<<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.21 - 11 Sep 2007 - TedRoche)

Hot Links

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Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Westford, MA. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.

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Jarod Wilson at 2007-01 <a class=MythTV Meeting" width="50%" height="50%" />
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Jarod Wilson at 2007-01 MythTV Meeting

About this document

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.20 - 10 Sep 2007 - TedRoche)

Hot Links

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.19 - 05 Apr 2007 - BillMcGonigle)

Hot Links

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Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Westford, MA. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.

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Jarod Wilson at 2007-01 <a class=MythTV Meeting" width="50%" height="50%" />

About this document

Provided AS IS. Use information here strictly AT YOUR OWN RISK.

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META FILEATTACHMENT Photo_011807_001.jpg attr="" comment="Jarod Wilson at MythTV Meeting" date="1175753805" path="Photo_011807_001.jpg" size="41038" user="BillMcGonigle" version="1.1"
 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.18 - 02 Apr 2007 - BenScott)

Hot Links

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What is MythTV?

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Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.

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Hardware

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Hardware Vendors


Some places to get hardware:

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History of the MythTV Installation Fest and Participants

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History of the GNHLUG MythTV Events


On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.17 - 02 Apr 2007 - BenScott)

TOC: No TOC in "Www.MythTV"
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Hot Links


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What is MythTV?

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What is MythTV?


MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

Line: 113 to 123

Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.

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Recommended vendors

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Hardware


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Some good places to get hardware:
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Some places to get hardware:

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On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

Deleted:
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The MythTV home page is http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Westford, MA. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.

About this document

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.16 - 13 Mar 2007 - JarodWilson)

TOC: No TOC in "Www.MythTV"
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MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

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MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plug-in system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plug-ins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.
>
>
MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plug-in system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plug-ins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions. Note also that MythTV uses a client-server design, which allows for multiple backends (recording systems) and multiple frontends (playback systems) to operate seamlessly with one another. To use MythTV, you need at least one backend and one frontend, and they can either be on the same system or on separate systems.

There is a Gallery of MythTV setups if you want to see what it can look like.

Line: 14 to 14

The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data). EPG is available 12 days ahead of air date.

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If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatibility between versions of MythTV is not good.
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If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you must make sure they all run the same version of MythTV. Compatibility between different versions of MythTV is not supported.

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To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is some lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.
>
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To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is some lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on, and/or can be implemented with special work-arounds to use an external TV viewing program for live TV.

Another feature being worked on is to separate music-playback into its own program. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available Real Soon Now.

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Lingo

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  • Standard Definition (SD): The TV picture we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • High Definition (HD): The new TV picture. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Surround sound capable. Digital only.
>
>
  • Standard Definition (SD): The TV picture we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 720x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • High Definition (HD): The new TV picture. Various better displays, including 720p (1280x720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i (1920x1080). Surround sound capable. Digital only.

  • Interlaced: TV draws odd lines, then even lines, alternating every frame.
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  • Progressive: TV draws all lines every frame. Yields a better picture.
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  • Progressive: TV draws all lines every frame. Yields a better picture, particularly for high-motion scenes, such as sporting events.

  • OTA: Over-the-air. TV signals broadcast from transmission towers. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas.
  • Analog: The traditional over-the-air or cable TV systems we've been using for decades. Limited to Standard Definition.
  • Digital: New over-the-air broadcast and cable systems are digital. All High Def TV is digital, but not all digital is High Def.
Line: 72 to 72

^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Rarely Works great
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the cable box via "IR blaster"
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
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^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
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^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Sometimes Unlikely

^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
Line: 101 to 101

Other Hardware

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Jarod recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of a configuration tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.
>
>
Jarod recommended nVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of a configuration tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

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Recommended vendors

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Jarod Wilson's list of "good places to get hardware":
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Some good places to get hardware:

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History of the MythTV Installation Fest and Participants

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On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.
>
>
On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

The MythTV home page is http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Changed:
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Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Tyngsboro. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.
>
>
Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Westford, MA. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.

