About to build a Linux HD DVR - where to start?

The very first thing to know is what source you are going to record and how many programs you want to record/watch at the same time. If you are going for OTA ATSC, then MythTV is a good choice. If it's sat or cable HDTV, then it's probably not and you'd be better off leasing an HD DVR from the source provider.

Assuming OTA ATSC, I've used 2 differtent cards. The first was a Fusion HDTV5 Gold plus that cost about $130 now. It works well, and does ATSC, NTSC, and QAM. I sold it after getting the next cards, Air2PC Rev.02 off ebay for about $20 each. The only do ATSC, but worked just as good as the expensive card in my case. I now have 6 of them. 4 in the master backend and 1 in each of the 2 slave machines.

For the PC with the way pricing is today I'd suggest a socket AM2 AMD X2 3600+ or 3800+. Eother of these will have plenty of power for everything you might want to do. 1GB of ram is plenty. I only 512M when I ran 4 cards originally on a 3000+. As for video, I use the onboard video of the Geforce 6100 and another Geforce 6150 but I use the VGA out on both. Since your HDTV doesn't have a vga input, then if you get onboard video make sure it has DVI out and make sure it has everything else you might want. Take your pick of remotes and IR receivers. Check the LIRC compatability pages.

For software, there are several MythTV distros like Knoppmyth, Mythdora, and a few other designed for mythtv specifically. They are arguable the easiest to install for a for first time Lnux user and generally install all components required. I've done it several ways. I installed the SVN source and compiled it on this box. On another I used mandriva 2007 and the PLF rpm's (pretty easy), and on another I'm using Knoppmyth for the moment. They all work. A lot of people or using Ubuntu and some guide that's on the web. I haven't messed with it. Well, that's my 2 cents. Good luck

Most RAM these days is DDR2. The newest hard drive interface is SATA.

And the best place to get cables is www.monoprice.com. Their cables are very good (equal to the "Monster" ones) and very reasonably priced (read cheap) to boot.

BTW, SATA II (or SATA 2) drives are faster than any other, and these drives are cheaper than the best IDE drives around here. The best motherboards have 4 SATA drive connectors as well as 2 IDE connectors.

I'm looking at the "Asus M2N-E AM2 nForce 570 Ultra DDR2 GbLAN PCI-E" motherboard for my new Linux PC. I figure around $900 for an entirely new PC (Antec P150 Super Quiet Case and all) for a 1 TB unit - from my local computer specialty store - slightly less if I buy the parts online).

Remember, recording video takes up a lot of space (around 2.2 GB/hour for DVD quality and around 5 GB/hour for HD programs - after commercials are edited out).

Because you cannot record digital cable or satellite in HD except with a box that you rent from the company (or with a TiVo Series 3). The cable and satellite companies wont let us. The only channels you are likely to be able to record in HD through a cable provider is the broadcast network stations.

I use my mythboxes with cable and OTA. Via QAM I only get my locals in HD and SD and a few other channels. I still prefer to use myth over a DVR. The cable company provided DVRs have been unreliable and with a poor, buggy interface. They are "working" on it (I'm with comcast, and just check the AVS forums for problems with the SA and Morotola DVRs). Plus since I have multiple TVs (and monitors) I like to be able to stream the content to multiple TVs, which the cable DVRs don't allow as of yet (you'd have to get a separate DVR on each TV. My cable company in my area doesn't allow anyone to have more than two DVRs which would be another problem). You can't transcode the recordings, archive them, and they have small hard drives for my uses. So in my case, I'd still build mythboxes with cable. Plus I use mythgame and mythvideo quite a bit in multiple rooms.

Also, I use the firewire out from the cable boxes(non DVRs) to get almost all the stations except Premium HD channels (HBO, Showtime. I used to get them all, but they change that, and can change the other ones at their whim). So I can also get even more HD channels than QAM allows. But it works nicely. For the Premiums I can just watch them onDemand with regular cable boxes, so I don't need to record them anyway. Firewire and QAM availability is provider and location dependent. If you are going with cable you should investigate the availability.

Analog is going away in 2009, but I also use an analog tuner to get all of the extended basic cable (1-99). I'm a little far away from the networks to reliable get the OTA channels without an antenna on my roof, but I have an OTA tuner as a backup (with my indoor antenna. If I play with it, I can get each channel, but not with the antenna in one position).

So it depends on what you want to record, and what your cable company makes available to you via QAM and firewire.

