Whats the latest "best" installation for mythTV from scratch? I looked into it about a year ago and now it seems that a lot of the distros are much more comprehensive. I do have linux/unix exprerience, but time is an issue. I'll be using the system as a centralized HDTV and audio server for 3-4 rooms.

What are the pros and cons of each distro?

thanks

D

I only have direct experience with Ubuntu, and it was pretty easy (use 6.10). Knoppmyth and Mythdora are still high up there. All three have pretty comprehensive installation guides available. I'd look at the installation guides to see which one will be easiest for you. Some of it is hardware dependent (different kernels natively support different tuner cards, etc.). so which one saves you the most time might be a bit hardware dependent as well...

I did a fedora core 6 and mythtv install.. very easy to do.
install fedora, then 'yum -y upgrade' to bring the distro to the newest level, add the atrpms repository to yum and do a 'yum -y install mythtv-suite' and install the video drivers, remote control etc drivers.
Then start configuring mythtv and done.

I did with Ubuntu 6.10. The instructions are easy to follow.
Google ubuntu community MythTV

google mythdora it doesn't get any easier. it guides you right through the install with barely input from you.

Whats the latest "best" installation for mythTV from scratch? I looked into it about a year ago and now it seems that a lot of the distros are much more comprehensive. I do have linux/unix exprerience, but time is an issue. I'll be using the system as a centralized HDTV and audio server for 3-4 rooms.

What are the pros and cons of each distro?

thanks

D

I personally use Ubuntu and I have found that it has more ppl supporting the product including adding dev's, and just general support than the other ones. MHO But I may be a little biased than the other ppl here in this forum since I use the modified Xbox running Xbmc and that seems to play extremely well with Ubuntu too. I use the Xbmc as a front end and an old Emachine (466 with 192MB SDRAM and a 4.3 GB HD and a 250GB WD HD). It is great with upscaling sd dvd's to 1080i on my PJ and I am very pleased. I Love just clicking on a thumbnail to start a dvd. I just installed antoher 320 GB WD HD in a USB (IDE) external holder and interfaced that with no problems. I still need to add another 320 or 500 HD externally to cover the rest of my dvd's. I load all my music, Ripped DVD's in ISO format and Pictures (JPEG) and the thing works great (THe pan and scan feature of the jpeg viewer is the best, pic's just come to life on their own). Eventually, I am going to build a 19" rack mount case with miminal devices installed and (DVD, 4.3 GB HD and HDTV Qam tuner card and a MythTV backend) everthing else will be USB attached. (HD's with seperate PS's). In order to do HDTV I need to upgrade the processor or find an HDTV capture card or DVB that has a mpeg 2 encoder/decorder so I can keep the processor/MB/Ram at a minimum while letting the Xbmc/Xbox combo do its stuff.

FYI, whatever distro you go with check the support for HDTV capture/DVB/Tuner card support. You need to make sure that the driver is there for the card.

Eventually, a HTPC will be my next project, unless they bust the Xbox 360 wide open. I hope, I hope, I Hope.

I've done 3 installations on Fedora Core 4. There is a lot of documentation out there for Fedora, such as Jarod Wilson's guide, and more on the wiki. However, now that I've installed Knoppmyth, I don't think I'll ever do another Fedora install.

Problem #1 with Fedora is the frequent updates, 4, 5, 6, and how APT and other distrubution sites quickly drop support for the older versions. Once your Mythbox is running you don't want to have to upgrade again.

Knoppix has so much configured right out of the box. You can install in only a few minutes. The installation boots really quickly. Lirc is configured for you, Mythweb is configured, streaming using MythStreamTV works, there is a poweroff and reboot on the mythtv menu. Myth frontend starts automatically.

The only problem is that if you choose the auto install it only makes a 5 gig partition for Linux, and installs Fluxbox. No KDE. No Firefix. However, if you look in the Knoppmyth wiki, there are easy instructions for doing a slighly manual install (where you choose the partition sizes) an then with a few apt-get's you can install KDE and Firefox.

Why don't you just download the source and configure and build it yourself? That way you can get exactly what you want and not what someone else decided was best. Plus you have the option of pulling stuff out of svn that isn't in a release yet.

I am just trying to address this part of the author's question: "I do have linux/unix experience, but time is an issue."

What you choose depends on whether you want to spend a lot of time configuring and compiling, or if you prefer a quick install that may do 90 - 100% of what you need. Knoppmyth has come a long way and it can greatly reduce the time and frustration of installing MythTV.

However, If you have the right hardware, everything should go smooth for many other well documented distros such as Ubuntu and others mentioned here.

The great thing about Knoppmyth is you can have it up and running quickly, test it out, and if it does not meet you needs then you did not waste much time trying.

I just installed a fedora core 6 system in 2 hours. I know exactly what I am doing though. Longest part is waiting for yum upgrade to get everything up to date. I already had my database saved so that always helps. I tihnk you could do a complete install with all your settings in about 6 hours from scratch using fedora core 6 and the "Fedora mythtv guide" by jared (google search it) and resources from the myth wiki mythtv.org/wiki/