About this document

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  • And, of course, Jarod Wilson
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 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.15 - 12 Mar 2007 - MadDog)

TOC: No TOC in "Www.MythTV"
Line: 117 to 117

Jarod Wilson's list of "good places to get hardware":

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 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.14 - 08 Mar 2007 - MadDog)

TOC: No TOC in "Www.MythTV"
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Introduction

On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

The MythTV home page is http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Tyngsboro. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.


What is MythTV?

MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

Changed:
<
<
MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plugin system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plugins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.
>
>
MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plug-in system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plug-ins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.

There is a Gallery of MythTV setups if you want to see what it can look like.

Line: 43 to 36

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Over The Air

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>

Over The Air (OTA)


OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. Much of it (especially newer programming) is in high definition. And you can't beat the price.

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OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.
>
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OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC.

Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist. In fact all new TVs appearing on the market will have to support ATSC.

In a short time (a couple of years) the Analog OTA stations will cease to transmit and only Digital OTA stations will exist. This is for a variety of reasons both technical and commercial.


In southern NH, the big OTA stations are TV 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 25.

Cable TV

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First, a definition: "Basic cable" designates all the flat-rate channels you receive with a basic cable package, like History, Discovery, CNN, ESPN, TBS, etc. Basic cable does not include "premimum" cable, like HBO, Cinemax, etc.
>
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First, a definition: "Basic cable" designates all the flat-rate channels you receive with a basic cable package, like History, Discovery, CNN, ESPN, TBS, etc. Basic cable does not include "premium" cable, like HBO, Cinemax, etc.

Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrambled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controlled by, a MythTV system.

Line: 104 to 101

Other Hardware

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Jarod recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.
>
>
Jarod recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of a configuration tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

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MythTV has an archiving plugin for archiving to DVD.
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MythTV has an archiving plug-in for archiving to DVD.

Any LIRC device (IR remote control) will work.

Line: 136 to 133

Added:
>
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History of the MythTV Installation Fest and Participants

On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

The MythTV home page is http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Tyngsboro. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.


About this document

Provided AS IS. Use information here strictly AT YOUR OWN RISK.

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.13 - 15 Feb 2007 - BenScott)

Introduction

Line: 35 to 35

  • Standard Definition (SD): The TV picture we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • High Definition (HD): The new TV picture. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Surround sound capable. Digital only.
Added:
>
>
  • Interlaced: TV draws odd lines, then even lines, alternating every frame.
  • Progressive: TV draws all lines every frame. Yields a better picture.

  • OTA: Over-the-air. TV signals broadcast from transmission towers. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas.
  • Analog: The traditional over-the-air or cable TV systems we've been using for decades. Limited to Standard Definition.
  • Digital: New over-the-air broadcast and cable systems are digital. All High Def TV is digital, but not all digital is High Def.
  • NTSC: National Television Systems Committee. The TV system we've used for decades. Analog.
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Over The Air

Line: 55 to 57

Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrambled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controlled by, a MythTV system.

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Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. You need a digital cable box to tune and decode the signal. The cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms ("DRM") designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digital cable channels.
>
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Digital cable is a tricker beast. MythTV is not going to work for most digital cable programming. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire ("DRM"). Consumers are not permitted to decrypt it. You need a digital cable box to tune and decode the signal. That cable box will likely only output a digital High Def signal over an encrypted link to the TV. No consumer capture possible. HD component video from the cable box is not encrypted, but it is not feasible to capture a High Def signal from component video.

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Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local OTA stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.
>
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However, you may still be able to capture local TV stations via digital cable. Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which can provide the digital video bitstream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card. However, the bitstream will still be encrypted for most channels, so it doesn't solve that problem.

Line: 98 to 100

One bit of hardware that Jarod recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

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Remember that none of these devices will decrypt encrypted signals, so some HD channels and premium channels will not be accessible without going through a cable box that has the decoder.
>
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Remember that none of these devices will decrypt encrypted signals, so most digital cable channels will not be accessible without going through a cable box, and then only in Standard Def.

Other Hardware

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.12 - 14 Feb 2007 - MadDog)

Introduction

Line: 21 to 21

The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data). EPG is available 12 days ahead of airdate.

Changed:
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If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatability between versions of MythTV is not good.
>
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If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatibility between versions of MythTV is not good.

To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is some lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.

