On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 16:29, Kirk Bocek wrote:
Scot L. Harris wrote:
Groovy! I also found several detailed instructions on getting X running on the 350. Now I can say bye-bye to the Radeon 7000 and just use the VGA that's onboard the motherboard during setup. That'll leave another slot for capture cards. UPS just showed up with my PVR-350...
This is exactly what I am doing with the new slave backend system. The ECS board has built in VGA which is what I am using during setup. By next week this box will be using the PVR-350 for all output. But I wanted to try and test the DVD first. :)
I have not worked with the DVD much yet. On my todo list. :) I have read where it should be possible to run xine out the PVR-350 but it is not clear to me if the quality is going to be acceptable. Until then I use the old Apex DVD player.
I hope this works. Replacing the DVD player in the AV shelving is a primary goal for me.
Me too! The Apex player I have does not like DVD-R or +R for that matter.
You want at least two so you can record two shows at once or watch live TV through the mythtv box and record a show at the same time. You don't have to have a capture card available to watch recordings.
Duh! I forgot about that scenario. Note to self - plan to get another tuner.
I assume you are just connecting the cable straight from the wall to the capture card? I find this works very well.
Start with one capture card to get it working. Then you can easily add a second card. I installed a PVR-250 in the first box as a second card. Takes just a minute or two to add it. You just run mythtv-setup again and add the card and video source. The system then starts using it.
I'm glad it's that easy.
Where it got confusing was getting the capture cards in slave backends working.
I tried a PVR-500 card in the second box...
Too bad that's not working. But since it's easy to add cards, it sounds like I can afford to wait until support for that card settles out.
I kept watching the list and it seemed that lots of people have it working. It could be a hardware problem in the card I received. Have not figured out how to test for that yet. I was able to get video and sound going on the first tuner but the second tuner just did not work. The system recognized both tuners but I was unable to adjust the various settings on the second tuner using the tools provided. I found a few people on the list reporting the same exact problem. So it may be a driver issue which why I need to eventually try the 0.3.8 ivtv drivers.
Right now I'm going to go with just the scenario you describe: everything on this one box. Already have a 'house server' in the garage providing net connection, etc. I hope to upgrade it at some point and make it the backend with a bunch of raided, hot-swap storage. Maybe do video capture too on it. Your idea to do diskless workstations is a good one. Might even be able to do something fanless!
That is exactly where I want to go with the frontend systems, fanless, silent, cool. No moving parts.
Right now the big box with the four 300GB drives in it is not to bad. I only really notice it once it finishes recording a show and runs the commercial flagging job. The processors kick in high gear and the power supply fan revs up. Almost sounds like it is rewinding the show. :)
Just did the ATrpms install of mythtv-suite. That's a lot of packages! But no errors, thankfully. We'll see how the PVR-350 works now.
Good luck, the mythtv project has got to be one of the most useful projects that have come out for a linux type system.