Howdy.

Why am I here?

I am seeking kernels of wisdom about the right (low-to-medium hassle) way of assembling a 3-tuner myth box. This will replace my HTL-HD's component and SPDIF connections (HTL-HD being used as extra OTA-only HD tuner when HDTivo is busy with 2 other recordings) and also replace my aging ReplayTV (which doesn't like to dial out any more) as supplemental DVR to the HDTivo (despite large antennas and amp it still has dropouts on some channels due mostly to multipath, I believe).

Clearly, then, what I absolutely need is a nice quiet Silverstone LC16 case, 3 5th-gen tuners (leaning towards dvico), the lovely though not seeming to be quite yet available 35W AM2 Athlon x2 3800, one or more 750gb perpendicular-recording drives, a motherboard to connect it all, fanless 7600GS video card with component out, some RAM, a nice quiet power supply (Seasonic), DVD-RW (for now), and either Linux-workable-SPDIF onboard sound or soundcard. Plus some Fedora and MythTV.

Timeline is of course to have it running by September when OTA season starts again. I would be ordering stuff from newegg today, but here are a few things I am wrasslin with:
* mobo selection: prefer Nvidia chipset to VIA, selection of AM2 Nvidia 4-PCI (3 tuners + sound or another tuner if I feel like it) w/plenty of SATA2 connectors and maybe onboard SPDIF is...slim
* CPU - not really wrasslin - just where are the low-power AM2 parts? being held back for mass launch sometime after the big AMD price cuts next week?
* drives - big dream was 4x750 RAID5 but that's a lot of cash to sink into drives...do I really need that much? The HDTivo is pretty happy with just a 320, and the new box will only have OTA/clear QAM available. In the last 5 years or so at home though, I have had 2 drive failures (1 linux webserver, 1 HDTivo) and 2 mobo failures - so I don't want to be tied to a particular mobo/hardware RAID controller but I'll feel pretty foolish if a hardware failure takes down my shiny self-built DVR. Software RAID 1 with 2 750s? EVMS? LVM? Isn't it tricky to get software RAID to boot from itself?
* the sound thing, people seem to have trouble with onboard SPDIF sometimes (like I just saw a posting). Presumably the standard sound card would fix that, but there is the whole lack of slots thing - there are more mobos with only 3 PCI, but then I am screwed out of a tuner if I can't get onboard SPDIF to work. Until Linux drivers for the PCIe dual-tuner card are available maybe...
* remote - kind of last on the list for now. The LC16 comes with one I think. And I have a "universal remote" software on my PocketPC as well, not as tactile as the peanut though.
* hey, does Myth have a 30-second-skip feature? Call me a hopeless Tivo-head but I love 30-sec-skip (since I got my ReplayTV back in early 2000 actually).


Just some things I am thinking about. Feedback? Questions> Comments?

I thank you.

Henry

Get a chaintech av-710 7.1 sound card spdif works great..

on bored stuff for nvidia 4 has no support right now...

and i love my divico got a fusion5 lite... awesome tuner and picture!

oh and the skip... well it does a great job skipping all over the place.. and if your looking for comercial skipping, mine does a pretty good job with that... skips completely over them

I am seeking kernels of wisdom about the right (low-to-medium hassle) way of assembling a 3-tuner myth box.
Henry
Right now, I've got 4 ATSC tuners in my MythTV server. It's running on a 754 A64 3000+. I ve no problem recording 4 shows and watching a recording at the same time, but it's manly just the server. I've got 2 other real cheap bare machines using 754 Semprons running as frontends over the network. Both of these machines cost less than $200. Built today would even cost under $150. Nothing fancy though. A $25 black case and PSU, MB/CPU 512M ram, FX5200 vid cards. Works fine for me using XvMC playback. One goes to a 19" crt at 1600x1200 and the other to an old analog 32' TV via the svideo out of the card. I'm using the old Air2PC rev.02 cards that only cost $25 each. First card was a Dvico Fusion HDTV5 Gold plus, but I couldn't tell the difference so i sold it. I pefer remote mouse/KB, but i've also got regular remotes hooked to the frontend machines. At $4.95 each, including IR receiver, they work well. If you want a small quiet case for the TV room, I'd suggest a cheap server box for recording located elsewhere and a small frontend box at the TV. The reason is that the tuners produce a lot of heat, but it takes almost no cpu power to record ATSC. Playback stresses the cpu so a small case with 3 tuners and playback will need very good airflow, which means a small case isn't going to work well. You can easily serve 2 frontends with 100MB nic, but would probably want a GB nic if you want more than 2 or 3.frontends. If you just want one location then I'd suggest a normal nid tower case and modify it fro a side fan to blow on the tuners, and duct the cpu cooler intake to the outside also. and one extra exhaust fan in the back just under the PSU wqualizing the intakes and exhaust. It'll keep a small room warm in the winter.:-)
As for MB, I'm considering this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128010
it has 4 PCI slots and GB lan with onboard video which I'd use. but it also supports PCI-E video card. Well, you can see if it meets your needs.
As for drives. that board will support 4 sata2 drivesand 4 EIDE, But I'd put linux on a small ide drive by it self and use sperateb drives for video storage. I've gto 2 300Gb Seagates and it's more than enough for me. Actaully got by pretty good with just 2 80GB but I don't save videos for more than a day or 2. just figure 7GB for every hour you want. to have recorded.
And lastly, yes, MythTV has a jump (skip) feature that is programmable to whatever time period you want. I use the default 3 minutes. It also has jumpback on fast forward programmable. I think you'll find it will do more than your Tivo will. That's why I dumped my Tivo.:-)

Timeline is of course to have it running by September when OTA season starts again. I would be ordering stuff from newegg today,

The price of the cpu will drop by abpout 50% on the 24th. Don't order today unless the X2 3800 is under $175. Hope this isn't too late.

The price of the cpu will drop by abpout 50% on the 24th. Don't order today unless the X2 3800 is under $175. Hope this isn't too late.

Definitely waiting for the price drop on CPU, but as I mentioned I don't see the low-power part that I really really want offered anywhere right now anyway.

Like wnewell said, the backend that does the recording doesn't need much oomph. I'm using a $149 Fry's PC for that which uses a AMD Geode (obviously I had to add RAM and disk drive to it) which is a 14W at standard usage CPU and 25W max. It handles recording 3 things just fine. I have a Fusion 5 USB tuner, a 0.2 air2pc and a 2.0 air2pc card in it. My backend doesn't even have a monitor hooked up most of the time.

The front end on the other hand is where you need either oomph or xvmc. In my opinion, oomph is better due to the occasional (though better than it used to be) flakiness with xvmc.

Not only do tuners get hot but so do harddrives, especially the new +500G perpendicular recording technology ones. One of the real benefits of separating it out to a backend and a frontend is that the heat issue will require fans and by making the backend not in the same room as your TV, you won't be annoyed by the sound.

[QUOTE=As for MB, I'm considering this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128010
it has 4 PCI slots and GB lan with onboard video which I'd use. but it also supports PCI-E video card. QUOTE]

The only downside I see with this board is the lack of DVI output for graphics. Otherwise it looks well suited to the purpose.

I've been lurking on this and other boards looking for recently recommended components to build a Linux HD HTPC. I'm leaning toward using the pcHDTV-5500 tuner and hopefully a SATA RAID5 array.

The HTPC will be at the other end of a 10-meter DVI, HDMI, Component cable bundle (which are already in place). I have a Westinghouse LVM-42w2 monitor but may get the 47inch shortly.

I really want to get rolling on this but just haven't pinned down all components yet.

That is the motherboard I selected as well. Lack of onboard DVI didn't bother me because my RPTV is old enough not to have one, and since it's a Linux box I am building I am not anticipating a need for it to ever have an HDMI connection. Getting a video card anyway for component output, it has DVI if I need it.