Line: 65 to 65

Read from left to right. "Scrambled" indicates deliberate action is taken to make it hard for anything (MythTV included) to capture the content.

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Delivery Signal Picture Programming Scrabled? MythTV
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Delivery Signal Picture Programming Scrambled? MythTV

Over-the-air Analog Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Never Works great
Line: 88 to 88

Any card needs to be Video4Linux (V4L) compatible. There are dozens of compatible cards. Check the MythTV website for information on what works and what does not.

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The pcHDTV HD-5500 card is a good one. It supports both OTA and Cable, SD and HD, in both analog and digital formats. While it may be a bit more expensive than other cards, pcHDTV specializes in Linux drivers and Linux support.

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR line is popular. Some notes on models:
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  • PVR-250 is a good started. The IR receiver (for remote control) is not the best.
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  • PVR-250 is a good start. The IR receiver (for remote control) is not the best.

  • The hardware decoder on the PVR-350 is of limited use.
  • The PVR-500 is a dual-tuner card, and functions just like having two PVR-250 cards.

One bit of hardware that Jarod recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

Added:
>
>
Remember that none of these devices will decrypt encrypted signals, so some HD channels and premium channels will not be accessible without going through a cable box that has the decoder.

Other Hardware

Jarod recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.11 - 14 Feb 2007 - BenScott)

Introduction

Line: 35 to 35

  • Standard Definition (SD): The TV picture we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • High Definition (HD): The new TV picture. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Surround sound capable. Digital only.
Added:
>
>
  • OTA: Over-the-air. TV signals broadcast from transmission towers. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas.

  • Analog: The traditional over-the-air or cable TV systems we've been using for decades. Limited to Standard Definition.
  • Digital: New over-the-air broadcast and cable systems are digital. All High Def TV is digital, but not all digital is High Def.
Added:
>
>

Over The Air

Changed:
<
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OTA = Over The Air. These are the TV signals broadcast from transmission towers and received via antenna at viewer sites. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas. OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. And you can't beat the price.
>
>
OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. Much of it (especially newer programming) is in high definition. And you can't beat the price.

Changed:
<
<
OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.
>
>
OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.

In southern NH, the big OTA stations are TV 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 25.

Line: 52 to 55

Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrambled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controlled by, a MythTV system.

Changed:
<
<
Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. Digital cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digitial cable channels.
>
>
Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. You need a digital cable box to tune and decode the signal. The cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms ("DRM") designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digital cable channels.

Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local OTA stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.10 - 08 Feb 2007 - BenScott)

Introduction

Line: 60 to 60

Compatibility matrix

Changed:
<
<
Read from left to right. "Scrambled" indicates something is done to the signal which makes it harder for MythTV to capture the content.
>
>
Read from left to right. "Scrambled" indicates deliberate action is taken to make it hard for anything (MythTV included) to capture the content.

Changed:
<
<
Delivery Signal Picture Programming Scrabled? MythTV
>
>
Delivery Signal Picture Programming Scrabled? MythTV

Over-the-air Analog Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Never Works great
Cable Analog Std Def Local Stations Rarely Works great
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Rarely Works great
Changed:
<
<
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the cable box via "IR blaster"
>
>
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the cable box via "IR blaster"

^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
Changed:
<
<
Satellite Analog Std Def Local Stations Rarely Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Rarely Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Sometimes Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out
>
>
Satellite Any Std Def Any Either Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable. Video capture is limited to analog Std Def.

Hardware

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.9 - 08 Feb 2007 - ThomasCharron)

Introduction

Line: 75 to 75

^ ^ High Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
Changed:
<
<
Satellite Unknown
>
>
Satellite Analog Std Def Local Stations Rarely Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Rarely Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the satellite box via "IR blaster" or serial cable
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Sometimes Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Maximum quality of 480p via component/S-Video out

Hardware

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.8 - 07 Feb 2007 - BenScott)

Introduction

Changed:
<
<
On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.
>
>
On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

Changed:
<
<
The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.
>
>
The MythTV home page is http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Changed:
<
<
Jarod's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology and links to his recently-released book from Extreme Tech. There's a sample chapter on that website, too.
>
>
Jarod Wilson works for Red Hat in Tyngsboro. He is one of the authors of Hacking MythTV (Wiley). Sample chapter online: MythTV Performance Hacks. Jarod's web site includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology, which includes a detailed HOWTO guide.