I have Comcast and I can record HD via IEEE TS onto my JVC 40k DVHS.

There is also Component Output and Optical/Digital Audio Output

I would hope that TS is not a problem for Linux while combining Component and SPDIF may be another story.

When you say "IEEE TS", I assume that you are referring to using the "Firewire" (IEEE 1394) connection. You're lucky that you have a STB with the "Firewire" connection enabled (a lot of them don't). That shouldn't be a problem for Linux, if your IEEE 1394 port is recognized by the distro that you're using. Linux should be able to handle Video TS files (but I'm definitely not the expert here).

A DVHS player is 5C compliant and should be able to record everything from firewire out if the cable box. A computer is not a 5C compliant device, and thus even if your DVHS can record from your cable box it doesn't mean a computer can. It depends on the 5C setting of the station. If the CCI (copy control informaiton) flag is set to anything other than 0 (copy freely) for a particular station a computer will not be able to record from it because it would need be able to authenticate itself.

the channels I mentioned I can't record from isn't due to any limitation from my firewire connection, it is because CCI is set to 2 on the those channels. TS isn't a problem for linux, but DTCP (5c) is a problem for any computer. This would most likely be what is preventing channel recording via IEEE 1394.

Combining component with audio is problem for computers in general. Capturing component is a big problem in itself due to the hard drive requirements to capture an uncompressed high definition stream.

I may be delusional, but I think I remember reading a post that said, by law, a STB must have a Firewire output.

I think it is so ironic that the only device which is actually capable of recording HD is the "obsolete" VHS platform, digital of course.

This is my understanding as well, however many cable companies don't follow it all the time. In most cases you can call your cable company and tell them to activate it.

My Mythbox can record HD (just not the HD premiums - I can still do every other HD station I get) via firewire, so can windows computers running capDVHS. It's all about the DTCP settings. If copy control is set to anything other than copy freely the DVHS is the only equipment I know of that can be authenticated.

I used to be able to record every channel, even HD premium via firewire, but one day they turned on the CCI to 2 on many channels. So it is location and provider dependent, and can change at any time, unless you have DVHS.

Yes, very ironic - but basically content provider and cable companies have no incentive to make it easy for you to use your own recording devices - and so they don't play nicely with other devices.

Because there's usually a problem getting a recodable HDTV signal from them that you can record. If you have cable, and want to build your own, check with the cable company and see if their box provides the means to do so. You might get lucky and they provide all there service in clear qam, but I doubt it. More than likely you will have very limited options. With OTA, there are no limits. I've got 6 ATSC tuners in my system. I don't have cable or sat and never have. When I can record 6 shows at once, I'm never without something to watch.

Keep in mind that the Tivo Series 3 can be had for $400 with rebate until 6-16-07.

that tivo 3 will be nice if it gets hacked like the other tivos have in the past and you can interface it with linux

Even if that's true, $400 won't get you a functioning unit. You still have to pay a subscritption fee that would end up being over $1000 in time. And the limitations of the S3 are well known. For OTA, it's way too expresive and way too limited. For cable it's just way too expensive compared to cable company offers. And for sat, well, it just doesn't work. To be a viable option, they need to be free with subsciption. And that pretty much means they will never be a viable option unless you are the type of person that likes to brag on how much they spent on something. I guess a lot of people look upon a Tivo as top of the line. I look upon it as close to the bottom with a top of the line price. I'm a former Tivo owner that got tired of waiting for them to bring out an HDTV recorder. There's still a few die hards out there that have the illusion that if it's a Tivo it has to be the best. This was debatable when the first Tivo came out. They aren't even in the running these days.

I want to build a video jukebox and rip HD-DVD & Blue Ray disks to play on my HT. I have an HDCP stripper to allow me to spoof any HDCP video card. I really don't want to pay Microsoft for XP or Media XP so I saw this thread and thought I might be able to use Linux to build my juke box. What are the pot holes?
Video card - I assume I need a fairly fast video card. It would be nice to have remote control. Suggestions?
Juke Box SW - What SW will run on Linux and provide a good GUI to call movies?
HD player SW - What do I need to run the decoding? I assume most of those for DVDs will not work. I will need one running under Linux.
Sound - I would assume TOSLINK will deliver my sound to my AV preamp ok.
Would there be a problem having only 1G of main memory? It would seem that most processing is done on the Video card.
HD ripper - I know there is WIndows based ripper SW for HD. Is there any known for Linux? I will probably do dual boot or rip and Xfer from a Windows machine if necessary.
Thanks,
Barry

laguna_b -- You need to do a lot more reading about Linux. Unless you are willing to learn about it, you can get frustrated very fast. Not all hardware (motherboards, BIOS, Sound cards, Video Cards, Network cards, etc.) is compatable with the various distros of Linux. You also need to decide which distribution (distro) of Linux will fit your needs (they are not the same, even though they are all based on the same kernel). See http://www.linux.org/ for some basic information.