As for separating the backend/frontend, I may go there eventually but for now I am going to try all-in-one because I don't have hardwired connection between my office/computer room and TV room. I have a 30-foot clear line of sight between them and 2 802.11g routers with WDS that work fine for streaming SD off the HDTivo or DVD/Divx-HD files from PC to my Linkplayer, but full HD to the Linkplayer doesn't work so good. I don't really want to run cat5 at this time - floor is carpet over concrete, there are lots of doors in the walls on a perimeter path, the RG59 from cableco installed long before I moved in is strung along the exterior brick - yech.

The premiere of Prison Break is getting a little close for comfort (FOX is the one station that my HDTivo has the most trouble with) so I pried open my wallet and went through several (okay, more than "several") hours of comparison shopping trying to balance my outrage over paying so much for things that will be cheaper in a little while, trying not to get the absolute cheapest of anything, some combination of items for shipping convenience, and avoiding skeezy-looing vendors. I think I saved a fairly significant amount over buying all from one place even if newegg had everything. That's what I will keep telling myself.

Here's my BOM:
* 3x pcHDTV HD5500 - the fusion lites seem to have disappeared plus I read some FUD comments about them, and I don't want to end up with 3 extra remots by getting the fusion golds (from pchdtv.com)
* Gigabyte GA-M55plus-S3G AM2, onboard LAN & video, HW RAID, 4 PCI slots + PCIe 16x and 1x (newegg was out of these so zipzoomfly got the order)
* Athlon x2 4600 EE (65w) - this generated most of the outrage, compared to the non-EE x2 3800, and still no 35w 3800 to be found anywhere...could replace later with 35w 3800 and recycle the 4600 into a backroom machine (zipzoomfly)
* Zalman CNPS 9500 AM2 - dang, this cooler looks cool...wonder if I will need to defeat the LED? (newegg)
* Asus EN7600GS silent GeForce 7600GS w/component-out dongle (zipzoomfly)
* Crucial 2x512MB DDR2-800 (crucial is across town, this was delivered today instead of UPS sitting on it to make it "3-day" like they sometimes do)
* Seasonic S12-430 - silentpcreview says nice and quiet, later models apparently have 4 SATA connectors although spec sheet still lists 2; not going SLI or anything so this should be plenty big (newegg)
* 2x Seagate 750GB SATA2 - guess I'll go HW RAID1 for now, spose I'll do some kind of LVM thingy too on top of that (monarch, the only item I don't have a tracking number on yet, but it's "gone to the warehouse")
* Silverstone LC16M (black) w/2 rear "maglev bearing" fans, remote & VFD (sundialmicro)
* Liteon SHW160P6S05 (black) DVD+-RW/DL blah blah (newegg)
* Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS - no, not the cheapest possible, but I think I can get its SPDIF passthough to work w/ALSA without too much hassle (newegg)
* lighted keyboard & optical mouse from zipzoomfly, will use them in the office after mythtv setup along with the KVM I finally got around to buying and the 19" LCD just because I am tired of squinting at a buzzing 14" CRT

Cha-ching. Ouch.

Now to clear off the coffee table for build workspace and download some Fedora Core CDs.

Another thing that could make a new Myth box easier is the "HDHomeRun". It's a network based dual ATSC receiver. So, this eliminates any driver issues, and allows for more flexibility in server setup (fewer PCI cards allows for smaller case).

It's not released yet, but is in the final stages and will be out shortly (according to the developer, on the MythTV mailing lists).

It could also help in reception, allowing you to place the tuner near an antenna, or place the tuner & indoor antenna in some corner of the house, as long as you can get a network connection to it.

That is very interesting. Another reason for my preference of the all-in-one Myth box, that I failed to mention until now, is that I have only one OTA drop and of course it's in the TV room, similar cabling issues as for cat5 to get that to the computer room. Of course if the QAM works for me then additional tuners in the computer room are no problem (thanks to cablemodem drop) - I have 4 PCI slots free in my webserver box although it's only FC2 right now. I don't think an indoor antenna will ever work for me due to significant line of sight/multipath issues - I have an 8-bay and 100-mile VHF combined w/big CM amp up on my chimney, pointed at the hillside about 100 feet away and I'm 13 miles from transmitters. The HDTivo, as I mentioned, has trouble with bouncing FOX signal, the HTLHD less so but of course it doesn't record. The HTLHD wouldn't even work with a medium-directional combo UHF/VHF in an attic location although it was fine with that plus Rat Shack amp on the chimney.

That sounds like an awesome build, h_a_h_3.

One thing: have you ever gotten a pcHDTV 5500 to work with HD under Myth?

I just spent a couple of days trying, and was thwarted. No problems whatsoever with two PVR150 cards, but one 5500 kicked me to the curb. I tried Suse 10.0, 10.1 (Mythtv 0.19) and KnoppMyth R5c7.

You may want to try it with one first, before investing more cash in all three at once. And register and read their forums before buying, to get an idea of the issues out there.

I think that i am going to use a Fusion 5, if and when I try again.

Off topic, how is life in Boise? I looked at moving there from Colroado back in 2003. I visited several times, and was really stoked on living there. But, then our economy bounced back, and I was able to get a job again, after the big tech bust. I still think about it, though. Cycling, skiing, motorcycling and microbrews are my passions, and Boise has them all.

Cheers.

I don't have a working HD5500 in Myth, but I do already have 3 HD5500s sitting on the coffee table so it's a little late not to put all the eggs in that particular basket. Only the case and hard drives aren't here now (I really like my new 19" monitor). Case will be here Monday but the drives haven't shipped yet as far as I can tell so it could be next weekend before they arrive.

I figure I will start with FC5 since I am a RH guy from way back (6.2?) and update the kernel up to or past 2.6.18 per the included HD5500 instructions and see how it goes. You were using 2.6.16 with your unsuccessful-HD SuSe install?

As far as living in Boise, as they say around here, 100,000 Californians can't be wrong :) I'm having a great time, live close to downtown 10 minutes by bike or car from work. I would not be so happy if I were one of the people who commute in an hour of traffic to work and back just to live "away from the hustle and bustle". Lots of outdoor activities to be sure, Boulder was nice too when I visited for a friend's wedding. Our typical solid week of 100+ degrees seems to be over now, it's nice to open up the windows and cool off at night again.

Another thing that could make a new Myth box easier is the "HDHomeRun". It's a network based dual ATSC receiver. So, this eliminates any driver issues, and allows for more flexibility in server setup (fewer PCI cards allows for smaller case).

It's not released yet, but is in the final stages and will be out shortly (according to the developer, on the MythTV mailing lists).

It could also help in reception, allowing you to place the tuner near an antenna, or place the tuner & indoor antenna in some corner of the house, as long as you can get a network connection to it.

Random comments regarding the HDHomeRun:
- It has a builtin IR reciever, but (obviously) that's only useful if it's located within IR range of your TV.

- It currently only does 8-VSB/ATSC and not QAM, so you will need to use an antenna (cable uses QAM). It should be capable of QAM after reflashing to a newer firmware.

- You will still need to do any transcoding from your PC; what you get from the HDHomeRun is pretty much the raw digital feed.

Hardware update: hard drives still MIA, case arrived yesterday so I had a good time assembling (almost) all the new toys. The supplied case fans, the CPU cooler, and PSU are all very quiet. I picked up a pair of supposed quiet fans at compusa, for the front of the drive cages, along with some power adapters, and they are much noisier. Using the CPU cooler's fan controller dealy makes them almost tolerable - should be better with the top on the case. Now waiting for some more fan wiring adapters. Really liking the case.

Not having the real hard drives, I threw in (well, on) a "bad" drive that was giving off all kinds of errors in the HDTivo. FC5 installed just fine from the DVD, X auto-detect not so hot though so I am at 800x600 - but I do already have component-out working before the Nvidia drivers. Also recognized sound card without any trouble, just a little fiddling with the mixer app and coax SPDIF is heading to my A/V receiver via the 1/8" mono-to-RCA cable I picked up at Radio Shack. A random CD sounds pretty good even just over the IDE cable without either a digital audio or analog audio connection from the drive to sound card. Haven't figured out how to play a DVD yet, the associated app says something about I need a plugin - deCSS maybe?