What is MythTV?

Changed:
<
<
MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.
>
>
MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plugin system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plugins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.

There is a Gallery of MythTV setups if you want to see what it can look like.

Changed:
<
<

How it works

>
>

MythTV Operations


The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data). EPG is available 12 days ahead of airdate.

If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatability between versions of MythTV is not good.

Changed:
<
<
To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is a lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.
>
>
To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is some lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.

Changed:
<
<
Another feature being worked on is to separate music-playback into its own program. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available soon.
>
>
Another feature being worked on is to separate music-playback into its own program. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available Real Soon Now.

The MythTV wiki includes information relating to the operating system. This is of interest mainly because it has links to projects like KnoppMyth -- a "Live CD" which includes a canned installation of MythTV. Just put the CD in the computer and turn it on.

Broadcast technologies

Changed:
<
<
  • SD = Standard Definition. The TV we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • HD = High Definition. The new TV. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Digital only.
>
>

Lingo

  • Standard Definition (SD): The TV picture we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • High Definition (HD): The new TV picture. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Surround sound capable. Digital only.
  • Analog: The traditional over-the-air or cable TV systems we've been using for decades. Limited to Standard Definition.
  • Digital: New over-the-air broadcast and cable systems are digital. All High Def TV is digital, but not all digital is High Def.

Over The Air

Line: 54 to 58

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which can provide the digital video bitstream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card. However, the bitstream will still be encrypted for most channels, so it doesn't solve that problem.

Added:
>
>

Compatibility matrix

Read from left to right. "Scrambled" indicates something is done to the signal which makes it harder for MythTV to capture the content.

Delivery Signal Picture Programming Scrabled? MythTV
Over-the-air Analog Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Never Works great
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Never Works great
Cable Analog Std Def Local Stations Rarely Works great
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Rarely Works great
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Possibly, if MythTV can control the cable box via "IR blaster"
^ Digital Std Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ High Def Local Stations Sometimes Only if not scrambled
^ ^ ^ Basic Cable Usually Unlikely
^ ^ ^ Premium Cable Usually Unlikely
Satellite Unknown

Hardware

Tuner/Capture Hardware

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.7 - 07 Feb 2007 - MadDog)

Introduction

Changed:
<
<
On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.
>
>
On Thursday, 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Line: 11 to 11

What is MythTV?

Changed:
<
<
MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Persona/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.
>
>
MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plugin system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plugins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.

Line: 25 to 25

To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is a lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.

Changed:
<
<
Another feature being worked on is to put music-playback in a separate process. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available soon.
>
>
Another feature being worked on is to separate music-playback into its own program. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available soon.

The MythTV wiki includes information relating to the operating system. This is of interest mainly because it has links to projects like KnoppMyth -- a "Live CD" which includes a canned installation of MythTV. Just put the CD in the computer and turn it on.

Line: 46 to 46

First, a definition: "Basic cable" designates all the flat-rate channels you receive with a basic cable package, like History, Discovery, CNN, ESPN, TBS, etc. Basic cable does not include "premimum" cable, like HBO, Cinemax, etc.

Changed:
<
<
Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrabled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controled by, a MythTV system.
>
>
Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrambled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controlled by, a MythTV system.

Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. Digital cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digitial cable channels.

Line: 75 to 75

Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

Changed:
<
<
MythTV has an archving plugin for archiving to DVD.
>
>
MythTV has an archiving plugin for archiving to DVD.

Any LIRC device (IR remote control) will work.

Line: 113 to 113

Added:
>
>

  • And, of course, Jarod Wilson
 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.6 - 07 Feb 2007 - BenScott)

Introduction

Line: 36 to 36

Over The Air

Changed:
<
<
OTA = Over The Air. These are the TV signals broadcast from transmission towers and received via antenna at viewer sites. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas. OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. And you can't beat the price.
>
>
OTA = Over The Air. These are the TV signals broadcast from transmission towers and received via antenna at viewer sites. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas. OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. And you can't beat the price.