The latest video cards are not yet supported in Linux. The HDTV features of many video cards are keyed to MS software and won't work under Linux. As a result, you may need a fast processor and RAM (1GB minimum) to do the HD processing in software (for playback). It's not needed for recording.

You should be willing to do some tweaking using the command-line (terminal mode) interface (and learning how to do it). "No pain, no gain." What you want to do can be done in Linux, but not without some effort on your part (in exchange for a lot less cost and intrusion into your privacy).

NOTE: I'm not sure that the HDCP Stripper will let you do the HD recording, since you still have to get the digital video and the digital audio streams into your computer. There are no interfaces that do that, AFIK (it would be nice, but I haven't found any yet).

I hear ya. I just know that these projects get way more complicated than one ever imagined. I am up trying to get my regular PC to play through my Barco CRT PJ. Things are not going well and that shold be a plug and play. Thanks for the tips though. Geez, if the video cards leave all the heavy lifting to the CPU, not much reason to get a great one.

Yup. The best ones that I've found so far are the ones based on the Nvidia 7600 & 7800 chipsets. The Nvidia "8" versions do not have Linux support yet.

BTW, I added a note to my post while you were responding.

My plan for HDCP is simple. I plan to rip HD-DVDs and Blue Ray disks using DVDFAB. They will then be clean though I read somewhere that some cards default to 540p anyway w/o HDCP so i will use my stripper for that. Right now I can't even get my older PC to play through my Lumagen on DVI. Very frustrating this whole thing is.

Oh, I meant to ask...what about ATI cards?

Not as much support (much less than Nvidia). I sent you a PM.

PS - I prefer Ubuntu Version 7.04 (the latest). I've also been reading up on Linux for the last month.

laguna_b:

I'm doing pretty much the same thing. I'm using mythtv as the video system and mplayer svn to playback HD-dvd/bluray rips. I have a specific command I use to run EVO files in mplayer (pulled from the mplayer mailing list) Right now though, no enhanced ac3 audio. Should be finished by the end of the summer of code.

I just updated my system info on my mythtv hardware page. The only frontend I can run x264 1080p rips on without frame loss is the main front end. My old intel 830 couldn't handle it x264 but was fine with the hddvd and bluray full rips. Anything less than an overclocked e4300 probably won't work on the 1080p x264 rips. Also I plan on upgrading my main frontend to a quad core when the price drops. One reason I use a lot of the x264 rips instead of the full bluray/hddvd is to save about 15 Gb of space. Right now at best a hd-dvd/bluray rip is 25GB.
When the enhanced E-ac3 is available, I'll be switching to analog 7.1 outputs/inputs to get the master audio. The only other way to do it would be hdmi 1.3 which is prohibitively expensive.
http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:Blackoper

blackoper -- I read your wiki, nice description. I noticed that you are using the Antec P180B case for your Master Backend. Since that model comes without a power supply, so you should also list which PS you are using. I was thinking of getting the Antec P150 case (the P180's little brother), but the HE430W PS, that it comes with, has a questionable reliability history.

yeah I'm rolling with a thermaltake toughpower 750 (overkill at the moment) got a good deal on it and it has over 85% efficiency. I'll probably move it to the hard disk array when it has more than 10 drives as I'm thinking of making it a dedicated Openfiler box to manage the storage. Updated the wiki to reflect power supply and opefiler info.

The build quality of all the antec cases I've dealt with has been very good (p180b, nsk2400, and the minuet 2). The newer models are all based off the same kind of designs so I don't think you'll be disappointed with the P150.
If I had things to do over again, I'd get the D.vine 5 instead of the p180b case and get a hd homerun dual tuner to avoid the pci slots. I may eventually separate the backend/main frontend but I'd rather not waste the extra power and the cost of building and running another computer. Maybe a lower power 35Watt mobile dual core processor would change my mind but so far things are working ok.