I am not sure how much more time I want to invest configuring a known bad drive (the only one I have around the house available). Came really close to just ordering more drives from somewhere quicker today, but that wouldn't be prudent before making sure the monarch order is actually cancelled. Would sure like to figure out if the tuner cards are going to play nice for me.

I'm checking back and keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Jack at pcHDTV was supremely professional in giving me an RMA for the 5500 card that I was too dumb to configure. I would buy from them again, based on this transaction.

I'm curious and envious about the Silverstone case. For the price, i would hope it is very satisfying. Keeping an eye on those for price reductions.

Keep letting us know how it goes.

Hmmph.

a) Monarch is still being quite unresponsive, and from their forums it doesn't seem to be unusual...shame on me for not doing a bit more research. Waah.

b) Doing some more reading, "hardware RAID" of the type supported by your normal $90 nVidia mobo requires loading a driver to work in windows...and no one seems to know if it works in linux; although linux seems to offer about 3 different ways to do software raid, it appears a bit difficult to get the sw array to be one's boot disk - my concept of popping in the 2 750s, configuring hw RAID in the BIOS and being off to the races is not to be. Probably everyone knows this but me.

c) The 8/21 premiere of Prison Break appeared in my HDTivo's to-do list today. This is my "drop-dead date" when I must have the mythtv box up and running...or not be able to reliably record HD from FOX! The horror!

a) + b) + c) = d) I have ordered a more moderate single drive (a mere 500gb) from zipzoomfly for boot & root duties. I'll just have to be sure to grab a backup image when everything has settled down. Right? Even with overnight shipping it's still $40 cheaper than from newegg. In theory I'll be able to play with it over the weekend since it should arrive Friday. This will of course cause a shipping notice from monarch to appear in my inbox any moment now.

I wanted to do a BIOS update last night but the floppy drive I pulled from the good old Pentium-166 (MMX!) Pavilion didn't work for some reason, and the "not requiring bootable floppy, just a floppy with BIOS file" BIOS updater didn't seem to want to work at all without a floppy (say, with a USB key or something). So I installed win2k and updated the BIOS with the windows app, fiddled with overclocking a bit (easy +10% MHz), reinstalled FC5 in dual-boot just because I was bored, and flaky things started happening. Wonder if there is any connection to the bad hard drive I'm using? Network didn't come up in FC5 this time (works fine in Windows), although I did get the graphical installer to start. Various hangs and long pauses later, I decided to leave well enough alone and twiddle my thumbs waiting for hard drives to show up. Oh, and watch some HDTivo, it was getting lonely.

Also, there seems to be a ground-loop hum coming from the video card through the component dongle, my component/digital audio switcher, and thence my a/v receiver and speakers. It's not the digital coax, the only other connection. I guess it's really pretty subtle, hard to hear over the non-silent computers in the other room when the door is open as usual (may have to get some more quiet power supplies...) and of course only detectable when the amp is on but no audio is present. Eh.

Progress report:

500gb hard drive arrived as expected Friday (yay zipzoomfly, boo monarch) and the fiddling around began. FC5 install went smoothly again, got lots of updates downloaded. Then the real fun began, involving various attempts to get a functional X modeline for my TV after I wrassled with the Nvidia driver install for way too long. Still don't have a good 1080i modeline for X (insert "but it works in Windows" whine here) and I guess I'll try the Powerstrip method tonight.

On the plus side, I did get the drivers for the tuner cards loaded, and was able to pull up some live NTSC channels using TvTime. The xine-hd ATSC player/viewer provided by pchdtv wouldn't compile with latest kernel though. I did get good ATSC signal strengths from the command-line utility from my antenna, not seeming to find any QAM channels on the cableco line however.

So I haven't even started on the actual myth install or lirc fiddling, and it's a week to go-time. I have a full evening available tonight (this is really cutting into my TV viewing though!) but only a couple hours each Tue-Wed-Thurs, then all Friday night and the weekend. I hope it's enough.

EDIT: late this afternoon I got ship notification for the drives from monarch...guess I won't need to buy any more hard drives for a while.

Progress report:
So I haven't even started on the actual myth install or lirc fiddling, and it's a week to go-time.
Why don't you just download Mythdora and install it rather than trying a manual install. Should have a running MythTV system it minutes that way. If that doesn't work for you, try Knoppnyth. It's debian based but works well too. My server was a manual install, but I used Knoppmyth on the 2 frontend machines. Just ddin't see the point of doing them manually.

Because I want, want, want to be an install-from-scratch-onto-the-bare-metal type of guy? Or I did before the modeline stuff almost reduced me to tears...turns out you don't need a custom PowerStrip modeline for component-out, you just tell the nvidia X driver you have a TV! ...kinda like check-the-box on the winders driver. Screen: Option "TVStandard" "HD1080i", Option "ConnectedMonitor" "TV", Modes "1920x1080". Pretty good overscan though, I can only make out the edges of Gnome's top and bottom bars. The "TVOverScan" option doesn't seem to have much effect. In the winders driver there was an option to underscan to like 1700x900 or something (it didn't specify) and that made it look like my PS2 in 1080i mode since I have adjusted a lot of the typical overscan out of my TV.

If knoppmyth or mythdora will take care of all my problems like that then I'll certainly consider them. Or would I still have to do the Nvidia drivers, tuner card drivers, X config dances that I have now gained so much experience from?

Now that the dual drives are tracking to arrive on Thursday, and I have found a good-looking SW RAID boot & root howto (http://www.texsoft.it/index.php?c=hardware&m=hw.storage.grubraid1&l=it) for FC4, I am leaning towards mirroring again. Argh. Everything else will go much faster the second time, right? If I can get myth installed tonight & tomorrow then maybe I can simply copy that part over.

Today's update:

Drives are on the truck for delivery today.

I was able to run "yum install mythtv-suite" and various other setups via ssh remotely, and that wasn't so hard. After/during watching the Glen NASCAR race via Tivo, I started fiddling with actual myth setup on my monitor and "advanced" to where I got my channel listings & schedule, tried to set up tuners but although there was ATSC signal detected in scanning I could only see NTSC video-no-sound on screen - there was some kind of access (not permissions) problem with my JFS /video partition so I got nothing at all until I changed it to ext3. I did get a DVD to play with sound (no AC3 passthrough but that's probably an option to mplayer I just need to track down).

Reading through the FC-Myth howto, the X HDTV options I spent so much time discovering are clearly mentioned. Had I only been reading that more carefully...

So today I'll be watching the tracking closely so I can run home and put my drives inside when they show up, and then back to setup tonight.

Do I select my (HD5500) tuners as type pchdtv/v4l or DVB? I picked pchdtv/v4l but I was thinking that might be for the 2k/3k ones - more research required. NTSC did work though, without sound yet. Now I have a 3-tuner ReplayTV!

EDIT: quick look at pchdtv's forums shows that I should be using DVB type. Wonder if I can do that from here...

EDIT #2: Ran home at lunch and rescued my hard drives from the front porch. Also have setup DVB tuner type and scheduled 4 recordings for this afternoon (3 ATSC, 1 NTSC) that don't quite all conflict...using mythweb! It's a bit more garish than tivoweb but oh well :)

I would like to announce qualified success.

I have made a number of ATSC recordings, and I can watch them on my monitor but not my TV because of a "known issue" with the Nvidia Linux drivers. Sure would have been nice to know about the known issue ahead of time. The SW RAID setup went smoothly, then I got to install again because I had the wrong kernel-devel package (must match smp if you use smp kernel, or no matter how many times you compile the dvb drivers they won't load) and I couldn't figure that out operating on not enough sleep. Also, the Nvidia driver won't load successfully without the extra packages noted in the nvnews forums (that I found once and then forgot about the next time) no matter how many times you run the installer.

