[Whosa]

My main system is MediaPortal which works very well.

The following information is for people who may want to setup a HTPC using an old P4, or even using the latest tech.

You can also use your DVICO Dual Digital 4, Rev 1 card that you may have thrown in the draw because of problems working with Windows. It is a totally different situation with Linux where this card works exceptionally well.

Within a month I should have compiled complete instructions for setting up a Media Centre based on EeeBuntu and MythTv. These instructions will be detailed enough for people without previous Linux experience to follow.


It will include;

Latest NVIDIA Drivers

Working with, but not only, Tuner Cards, DVICO DVB-T PLus and Dual Digital 4, Rev 1.

System turning off and restarting for scheduled recordings.

Work with, but not only, a Creative Sound Blaster card.

XBMC


Pros;

Free open source OS

From pressing the start button to watching TV, P4 computer, 1 minute 40 seconds, my MediaPortal HTPC, latest AMD, 3 minutes 15 seconds. There are changes that can be made to make this even quicker, but probably the same for MediaPortal.

Picture quality at least as good as MediaPortal.

One touch recording.

FF and RW progressive from 3X to 180X.

Able to transfer recordings to your Window's computer via a LAN setup.


Cons;

Not as easy to setup as MediaPortal.


The link for set up instructions;

Eee MC | Eee MC


I have attached some screen prints taken from my PC.

[winterescape]

Very interesting, When selecting HW to join the HTPC crowd I tried to select HW that would work well with both windows and Linux. I quickly discovered that I was woefully uneducated on the intricacies of Linux. I tried loading mythbuntu without much luck. Although it has been a tremendous investment of time to get MP running the way I want I am always looking at other options to investigate... So why Eeebuntu instead of mythbuntu? What I continue to search for is something that I could set up for my father or someone without any PC knowledge.

P.S. why the mention of XBMC? how is it related to Myth?

[Whosa]

While quite a few Linux OS’s are based on Ubuntu they are definitely not all equal. I have tried quite a few of them and found that Eeebuntu was a particularly nice one to use with a good presentation. Basically the programmers who have developed Eeebuntu have delivered a particularly polished product. This then provides a good base on which to work and ends up with superior results.

In regard to XBMC, some Linux users have gone to the lengths of modifying XBMC to operate as their MythTv front end. There is a lot of work involved in completing this setup. I added XBMC because it gives the user another option in regard to playing videos, music and so on, and it has a particularly nice looking presentation. The final result will be the ability to close MythTv and open XBMC by the remote and vice versa.

[Whosa]

I am going to put the cart before the horse and supply an .iso image which will have everything loaded into the OS.

This means that if you are living in Brisbane, Australia, are using a Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4, Rev 1 and a Fusion HDTV DVB-T Plus, either an MCE Remote or the Hauppage equivalent that the OS should operate straight off. There will be instructions for using other hardware.

Go to,

http://eeemc.blog.com/eeemc-installation-guide/

for download links.

[Whosa]

One advantage that I did not list is that four TV channels can be recorded at the same time using one Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4 tuner card.

In the attached screen print it can be seen that five channels are being recorded, and five are scheduled to be recorded. The fifth channel was being recorded on a Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Plus card which does not have the same facility.

So with two Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4 tuner cards, eight TV channels can be recorded at the same time.

[noonereallycares]

Originally Posted by Whosa

One advantage that I did not list is that four TV channels can be recorded at the same time using one Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Dual Digital 4 tuner card.

Be careful about making statements like this. You may create some confusion.

The reason that you are able to record 5 programs at once is that there is an overlap in the use of your tuners. Since 9 HD and Go! are both provided on a single transport stream, only one tuner is required. The same goes for Ten and One.

This would not be possible if you wanted to record 2, 7, 9 and 10 at the same time.

To take it to an extreme, you could technically record ABC1, ABC2, ABC3, One and Ten using only two tuners. This is not a hardware feature. It is a software feature. Once the tuner is picking up the transport stream for the network delivering thos channels, the software handles decoding the individual channels and recording them.

One a lesser scale, this is how it is possible to have overlapping recordings on a single channel.

[Whosa]

Some digital transmitters transmit multiple programs on a multiplex, if this value is set to a value greater than one MythTV can sometimes take advantage of this.


See,

EeeMC-9.10.1 | Eee MC


EeeMC-10.04.1 based on Ubuntu 10.04 with MythTV .23 and XBMC on the way.