few hours and not really making any progress).

I'm thinking about upgrading the sound and maybe video. The sound really is just complete bollocks throuh my 5.1.

The video sometimes struggles a bit with higher-res xvids but I think that it may be the fact that the system is so loaded with unnecessary dev stuff (used to be my dev server). Maybe a nice clean OS will help.

Thanks for the tips will see how it goes - the Thecus is bloody brilliant by the way, nice recommendation whoever it was.

Edit Obes:

At the moment all it needs to do is play back ripped media and maybe DVD ISOs for stuff I want to transfer in uncompressed condition (one of the goals of the great big NAS).

Recording TV is useful, but more to record the kid's morning programs than anything else, we don't really watch much FTA.

I'm entirely indifferent to HD for the forseeable future.

last edited by Hogfather at 11:55:02 27/Jun/08

I agree with Obes.

Well if if you said FTA was of no use I'd say Mod and XBOX and get XBMC. (or buy one second hand).

Or put XBMC ported for loonix or Windows on it.

But the recording FTA shows for the kids means you will need myth tv, if going the loonix path.

Yeh I considered an XBOX setup but do need to be able to record some TV, plus I have the tuner just sitting there all lazy.

A friend of mine mentioned a year or two back that getting EPGs is a pain in the butt in AU - is this any better yet?

My first suggestion - don't plan on it being as easy as Windows based media center products. It will take a bit of extra time, tweaking in config files and some effort to get things configured but the upside is that once it's done - it's done! There's no need to revisit the installation and it will run rock solid unless you change something.

I've been running MythTV since about 2004 and what it is now is an awesome little package compared to how it was back in the day (think recompiling kernels to add in DVB-T support).

There's a bajillion guides around on how to setup MythTV on top of an existing install (Ubuntu or FC8 or Debian or whatever) and another bajillion on setting up MythDora or MythBuntu, etc.

You didn't mention a TV tuner card so not sure if this is relevant, but the best EPG to use is Shepherd.

Cheers Tic - have a USB tuner so I'm a bit dubious about it working under Linux, we'll see what happens.

Yeh I considered an XBOX setup but do need to be able to record some TV

There's a frontend for MythTV available for XBOX+XBMC which lets you schedule recordings & watch recorded shows. It does have live tv watching but it's not "all that and then some" just yet.

vista, out the box, works f***ing well for HTPC. been running for 12months, not one issue or crash i remember.

sync recorded tv etc straight to the missus zune, one click. so easy she can use it.

got 2 haugpage tv cards in her. put in postcode, downloads tv guid from the net. couldnt be easier. also has a "lock" option so mce is always on top. did i mention i love it?

last edited by mooby at 19:47:47 27/Jun/08

is it easy enough (for newb) to install ubuntu on a 3yo laptop (xp), just for s***s and giggles?

off topic-ish... mooby, maybe you can help me...

Essentially, I want to have sky through the MC computer remote, (not that I watch much sky anymore) but for arguments sake, I would still like to set the computer up as a DVR.

Live in Jersey, so not sure if this is an issue.

Setup:

Internets -> router -> computer
Computer via HDMI cable -> TV
Sky via ??? -> computer
(sky to tv via scart)

tried just the arial cable to computer but that just sends through free to air and in 4:3 format?

do you know of any good internet guides that give newb step by step instructions?

So I gave Linux another day of my life. I seem to do this every 5 years or so.

After struggling most of the day with the installer to get the thing loaded (apparently Ubuntu has a big freak out if you don't have a floppy disk installed) and myth's mySQL database properly configured (almost), I decided to look into mounting the data currently shared from my NAS. No problem I thought - it is an ext-based file system and a Linux-based OS running it after all. Mounting the shares took 30 seconds in Windows.

How hard could it be? A quick look over the net yields many mythtv users having trouble if the back end is reading and writing from network storage.

XP MCE is installing now. I fully expect to have the network shares up and all the media loaded and running before midnight. See you in 2112 Linux!

apparently Ubuntu has a big freak out if you don't have a floppy disk installed

I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop nor on the PC that I both dual-booted with Ubuntu .. never had this problem.

It must be a special gift I have - nothing I installed in a linux flavour works properly out of the box. I seem to always have to spend inordinate amounts of time researching how to get seemingly basic s*** to work.

Oh well, gave it a shot!

I try ubuntu on my laptop every time there is a new relase and then almost immediately go back to winxp because of ubuntu's balls wifi support.

ubuntu's balls wifi support.

What adapter is it?

Ubuntu supported my laptop's WiFi card out of the box (the laptop was even released well after that version of Ubuntu!). I just clicked connect, entered SSID and WPA2 password, done.

I don't really have an agenda to defend Ubuntu (I use XP primarily), but I figure I'd voice my "it worked fine" opinion whenever someone generalises some aspect of it when it's ok for me and many others.

Some broadcom chipset adapter. Wouldn't see wifi until you stuffed around. Got it working then it would die after 1 min and would need the network to be taken down and put back up again. In the end, the benefit vs cost wasn't enough for me to get it working.