To workaround the no-play-on-TV issue (I can get a 1920x1080 desktop on the TV, but nothing more than a black screen & 100% cpu X server when I play any video file) I am going with a $25 VGA-RGBHV(RCA) cable since I happen to have an RGBHV input on my TV, instead of the $112 VGA-to-component transcoder option. I tried a uPNP server but my LinkPlayer2 didn't want to play the myth recordings, my laptop didnt play them back all that smoothly either. ATI's drivers for Linux don't appear to be any better from what I have read now that it's too late. And I thought I really had done a lot of research!

I also don't have the AC3 passthrough (for the 2 DT stations that actually have 5.1) or remote working yet, but myth will be able to record Prison Break for me tomorrow night, then when the cable arrives and I hook it up I can watch it. After some more fiddling with modelines and X, I suppose.

Thanks for the updates. I continue to monitor your progress.

This is good info on teh Nvidia driver. My box has a 5200 128MB card, and I was going to use the S-Video out for SD NTSC.

But, when building the boxes, I use the VGA out. News to me about the vid issues.

Though, my 720p/1080i set has VGA-in, so that might be OK.

I may need to rescind my qualified-success declaration. Last night when I got home I found a zero-byte "recording" of Prison Break, although The New Adventures of Old Christine and Vanished (just after Prison Break) recorded fine. The Tivo, as expected, had reception issues and no recording. This was...shall we say...not when I had in mind when I bought all this gold-plated hardware. Seems like myth doesn't want to pull in recordings or live tv from the 3rd tuner although it will scan channels fine (and it works in xine which I installed last night with "yum install xine").

But wait there's more! I scheduled a bunch of recordings during the day today using all 3 tuners and more than 1/3rd of them are failing. In a random fashion, nothing better than that for troubleshooting. mythbackend doesn't seem to be logging any errors associateid with this. Or maybe I don't know what logfile to check for that.

How much is that Tivo Series 3 again?

Luckily Prison Break is repeating this week since there's nothing else on. I don't know if I can stand to drag out a VCR again just in case myth fails some more. Not a happy camper.

Ok, I can't say that myth *never* successfully uses the third tuner - right now I have Veronica Mars, House, and JC Penney Jam for Kids all recording. Hmph.

Luckily Prison Break is repeating this week since there's nothing else on. I don't know if I can stand to drag out a VCR again just in case myth fails some more. Not a happy camper.
I've run into this a few times. Seems to happen when intial recording starts. My guess is it can't sync in on the signal fast enough and just drops the recording. You might want to set the time to wait for signal longer in mythtv-setup for that. I also had one tuner that wasn't seated good once.

I've run into this a few times. Seems to happen when intial recording starts. My guess is it can't sync in on the signal fast enough and just drops the recording. You might want to set the time to wait for signal longer in mythtv-setup for that. I also had one tuner that wasn't seated good once.

I thought I had increased the timeouts enough already, but they are even bigger now. Set the same sort of multiple-recording schedule today, and it seems to be doing the same sort of random zero-byte recording. Last night I thought my antenna preamp (required by Tivo to get what it can) might be causing a too-hot issue so I swapped it out and reception got worse. The 4-way splitter I am now using seems to add enough attenuation so as to not require the use of my variable attenuator I had for the 2-way splitter previously, since the Tivo's tuners have a narrow just-right signal-strength zone.

Made some progress with the VFD & LCDd, and lirc - once I followed directions linked to from the Silverstone product page. The iMON file for lirc (when I started using the one for the "pad" remote which is what came with the case) didn't have left-right-up-down codes (that worked) for the "joystick". I tried to record some with irrecord and got different-looking (as in number of digits, from the other codes) and also non-unique codes: left/up and right/down the same, which doesn't seem right. Then I thought I would be clever and record the Tivo peanut's codes so I could use that (only going to be using either the Tivo or myth box at one time, right?) and got a bunch of the same codes there too, same for a replaytv remote as well. Possible interference from CFL bulbs? It was late and I didn't feel like trying in the dark so I just went to bed.

Just curious why, if you were going to run a two-disk RID, you didn't go with RAID 0 striping?

I would think that while trying to feed streams from multiple data sources, you'd want to maximize the storage I/O

My game box has two 160GB 8MB cache SATA drives striped in RAID 0 with 32k interleaves, for example.

I would guess, as a totally unqualifed, pulled-it-from-my-butt assumption, that each stream should have a disk. So, an a two tuner setup, two disks on different controllers. or, one RAID 0 array with two or more spindles for writes and reads. 3 tuner = 3 disks.

Just my totally unscientific overbuilding (from a former Sun sysadmin).

if you want data protection, make networked or local backups, or add a mirror array.

A valid question.

Because while I don't think that 3 ATSC streams on a single SATAII link will have any bandwidth trouble (after all the HDTivo does 2 record + 1 play on PATA), I *have* had a drive fail on the HDTivo so that's the issue I am trying to avoid this time around. Always trying to fight the previous battle? "Add a mirrored array" and "networked backups" sound like spending someone else's money :) I am not quite to enterprise-class storage yet.

EDIT: FYI (although the HDTivo numbers seem way low, it's not doing any recording that I know of and just finished housekeeping after a reboot) this seems to bear out my point about bandwidth...even if the Tivo's numbers are more like my webserver's:

HDTivo:

bash-2.02# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 8.43 seconds = 15.18 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 9.49 seconds = 6.74 MB/sec


FC1/sempron 2200 webserver:

[root@web root]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 896 MB in 2.00 seconds = 448.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 148 MB in 3.02 seconds = 49.01 MB/sec


FC5/a64 x2 4600 mythbox:

[root@myth1 root]# hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 3824 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1912.49 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 226 MB in 3.01 seconds = 75.01 MB/sec


50% (or more) faster than PATA, and only adding 33% more streaming bits (from 2 record + 1 play to 3 record (I hope!) + 1 play)

hey, that's a good synopsis, h_a_h_3!

OK, I just thought I'd throw that out there as being a potential for your data loss. But, you're right, your system is definitely no slouch in laying the bits to disk.

Yeah, spending OPM is something i'm good at. bettter to overbuild than suffer downtime.

I'd do everything to HW RAID 0+1 in fibrechannel arrays, whenever possible, if i could swing the price.

Sounds like you know what you're doing here. I'll go back to lurker mode. :-D

I thought I had increased the timeouts enough already, ..............
Just as a reference, I've got a vhf and uhf antenna up top . Bring both down about 25' to a reversed 2way splitter and then a short cable into an amp. From there only about 20' to 4 way splitter to the tuner cards. All my cards are atsc only and I've never had a problem recrding 4 shows at once even when also watching a recording on the same box. I'm about 45miles from the towers and my neighbor has a big ass tree in the line of site that sometimes causes glitches, but I rarely miss a recording. I have had a couple of 0 byte ones and a couple where the picture is only 1/4 (this is really wierd), but that's about it out of recording probably on average of 8 shows a day for the last 6-8 months.
About a month ago I changed the cards to on demand instead of always active. Saves a little electricty and don't have to wait to start the backend on reboot now either.

Lirc, what a dream (or something similar). Been there done that. I bought some really cheap remotes for $4.99 that came with a serial IR receiver. Of course I had to manually configure them. Esay now though.

Did some digging on the myth list archive (didn't find much in the pchdtv forum) and there was some discussion of 0-byte dvb recordings about a year ago, perhaps related to channel-changing. So after switching myth to not release the cards and not wait for a header, I did some single recordings that didn't have anything recording immediately prior and they seemed to "always" work - of course I have decreased my sample size by 2/3.

Then my "normal" multiple recordings using 2 tuners (happening to be reruns) all worked in last night's primetime, got 2 Grey's Anatomy, 1 CSI and 3 Offices and an Earl.

And my VGA-RGB(RCA) cable arrived, so I am back in modeline hell. Can't even get 480i to work on the TV via RGB, much less 1920x1080. Watched a DVD last night after I gave up, so I haven't managed to break the TV yet. No LED DLP w/VGA input for me, darn it. I may call in my tv-repair buddy and see if he's got a spectrum analyzer or some fun tools like that to help me out.