Changed:
<
<
OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.
>
>
OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.

In southern NH, the big OTA stations are TV 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 25.

Line: 50 to 50

Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. Digital cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digitial cable channels.

Changed:
<
<
Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local OTA stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.
>
>
Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local OTA stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which can provide the digital video bitstream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card. However, the bitstream will still be encrypted for most channels, so it doesn't solve that problem.

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.5 - 26 Jan 2007 - BenScott)
Changed:
<
<
On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.
>
>
TOC: No TOC in "Www.MythTV"

Changed:
<
<
The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org
>
>

Introduction


Changed:
<
<
Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology and links to his recently-released book from Extreme Tech. There's a sample chapter on that website, too.
>
>
On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jarod Wilson, who presented on MythTV. Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jarod ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

Changed:
<
<
Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jared ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.
>
>
The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org. There is an official MythTV wiki, and a source code/bug tracker.

Jarod's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology and links to his recently-released book from Extreme Tech. There's a sample chapter on that website, too.

What is MythTV?

MythTV is Free Software which runs under the Linux operating system, and provides the functions commonly known as a PVR/DVR (Persona/Digital Video Recorder). Essentially, it's a computerized, intelligent VCR, which uses hard disk instead of tape, and knows when shows are on so it can record them automatically. TiVo and ReplayTV are two commercial DVR products. Since it's open source software, if you don't like the way it does something, you can always change it — that's how much of its current functionality came about in the first place.

MythTV includes all the basic PVR functions, like recording and playing back scheduled programs, allowing you to schedule recordings automatically in advance, and pausing and rewinding live TV. MythTV also has a plugin system which permits it to be extended by other programmers. Plugins currently exist for playing external video, viewing photos, listening to music files, using your TV and a web camera as a video-telephone over the Internet, browsing the web, retrieving current local weather, and many other functions.

There is a Gallery of MythTV setups if you want to see what it can look like.


How it works

Line: 17 to 27

Another feature being worked on is to put music-playback in a separate process. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available soon.

Added:
>
>
The MythTV wiki includes information relating to the operating system. This is of interest mainly because it has links to projects like KnoppMyth -- a "Live CD" which includes a canned installation of MythTV. Just put the CD in the computer and turn it on.

Broadcast technologies

  • SD = Standard Definition. The TV we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
Line: 42 to 54

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which can provide the digital video bitstream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card. However, the bitstream will still be encrypted for most channels, so it doesn't solve that problem.

Changed:
<
<

Tuner/Capture Hardware

>
>

Hardware

Tuner/Capture Hardware

PVR Hardware database has a list of configurations known to work, notes, etc.


Any card needs to be Video4Linux (V4L) compatible. There are dozens of compatible cards. Check the MythTV website for information on what works and what does not.

Line: 51 to 67

  • The hardware decoder on the PVR-350 is of limited use.
  • The PVR-500 is a dual-tuner card, and functions just like having two PVR-250 cards.
Changed:
<
<
One bit of hardware that Jared recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.
>
>
One bit of hardware that Jarod recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

Changed:
<
<

Other Hardware

>
>

Other Hardware


Changed:
<
<
Jared recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.
>
>
Jarod recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

Line: 67 to 83

Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.

Added:
>
>

Recommended vendors

Jarod Wilson's list of "good places to get hardware":


Other resources

Added:
>
>

Line: 83 to 112

Added:
>
>

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.4 - 22 Jan 2007 - BenScott)

On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.

The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org

Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology and links to his recently-released book from Extreme Tech. There's a sample chapter on that website, too.

Changed:
<
<
Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jared ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between NTSC and HD captured video.
>
>
Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jared ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between SD and HD captured video.

How it works

The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data). EPG is available 12 days ahead of airdate.

Changed:
<
<
If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatability between versions is not good.
>
>
If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatability between versions of MythTV is not good.

To show "live TV", MythTV records the live feed and then "immediately" plays it back again, in near-real-time. However, there is a lag introduced. Direct "pass-through" (without the record-and-play method) is not currently supported. This is being worked on.

Another feature being worked on is to put music-playback in a separate process. That will let one play music while browsing the web, viewing a photo gallery, etc. This is expected to be available soon.