I don't really have an agenda to defend Ubuntu (I use XP primarily), but I figure I'd voice my "it worked fine" opinion whenever someone generalises some aspect of it when it's ok for me and many others.

Well, its balls wifi for him isn't it!

last edited by Hogfather at 11:07:58 28/Jun/08

next time you newbs are feeling adventurous, try a mac. Its more your stylez lol

Well, its balls wifi for him isn't it!

Even with your ninja edit you still come across bitter and defensive.

Ah well each to their own.

I decided to look into mounting the data currently shared from my NAS. No problem I thought - it is an ext-based file system and a Linux-based OS running it after all.

Why not just mount it as a CIFS (samba) ?

is it easy enough (for newb) to install ubuntu on a 3yo laptop (xp), just for s***s and giggles?

Hell yeh it is. You don't even need to install it if you just want to play with it - you can download the ISO, burn it to a CD and then boot off it. Performance is a little sucky (because load times off CD are really slow compared to HDD) but its all there and works fine.

Installing it directly is also dead easy - the hardest part is deciding how big to make the partition you want to install it on, and only because you probably won't know how much you're going to use it so won't know how much disk space to give it.

I _think_ you can change partition sizes though relatively easily these days (?)

Haha parabol, I don't see anything bitter in anything I've posted in this thread, certainly wasn't my intent. The only defensive post is you rushing in twice to gush about how Ubuntu (or linux) has worked OK for you out of the box.

Gosh I'm really glad for you, and I'm not surprised that for a lot of people this happens. But in the end I'm just a random guy on the internet who asked for some help giving Linux another go, and it didn't work out for me, the same way as it hasn't in the past.

That's all that is going on ITT - lighten up matey!

TicMan:

This sort of thing turned me off it. Based on my previous eperiences, if there are problems to be had with myth off a cifs-mounted back end I knew I was probably gonna run into them.

I'm sure you can tune cifs to stream reliabl but In the end I just ran out of time. I'm really busy (work 70-80 a week these days) and just don't have enough left over to spend a lot of time buggering around with home stuff as well. I think I gave up at about 9-10pm and had it all working again in Windows a bit after midnight.

Didn't think much of Windows' Media Centre (the app) though, I think I am going to use Media Portal which seems to be running really well. Switching from a server OS to a client XP one also looks to have improved performance considerably.

last edited by Hogfather at 13:28:23 28/Jun/08

I _think_ you can change partition sizes though relatively easily these days (?)

You mean after an install or during?

I used to use fdisk to do it all manually, but I do the same thing with the point-and-click partition manager they have nowadays. Basically a big primary ext3 partition ( mapped to / ) followed by 2GB of swap. The manager takes care of the minor details like boot flags, adding bootable partitions to grub, etc.

Though if you meant after, gparted is still pretty easy to use, as long as you don't have a bootable partition after the partition you're resizing.

The only defensive post is you rushing in twice to gush about how Ubuntu
(or linux) has worked OK for you out of the box.

Man you're still making a big deal about this? Refer to my disclaimer in Post #20.

last edited by parabol at 14:01:07 28/Jun/08

I had the best luck with mythdora, had issues with both mythbuntu and knopmyth. But the issues were mostly driver related so your luck will probably vary.

i'm running ubuntu and thought it was pretty flash over all, but yeah wifi support is really all over the shop compared to how neat the rest of the system is.

its a really polished system to be honest (wifi excluded).

I _think_ you can change partition sizes though relatively easily these days (?)

Partition Magic and Acronis both do a fine job of this. I have resized NTFS partitions in the past without any dramas. I've never tried resizing partitions of a different type though, might have issues with moving some NTFS space over to a EXT3 partition.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. Windows costs money, and is usually easier for a noob to just pick up and use. Linux is free, and can be more problematic.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for

Haha, it makes me giggle every time someone says that.

Tell that to the developers and users of (randomly listed: ) Apache, Firefox, MySQL, VLC, squid, TrueCrypt, phpBB and countless other programs that don't cost you a cent and are in very wide use in many homes and corporate environments.

Truth is there's good & bad proprietary software, and good & bad free software.

What's a good epg source for vista?

Ah, good point, parabol. I guess what I'm getting at is that if something is free, you can't really complain if it doesn't do what you want or if it's not as good as something that costs money. I don't really buy into the 'FireFox is safer', and it has trouble rendering some pages I go to, but I don't complain about it because it's free. Some of the best software I have ever used is freeware, and some of the worst costs thousands of dollars for an organisation to use (grrr MapInfo).

On the other hand, ubuntu/mythtv/shepherd worked without too much effort for me on my media box. Just the luck of the draw at times with hardware.

On my lappie with linux the soundcard conflicts with wireless ... nfi why and I don't care. Took me a good couple of hours to sort it and even then its not what I would call ideal. Everytime I have gone to use a linux distro as a desktop its had issues.

Now I mainly have to deal with its annoyances when we need a new PXE kernel for image deployment.

The only time I like Linux is when its going on to a fairly standard machine to run as some form of edge server.