A valid question.

Because while I don't think that 3 ATSC streams on a single SATAII link will have any bandwidth trouble (after all the HDTivo does 2 record + 1 play on PATA), I *have* had a drive fail on the HDTivo so that's the issue I am trying to avoid this time around. Always trying to fight the previous battle?


h_a_h_3,

I have been monitoring your progress and wish you the best of luck. You have had the guts to do what I've wanted to do myself for a couple years now (I'm still clutching onto my old ReplayTV at Standard Def). I have a question about using RAID w/ MythTV/Linux though...how will you know if a redundant drive has failed? Will it give you an obvious on-screen alert, or something along those lines? Or when the RAID has lost redundancy, does it just bury the message in a log file somewhere? Just curious.

you can set it up to email you a notification, or you can set up 'watch' to spit out the status at regular intervals

When I unplugged each drive in turn and booted to test, the smartd process did send an email (to the localhost root account which I probably won't check all that often), I am sure that can be configured to use a different/additional address. There was also a [FAILED] instead of [OK] in the smartd startup line at boot time. And the 'cat /proc/mdstat' shows status as [_U] or [U_] instead of [UU] so even I could write a script to check that and email me.

When I unplugged each drive in turn and booted to test, the smartd process did send an email (to the localhost root account which I probably won't check all that often), I am sure that can be configured to use a different/additional address. There was also a [FAILED] instead of [OK] in the smartd startup line at boot time. And the 'cat /proc/mdstat' shows status as [_U] or [U_] instead of [UU] so even I could write a script to check that and email me.

mdadm is your friend here. Just add 'MAILADDR username@domain.tld' in your mdadm.conf and it'll e-mail you.
As for smartd, I belive you then do have to setup your harddrives manually (or maybe you can set a global default in smartd.conf) but simply add the /dev/hda <someoptions> -m username@domain.tld to your smartd.conf and that also should mail you when problems occur.

Excellent info on mdadm, thanks. I believe I also ran across some documentation in the MythTV wiki about this, after I posted my question.

If you're really wanting to do a myth box, I'm in Wylie and have 3 of them going. One backend and 2 fronts. Stop by any time. Well, after 11am. I sleep late most days. I dumped my Tivo and other dvr's about 8 months ago. Good ridance to NTSC..

If you're really wanting to do a myth box, I'm in Wylie and have 3 of them going. One backend and 2 fronts. Stop by any time. Well, after 11am. I sleep late most days. I dumped my Tivo and other dvr's about 8 months ago. Good ridance to NTSC..

That's really cool of you, thanks for the offer. At this point, my issue is budgeting the funds to build a box. I don't know if I can talk myself into it until I have the ability to record premium HD content on the DishNetwork (such as Sopranos, Deadwood, etc.).

It does feel kind of extravagant to build a box just for ATSC like I did...on the other hand its only monthly fees will be electricity & broadband. As far as premium HD content being made recordable by a myth/linux box, I don't think the content providers will ever allow that.

I got tired of seeing colored hash for a second and then my TV turning off, so I downloaded the new Nvidia driver released last week. Attempting to start a video file in 1080i mode still pegs Xorg in an unkillable fashion, but at least now it has the good grace to die on its own after a couple of minutes before it can render the box completely unresponsive. 480p is not as blue-tinted any more (and hey, video works!) so that could provide a watchable if not ideal solution doing something, anything with the recordings I have piling up. No more 0-byte recordings in my "normal" scheduling (max of 2 tuners), so far.

I still may try 1080i once or twice more, it's possible my mythtv tv setup deinterlace/decoder settings can be changed to allow that to work (I hope, I hope).

It does feel kind of extravagant to build a box just for ATSC like I did...on the other hand its only monthly fees will be electricity & broadband. As far as premium HD content being made recordable by a myth/linux box, I don't think the content providers will ever allow that..
If you saw how bad NTSC channels 2, 4, and 5 were here you would buld one in a heartbeat.:-) Don't know what you mean by premium HD. It doesn't get any better than OTA ATSC. I got one old 480i TV still and even it's nice clear picture is enough to make the switch.

I got tired of seeing colored hash for a second and then my TV turning off, so I downloaded the new Nvidia driver released last week. Attempting to start a video file in 1080i mode still pegs Xorg in an unkillable fashion, but at least now it has the good grace to die on its own after a couple of minutes before it can render the box completely unresponsive. 480p is not as blue-tinted any more (and hey, video works!) so that could provide a watchable if not ideal solution doing something, anything with the recordings I have piling up. No more 0-byte recordings in my "normal" scheduling (max of 2 tuners), so far.

I still may try 1080i once or twice more, it's possible my mythtv tv setup deinterlace/decoder settings can be changed to allow that to work (I hope, I hope).

What kind of problem are you having with 1080i? Aren't you using the M55Plus board? That's what I just upgraded to with an X2 3800+. I'm using the onboard video to a monitor without any problems at 1280x1024. I was having a freeze up problem but traced that to having sync to vblank turned on in the nvidia driver when i was using XvMC. Anyway, it plays fine now with XvMC at about 50% of 1 core with cpufreqd keeping the cpu in medium speed. I can even do 1080i PIP if I turn off XvMC. But I never use PIP anyway. Acually I usually watch Tv on another old Sempron 3100+ machine in the bedroom and my wife watches on another Sempron 2800+ machine in the Den.

If you saw how bad NTSC channels 2, 4, and 5 were here you would buld one in a heartbeat.:-) Don't know what you mean by premium HD. It doesn't get any better than OTA ATSC. I got one old 480i TV still and even it's nice clear picture is enough to make the switch.

Unfortunately, I still haven't made the upgrade to HDTV yet....which I'm hoping will happen in the next 6 months or so. Once I do this, I will definitely be getting the full HD package from DishNetwork (I think they have named it the Platinum Package, or something like that)...and by premium HD content, I meant HD channels like HBO, Showtime, etc.

Unfortunately, I still haven't made the upgrade to HDTV yet....which I'm hoping will happen in the next 6 months or so. Once I do this, I will definitely be getting the full HD package from DishNetwork (I think they have named it the Platinum Package, or something like that)...and by premium HD content, I meant HD channels like HBO, Showtime, etc.
Well, I went about it the cheap way. My server still uses the old 17" crt monitor at 1280x1024. Wanted a real HDTV for the bedroom but couldn't find any at the size I wanted (under 24") at anywhere close to a reasonable price so when Best Buy had there crt monitors on sale for $69 I got one of them and it works great at 1600x1200. And that's a higher res than you'll get with a $700 LCD. Offere my wife an HDTV, but because of space limitations in the entertainment center the HDTV screen size would have been considerably smaller than thre 32" that's there now and she said she didn't want to go down in size so She still uses it behind a myth box. I wasted a lot learning, but today one can build a very decent MythTV box for about $350 including 2 ATSC tuner cards. Monitor is extra.:-) And once you us it, you'll be ready to toss that replay just as I did my tivo and other analog dvr and vcr's. had 4 of them stacked in the bedroom where I watched tv. Now just one pc there. No more phone lines or even TV cables as it all runs over cat5. Actually have room to use some space there now and got rid of all the splitters and interconnect cables, etc.

Well, I went about it the cheap way. My server still uses the old 17" crt monitor at 1280x1024. Wanted a real HDTV for the bedroom but couldn't find any at the size I wanted (under 24") at anywhere close to a reasonable price so when Best Buy had there crt monitors on sale for $69 I got one of them and it works great at 1600x1200. And that's a higher res than you'll get with a $700 LCD. Offere my wife an HDTV, but because of space limitations in the entertainment center the HDTV screen size would have been considerably smaller than thre 32" that's there now and she said she didn't want to go down in size so She still uses it behind a myth box. I wasted a lot learning, but today one can build a very decent MythTV box for about $350 including 2 ATSC tuner cards. Monitor is extra.:-) And once you us it, you'll be ready to toss that replay just as I did my tivo and other analog dvr and vcr's. had 4 of them stacked in the bedroom where I watched tv. Now just one pc there. No more phone lines or even TV cables as it all runs over cat5. Actually have room to use some space there now and got rid of all the splitters and interconnect cables, etc.