Broadcast technologies

  • SD = Standard Definition. The TV we've been watching for decades. 480i (480 interlaced lines). 640x480 resolution. Can be distributed via analog or digital means.
  • HD = High Definition. The new TV. Various better displays, including 720p (720 progressive, non-interlaced lines) and 1080i. Digital only.

Over The Air

OTA = Over The Air. These are the TV signals broadcast from transmission towers and received via antenna at viewer sites. Think rabbit ears and roof-mount Yagi antennas. OTA still exists and can work fine, even in this era of cable and satellite. If your house is conveniently placed to receive the signal, digital OTA can be of very high quality. And you can't beat the price.

OTA exists as two major types. Both are unencrypted and can be recorded by MythTV. Analog OTA (NTSC) is the classic analog TV system that's been around for decades. Analog TV is SD programming only. There are lots of tuners for NTSC. Digital TV (ATSC) is the new standard. It enables HD (High Definition) programming, but allows for SD as well. You need a digital tuner to receive ATSC, but they exist, too.

In southern NH, the big OTA stations are TV 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 25.

Cable TV

First, a definition: "Basic cable" designates all the flat-rate channels you receive with a basic cable package, like History, Discovery, CNN, ESPN, TBS, etc. Basic cable does not include "premimum" cable, like HBO, Cinemax, etc.

Cable TV also exists in analog and digital flavors. As with OTA, analog cable is limited to SD. In this area, analog basic cable is generally transmitted unscrabled, so you don't need a decoder box. That means it can work well with MythTV. Premium analog cable needs a cable decoder box. It is unknown to this author if such a decoder box can be hooked up to, and controled by, a MythTV system.

Digital cable is a tricker beast. Most digital cable channels -- even basic cable -- are encrypted on the cable wire. Digital cable boxes and high-def TVs include sophisticated mechanisms designed to prevent you from recording it using your own hardware. This means MythTV is not going to work for most digitial cable channels.

Cable TV providers redistribute the high def, digital feeds from the local OTA stations. The signals are generally re-modulated, as digital OTA broadcast uses 8-VSB, while digital cable prefers 256-QAM. However, the local broadcast programming is often not encrypted -- so called "QAM in the clear". If that's the case, you can make use of it with MythTV. You generally don't even need to subscribe to "digital cable" -- the unencrypted feed comes down all the cable wires, regardless of subscribed services. If you already subscribe to basic analog cable, this can be an easy way to get a few HD channels, without messing around with antennas or paying extra for digital channels.

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which can provide the digital video bitstream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card. However, the bitstream will still be encrypted for most channels, so it doesn't solve that problem.


Tuner/Capture Hardware

Line: 24 to 53

One bit of hardware that Jared recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

Deleted:
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Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which will provide the (possibly encrypted) digital video stream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card.

Other Hardware

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Jared recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set "=UseEvents True=". He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.
>
>
Jared recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set UseEvents to be True. He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

Line: 40 to 67

Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.

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Other notes

MythTV currently does not support straight pass-through without a lag for writing to and reading from disk. This is being worked on and may appear soon, perhaps the next release.

Currently, the photo gallery can't show a slideshow while music is streamed, too. This is also being worked on and is coming soon.

Most cables, whether analog or digital, should also be carrying high-definition versions of the over-the-air (PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC) networks. Most local Comcast cables seem to have it QAM-256 encoded.


Other resources

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  • IRC: #mythtv and #mythtvusers on irc.freenode.net
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Contributions from:

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 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.3 - 22 Jan 2007 - TedRoche)

On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.

The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org

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Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology.
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Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology and links to his recently-released book from Extreme Tech. There's a sample chapter on that website, too.

Sixty-one attendees made it to Martha's Exchange that night, making it the largest dinner ever, and one of the largest meetings, ranking up with Ted T'so and Linus. Jared ran the meeting as a straight Q&A after a brief introduction, and finished with some striking demonstrations of the difference in quality between NTSC and HD captured video.


How it works

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Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.

Added:
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Other notes

MythTV currently does not support straight pass-through without a lag for writing to and reading from disk. This is being worked on and may appear soon, perhaps the next release.