Very cool. Good idea using the cheap CRT versus an expensive small HDTV unit.

I wasted a lot learning, but today one can build a very decent MythTV box for about $350 including 2 ATSC tuner cards. Monitor is extra.:-) And once you us it, you'll be ready to toss that replay just as I did my tivo and other analog dvr and vcr's. had 4 of them stacked in the bedroom where I watched tv. Now just one pc there. No more phone lines or even TV cables as it all runs over cat5. Actually have room to use some space there now and got rid of all the splitters and interconnect cables, etc.

I'm currently researching to eventually build an HDTV mythtv box. It will mostly likely have one HD tuner (either OTA ATSC and/or HD on cable (QAM)), and one SD tuner.

I am having a hard time finding specific recommendations or guidelines for choosing components (processor, motherboard, tuner, hard drive) to ensure proper processor power and throughput to support HD content. For example, I am worried about the throughtput to support recoding 2 HD channels simultaneously, or recoding one HD while playing another.

Could you list your system details, recommendations and/or links that you have hard-won?

Thanks,

JP

I'm currently researching to eventually build an HDTV mythtv box. It will mostly likely have one HD tuner (either OTA ATSC and/or HD on cable (QAM)), and one SD tuner.

I am having a hard time finding specific recommendations or guidelines for choosing components (processor, motherboard, tuner, hard drive) to ensure proper processor power and throughput to support HD content. For example, I am worried about the throughtput to support recoding 2 HD channels simultaneously, or recoding one HD while playing another.

Could you list your system details, recommendations and/or links that you have hard-won?
JP

I'll start with recording. One could probably get by with a fast 486 to record multiple OTA digital stations sense there's no encoding required. Al 4 of my tuners in an A64 3000+ running at only 800MHz with cpufreq enabled never went above 10% cpu usage. When you say SD, I'll assume you mean NTSC analog, although SD is also sent over ATSC digital. I won't even go there. It's not even worth messing with IMO. there should be a digital counterpart to almost every analog station on the air by now, and IMO, with it going away in a little over 2 years, it's a waste of time money and CPU power to encode a crappy analog signal. That's why I built the myth box, to get completely away from NTSC. As for QAM. Well, if you want to throw good money away on cable then a good card choice would probably be the Dvico Fusion HDTV5 Lite at about $99. But you can get 4 ATSC only cards for that same $99. That's what I have, 4 Air2PC rev.02 cards. And they work pretty darn good even at the 45 miles I'm from the towers. I read reports here they wouldn't work past 25 miles.:-)
As for hardware, I've never built a bare minimum system with tuner cards, but I did use a Duron 1600 as a frontend machine for some time. And it worked fine for HD display over vga as long as you used XvMC decoding. I had an Nvidia FX5200 in that box. Not sure how it would have worked with a couple of tuners in it recording, but it might have been ok. I know it still displayed OK (except when you pulled up the menu during playback, which stuttered) using XvMC even when I clocked it down to 1200MHz. But dropped frames like crazy without XvMC at that speed. So if you already hava a machine about this speed, you can try it. if you're a new one, I wouldn't get anything less than a 754 Sempron 2800+. And that's just a guideline. Prices on CPU's are so cheap now, give yourself a little cushion but don't waste tons for a cpu if it's just going to be a myth box and not used for much else. IOW's there's no need to pay for power you'll never use. For video, I've had good luck with the FX5200 cards, but if you're goign to use a native 1080i display I've heard it won't do the full 19200x1080 over DVI. Now if you want HD PIP, that means you can't use XvMC so you're going to need a lot of CPU power. My X2 3800+ displays all that without any problem, but who really needs PIP. Nice gimmick. Not real useful imo though. With my A64 S754 3000+ I could get one HD and one SD in PIP mode, but not 2 HD pictures. So you figure the bare minimum for this. I don't care. 512M of ram is plenty. the one other thing is that the tuner cards probably consume a lot of power adn run pretty damn hot. I'm using a 3 year $24 600W PSU. You can waste money on whatever brand you want, but I do suggest a high wattage supply. I also had to mod my case and put a fan in the side cover to blow over the PCI slots or my system temp quickly went over 60C and was still climbing.:-) With a 2500rpm 80x25mm fan in the side cover it keeps it down to about 34C. And to close, I hate leaving messages on these forum boards. try usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv.

I recently built a box around an ASUS M2NPV-VM board; it's an AM2 socket motherboard based on Nvidia chips and sold for HTPC use -- integrated nvidia 6150 video with a nice daughterboard for YPrPb is a nice touch. In the end though I used the DVI with an HDMI adapter -- the VGA and YPrPb connections aren't nearly as crisp. I also wired up the SPDIF connector (adapter wasn't included), essentially passing off all playback to the hardware (XvMC for video, Passthrough for the audio).

For a CPU I used an AMD64x2 4200+; it's overkill for mythtv watching, but since the box is going to be running 24x7 it might as well handle a few server tasks as well -- it'll also help for transcoding.

My last remaining glitch is getting stable video at 1920x1080i -- I have no problems doing the desktop or GL at that resolution but oddly as soon as I try anything Xv related the video card freezes and basically takes out one of the CPU's cores with Xorg taking 100% of the cpu. Once frozen there's little hope of recovering the video short of rebooting it over ssh since Xorg refuses to die while the Nvidia driver is in an atomic state.

My last remaining glitch is getting stable video at 1920x1080i -- I have no problems doing the desktop or GL at that resolution but oddly as soon as I try anything Xv related the video card freezes and basically takes out one of the CPU's cores with Xorg taking 100% of the cpu. Once frozen there's little hope of recovering the video short of rebooting it over ssh since Xorg refuses to die while the Nvidia driver is in an atomic state.
I reported similar problems and the fix in the mythtv newsgroup. alt.video.ptv.mythtv. Turn off sync to vblank using nvidia-settings.

I've tried turning off Sync to v-blank and when I do, I get a lot of tearing in xine. I', running at 1280x720. Is there something else that I've got to do?

I reported similar problems and the fix in the mythtv newsgroup. alt.video.ptv.mythtv. Turn off sync to vblank using nvidia-settings.

THANK YOU wnewell! I now have fairly smooth 1080i picture with both xvideo "sync to vblank" boxes set to off, the OpenGL one set to on and the OpenGL flipping set to off. Mythtv settings for playback are XvMC with Bob deinterlace.

Those xvideo sync-to-vblank buttons should be labeled with a more informative title like "leave these on and start a video if you would like to hard reboot your computer".

It looks like I am not the first one to have trouble with the imon IR receiver and other remotes. Since everything except the directional pad does work on the supplied imon remote, for now I will use that with some mildly creative key remapping (ch+ and ch - for up and down arrows, vol+ and vol- for left and right arrows).

I loaded all my mp3 and a few videos, and am almost ready to pronounce it fit to wow guests - only thing left is the AC3 passthrough since I have yet to get anything but PCM 2ch out of the digital out. None of the copy and paste fixes work, I may have to break down and learn something about alsa.

It looks like I am not the first one to have trouble with the imon IR receiver and other remotes. Since everything except the directional pad does work on the supplied imon remote, for now I will use that with some mildly creative key remapping (ch+ and ch - for up and down arrows, vol+ and vol- for left and right arrows).

good to hear you got the smooth picture. XvMC and Bob are the same as I use. Can't help with the sound. I just use regular stereo speakers. As for remotes, well, lets just say I have more experience there than I wanted to have. Had to get into how lirc worked even with the remote that came with the HDTV5 card. The default lircrc.rc was for a previous remote and of course didn't work. After getting that working, I then decided to try a seperate remote, but with a serial ir input interface. While there was an lircd.conf file for it, I couldn't find an lircrc.rc file for it so I just made my own using all the buttons on the remtote. The default lirc of Knoppmyth and Mythdora also didn't recognize the serial ir receiver, so I had to did into lirc to get that working. Once you understand how it all works it's not that difficult. Instructions for using this $4.99 remote/ir receiver combo is in the mythtv newsgroup. Looks like they've gone up to a flat $5 on it now.:-)

http://tekgems.com/Products/tg-pbr.htm

BTW, if everything on the one you have works now except the directional pad, it's probably just not defined (properly) in the lircrc.rc file. Should be a simple matter of looking at the lircd.conf file, finding the button names they assigned to the codes each one puts out and then adding those to the lircrc.rc file. If you don't see them in the lircd,conf file, then you can create your own or search for one on the web. i found a whole bunch of preconfigured files somewhere. It's been a while since I messed with this. Probably the lirc website.

I agree that the d-pad isn't configured correctly :) But since irrecord w/the Imon IR/VFD won't produce good codes for that or any other remote, for whatever reason, I don't know that there is much I can do about it.

I have spent the last two weeks trawling though the mythtv-users archives and google trying to get my third tuner to work in three simultaneous recordings - was getting a malloc error and more zero-byte recordings. Long story short, added "uppermem 524288" to /etc/grub.conf before the kernel line, and "vmalloc=148m" to the end of the kernel line.

Three! Simultaneous! HD! recordings! Oh! Yeah!

Hmmph.

a) Monarch is still being quite unresponsive, and from their forums it doesn't seem to be unusual...shame on me for not doing a bit more research. Waah.

--SNIP--.

I live here & have been to their store twice. I waited like 45 minutes while they went & found the damn video card in the warehouse. They have quality components but their customer service, as you have intimated, is lacking.

I'm currently researching to eventually build an HDTV mythtv box. It will mostly likely have one HD tuner (either OTA ATSC and/or HD on cable (QAM)), and one SD tuner.

I am having a hard time finding specific recommendations or guidelines for choosing components (processor, motherboard, tuner, hard drive) to ensure proper processor power and throughput to support HD content. For example, I am worried about the throughtput to support recoding 2 HD channels simultaneously, or recoding one HD while playing another.

Could you list your system details, recommendations and/or links that you have hard-won?

Thanks,

JP


Recording HD does not place a big load on the processor, it streams the signal to the hard drive. This also holds true with NTSC cards with hardware MPEG2 encoding.

Playback will take some processor power, less if the video card has hardware MPEG2 decoding/acceleration, etc.

Check out Tier 1 and Tier 2 on mysettopbox.tv (KnoppixMyth forums) for hardware suggestions.

Anybody have experience with the POS ATI HDTV Wonder under linux?

I bought one of those Air2pc rev .02 cards from ebay. Man does it run hot. I'd guess it puts out more heat than my processor. Is everyone else seeing the same thing?

I got a airstar hd5000

and it gets hot.. was thinking about finding a small fan or some heat sinks to put on it... think that might be part of my problems...

My three HD5500s get a little warm but not as hot as the 7600gs's heat sink. The tuners are right next to the 12cm intake fan of my PSU which probably helps - I don't think I have had any problems that I can trace to heat vs. weak signal/transmit issues (other tuner devices see the same oddities on same channels).

The 7600gs is currently reporting 59C (slowdown threshold 125C), box is on 24x7 running 2x SETI/Boinc tasks in addition to mythtv. The HR10-250 sitting on top of it is reporting 43C.

Another datapoint just because I can: Athlon 1700xp (w2k) box in the office reports 35/36C. House temp is probably around 65F.

BTW, I am watching FAR TOO MUCH TV. 3 ATSC tuners in the same box will do that. Then there are the 2 tuners in the Tivo...

I bought one of those Air2pc rev .02 cards from ebay. Man does it run hot. I'd guess it puts out more heat than my processor. Is everyone else seeing the same thing?
I've got 4 of them in mine. Had to add a side fan to the cover to keep the temps down. Not a problem now. Pretty much all tuners run hot afaik.

Hi h_a_h_3,
I just bought a pchdtv hd-5500 and am having trouble trying to set it up. As far as my system, I am running fedora core 6 on a system that has two other PVR 500s. For the sake of simplicity, in mythtv, I got rid of the PVRs and am trying to set up my hd5500 first. I am not sure if I was supposed to install any firmware or drivers, but it sounds, from what I've been reading, that I shouldn't need to.

So, I first set up the card as pcHDTV in mythtv, selected QAM-256 to scan channels, but no all I get is 'timeout -channel X - no signal'. Then I read that I should be using DVB option, so I do that, but all I am able to scan in are my analog channels? I didn't even find any option for QAM-256 or anything similar. Also, even though I scanned in analog channels, I still can't watch them - no signal.

In summary:
1) how do I get analog channels that have signal?
2) how do I tune in QAM channels?

In advance thanks a lot for any suggestions.

Tom

I used to have a pchdtv 5500 and there were some conflicts between ivtv and dvb drivers (I have/had a pvr-150, but I don't remember how I solved it. I don't think this is your problem, but maybe something to look into. A good bet would be to go over the pchdtv 5500 forums - I think I may have seen similar issues as you're describing over there...
What distro are your running? Which kernel version? You may need to install DVB drivers depending on your kernel version. Did you compile myth from source or from a package? Have you successfully used a DVB card before? Can you use it for QAM outside of myth?

When you are setting up the card as DVB device do you see an "Analog Options" button? When you say no signal, what do you mean? You don't get any picture or a blue screen or myth says there is no signal?

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply.
I'll try to answer all of your questions:
What distro are your running?
I'm running fedora core 6

Which kernel version?
..with kernel 2.6.18. Both, the distro and kernel, based on what I've read should be ready for pcHDTV 5500.

Did you compile myth from source or from a package?
No, I've installed it through yum.

Have you successfully used a DVB card before?
Can you use it for QAM outside of myth?
- I've never used any DVB card, this is my first digital tuner. I do have 2 PVR 500s at the moment. As far as using QAM outside myth, I don't know if it worked the way it was supposed to. The only thing that I did get to work was the channel scan. When I scanned with 'dtvscan', it listed channels 1 - 109 like this: 'channel = 1' and when I used 'dtvscan -q' (QAM), it listed channels up to 148. When I tried dtvsignal on several channels, I get 0 signal.
However, as I am typing this response, I started up my myth machine and tried the scan again and I get an error:
"attempting to open /dev/dtv
/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0: Devise or resource busy
failed opening any device"
- what is this all about? I get a similar error when measuring the signal.

When you are setting up the card as DVB device do you see an "Analog Options" button? When you say no signal, what do you mean? You don't get any picture or a blue screen or myth says there is no signal?

I did see the "Analog option" and I saw no signal at two different places: 1) When I did a scan in mythtv using the dvb, it was listing all of my analog channels (not by name, though - only sequential numbers) - this is when I set up the card as DVB. When I set i up as pcHDTV and use QAM-256, it lists the channels again (only consequtive numbers), but it also was saying "timingout channel X - no signal" 2) When I went to watch TV, the info bar on the bottom said 0% signal, and the screen was black - when set up as DVB or pcHDTV.
Sometimes, it tells me that I should have got signal by now and should swith to a different input by pressing 'y', or something in that sense. This message, however doesn't show up every time, sometimes, it just sits at the black screen with the info bar on the bottom of the screen. I haven't figured out the pattern yet.

Thanks a lot. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tom

My three HD5500s get a little warm but not as hot as the 7600gs's heat sink. The tuners are right next to the 12cm intake fan of my PSU which probably helps - I don't think I have had any problems that I can trace to heat vs. weak signal/transmit issues (other tuner devices see the same oddities on same channels).

The 7600gs is currently reporting 59C (slowdown threshold 125C), box is on 24x7 running 2x SETI/Boinc tasks in addition to mythtv. The HR10-250 sitting on top of it is reporting 43C.