Currently, the photo gallery can't show a slideshow while music is streamed, too. This is also being worked on and is coming soon.

Most cables, whether analog or digital, should also be carrying high-definition versions of the over-the-air (PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC) networks. Most local Comcast cables seem to have it QAM-256 encoded.


Other resources

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  • IRC
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  • IRC: #mythtv and #mythtvusers on irc.freenode.net

 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.2 - 22 Jan 2007 - BenScott)
Changed:
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On Thr 18 Jan 2007, the MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.
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On Thr 18 Jan 2007, MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.

The MythTV home page is: http://www.mythtv.org


Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology.

How it works

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The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com (, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data).
>
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The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data). EPG is available 12 days ahead of airdate.

If you have multiple MythTV boxes, you really should try and make sure they all have the same version. Compatability between versions is not good.

Tuner/Capture Hardware

Any card needs to be Video4Linux (V4L) compatible. There are dozens of compatible cards. Check the MythTV website for information on what works and what does not.

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR line is popular. Some notes on models:

  • PVR-250 is a good started. The IR receiver (for remote control) is not the best.
  • The hardware decoder on the PVR-350 is of limited use.
  • The PVR-500 is a dual-tuner card, and functions just like having two PVR-250 cards.

One bit of hardware that Jared recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

Per FCC rule, any modern (within the past few years) digital cable box must have a FireWire port, which will provide the (possibly encrypted) digital video stream. Thus, if you have such a cable box and a FireWire port on your PC, you don't need a tuner/capture card.

Other Hardware


Changed:
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Hardware

>
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Jared recommended NVidia video display hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set "=UseEvents True=". He said the ATI cards can sometimes be made to work, but sometimes not, and all require too much effort.

Changed:
<
<
One bit of hardware that Jared recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.
>
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Lots and lots of disk storage. The more, the better. Standard definition recordings consume about 2.5 gigabytes/hour. High definition recordings consume from 6 to 12 gigabytes/hour.

Changed:
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Jared recommended NVidia hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set "=UseEvents True=".
>
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MythTV has an archving plugin for archiving to DVD.

Any LIRC device (IR remote control) will work.

For playback, a 600 MHz PIII is minimum for std def. High def needs a lot more, perhaps a 2 to 3 GHz P4 or similar. There are a lot of things you can do in the area of performance tuning.

Network streaming (i.e., a recording stored on one box, playing on a different box, over the network) is possible. MythTV uses its own protocol, or you can use NFS/etc. Std def needs about 3 megabits/second. High def can use up to 17 megabits/second. Avoid wireless (802.11) -- even if nominal throughput is there, contention and packet loss will kill you.


Other resources

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  • IRC

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About this document

Provided AS IS. Use information here strictly AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Contributions from:


 <<O>>  Difference Topic MythTV (r1.1 - 22 Jan 2007 - BenScott)
Line: 1 to 1
Added:
>
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On Thr 18 Jan 2007, the MerriLUG was proud to host Jared Wilson, who presented on MythTV. This page is an attempt to collect some of the notes about the presentation.

Jared's home page is http://www.wilsonet.com/ , which includes a section on Fedora Myth(TV)ology.

How it works

The MythTV system downloads it's Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data from Zap2It.com (, via an XML export feature. Zap2It requires free registration for this. Zap2It's motivation is apparently to avoid tons of screen scrapers hammering their web servers. Zap2It is operated by Tribune (incidentally, TiVo uses the same company for their EPG data).

Hardware

One bit of hardware that Jared recommended was the HD Home Run, from SiliconDust. It is basically an Ethernet-to-TV bridge. You plug coax into one side, Ethernet into the other, and you're in business. It contains everything you need to tune, capture, encode, and stream a TV signal over the 'net. It can be used with MythTV and other software as a capture device. This lets you put your TV input hardware in a different location than your MythTV backend storage hardware.

Jared recommended NVidia hardware, with the binary-only, closed-source driver. He also recommended the use of the a config tweak in the X server configuration file: Set "=UseEvents True=".

Other resources

Revision r1.1 - 22 Jan 2007 - 11:08 - BenScott
Revision r1.23 - 11 Jun 2009 - 08:59 - BenScott