Another datapoint just because I can: Athlon 1700xp (w2k) box in the office reports 35/36C. House temp is probably around 65F.

If you were to do this over again, would you go with a fan-cooled video card instead of a fanless one? I'm looking to build a similar frontend/backend box with 2 tuners and like the idea of fanless video cards since 1 additional fan means more noise.

If you were to do this over again, would you go with a fan-cooled video card instead of a fanless one? I'm looking to build a similar frontend/backend box with 2 tuners and like the idea of fanless video cards since 1 additional fan means more noise.

I thought this thread had been moved off to archive-land - I have been busy watching too much TV!

I would absolutely use the same fanless 7600GS again, none of my issues were due to its fanless nature. Just last week I finally got rid of all tearing by installing the latest Nvidia driver with "Use Events" option and turning on all vsync options everywhere, kerneldeint and extra audio buffering.

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply.
I'll try to answer all of your questions:

I'm running fedora core 6


..with kernel 2.6.18. Both, the distro and kernel, based on what I've read should be ready for pcHDTV 5500.


No, I've installed it through yum.


- I've never used any DVB card, this is my first digital tuner. I do have 2 PVR 500s at the moment. As far as using QAM outside myth, I don't know if it worked the way it was supposed to. The only thing that I did get to work was the channel scan. When I scanned with 'dtvscan', it listed channels 1 - 109 like this: 'channel = 1' and when I used 'dtvscan -q' (QAM), it listed channels up to 148. When I tried dtvsignal on several channels, I get 0 signal.
However, as I am typing this response, I started up my myth machine and tried the scan again and I get an error:
"attempting to open /dev/dtv
/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0: Devise or resource busy
failed opening any device"
- what is this all about? I get a similar error when measuring the signal.



I did see the "Analog option" and I saw no signal at two different places: 1) When I did a scan in mythtv using the dvb, it was listing all of my analog channels (not by name, though - only sequential numbers) - this is when I set up the card as DVB. When I set i up as pcHDTV and use QAM-256, it lists the channels again (only consequtive numbers), but it also was saying "timingout channel X - no signal" 2) When I went to watch TV, the info bar on the bottom said 0% signal, and the screen was black - when set up as DVB or pcHDTV.
Sometimes, it tells me that I should have got signal by now and should swith to a different input by pressing 'y', or something in that sense. This message, however doesn't show up every time, sometimes, it just sits at the black screen with the info bar on the bottom of the screen. I haven't figured out the pattern yet.

Thanks a lot. Any suggestions are welcome.

Tom

Sorry, I am only using my tuners for OTA ATSC. I did very briefly fiddle with the NTSC tuners outside of myth, and ran maybe one QAM channel scan but that was it. My focus in building the box was on better ATSC performance than my HR10-250 using my existing antenna.

The only way I would want to fiddle with QAM would be if I were to add more tuners (probably an HDHomeRun rather than a slave backend, given my FE/BE has only one 1x PCIe slot open now). My local cable (cableONE) doesn't have that much HD (newsletter said they are adding more very soon though!!), I only have analog "lifeline" service to get a discount on my cablemodem service. Also I have a hankering when looking at various monthly bills to maybe try cheaper DSL and fire cableONE altogether.

I would absolutely use the same fanless 7600GS again, none of my issues were due to its fanless nature.

How many (and what size) fans do you have in the box? Do you have a fan and/or heatsink for the CPU? The fanless video card is very appealing to me, seeing as I want to keep noise to a minimum. I wish they could design the PCs like a/v equipment without fans. Maybe if the box were on it's side and all the cards and CPU had heat sinks? My 500 watt (I think) DD5.1 amplifier keeps its cool with heat sinks only.

One of the ATSC tuner PVR cards claimed to turn on your PC for recording and turn it off afterwards, but I think that is only for MCE. Also it must be the PVR card controlling recording schedule rather than MythTV. Interesting idea that would save power as well as keep the box cool by shutting it off when not in use.

I wish they could design the PCs like a/v equipment without fans. Maybe if the box were on it's side and all the cards and CPU had heat sinks? My 500 watt (I think) DD5.1 amplifier keeps its cool with heat sinks only.

There are some solutions available, but they are usually pretty pricey. I wish I could afford one of the Zalman TNN cases, which are fanless. http://www.zalmanusa.com/

Also, here's a nice website with reviews for silent components, in case you didn't already know about it: http://www.silentpcreview.com/

How many (and what size) fans do you have in the box? Do you have a fan and/or heatsink for the CPU? The fanless video card is very appealing to me, seeing as I want to keep noise to a minimum. I wish they could design the PCs like a/v equipment without fans. Maybe if the box were on it's side and all the cards and CPU had heat sinks? My 500 watt (I think) DD5.1 amplifier keeps its cool with heat sinks only.

One of the ATSC tuner PVR cards claimed to turn on your PC for recording and turn it off afterwards, but I think that is only for MCE. Also it must be the PVR card controlling recording schedule rather than MythTV. Interesting idea that would save power as well as keep the box cool by shutting it off when not in use.

The case (Silverstone LC16M) comes with two "maglev bearing" smaller fans (70mm?) at the back, they are very quiet at full voltage. My Seasonic PSU (on recommendation of silentpcreview) has a 120mm fan that runs pretty slowly most of the time - never heard it. My Zalman cooler has like an 80mm fan blowing through a heat pipe/fin assembly, but I think it's overkill for a 65w x2 processor; I upgraded another box with a 65w x2 and can't hear the AMD boxed cooler, they are both running 2 SETI tasks 24/7. Then at the front of the drive cages I got a couple "super quiet" 80mm fans at CompUSA, only they weren't really very quiet so I used the fan controller that came with the Zalman to undervolt them, I can barely hear them with my ear next to the case.

The loudest thing on my system is definitely the dual 750s (sw RAID1) when doing lots of seeks during an flv transcode - I have now set those jobs to run in the middle of the night when I am sleeping in a room far away. Not really noticeable when just recording or watching.

There are people who have mythtv boxes configured to turn on for recording and then turn off again if they are idle, it's a little tricky but doable from what I read...but I leave mine running, that's why I got the low-powerish stuff.

Do you suppose a Scythe Ninja heatsink (without fan) would be sufficient to cool an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300? I'm hoping the case and PSU fans would be enough to handle cooling. Does the CPU need more cooling than a GPU? I'm thinking of getting a 600 watt PSU with 120mm fan, and case with 120mm fans like the Antec P180 pictured in this SilentPCReview of the Scythe Ninja (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article251-page5.html).

Also, why did you choose a GeForce 7600GS over a lesser 7300 or 7100?

The MythTV frontend/backend system I'm building will have 1 tuner card (ATSC/QAM/NTSC) to start with (likely to add a 2nd).

Do you suppose a Scythe Ninja heatsink (without fan) would be sufficient to cool an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300? I'm hoping the case and PSU fans would be enough to handle cooling. Does the CPU need more cooling than a GPU? I'm thinking of getting a 600 watt PSU with 120mm fan, and case with 120mm fans like the Antec P180 pictured in this SilentPCReview of the Scythe Ninja (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article251-page5.html).

Also, why did you choose a GeForce 7600GS over a lesser 7300 or 7100?

The MythTV frontend/backend system I'm building will have 1 tuner card (ATSC/QAM/NTSC) to start with (likely to add a 2nd).

I would make sure to orient the case vertically like in that article, but they did get impressive results for a hot-running P4 with fans only "nearby".

Why did I get a 7600? I guess I wanted a little "insurance" that it would be up to the task of HD, hadn't been on the myth mailing list or read extensively about the 5200 and 6200 cards being just fine for HD, and I had just seen some reviews of fanless 7600GS cards at the time. I am not sure that I looked very hard for lesser cards w/component-out dongles but that was another factor since my RPTV doesn't have digital inputs (and the VGA 5-RCA input didn't work so well with my breakout cable either). I was definitely trying to err on the cautious side for making the box work instead of almost work, even if it cost me a little more.