[KLUG Members] Knopmyth anyone?

[Bruce Smith]

> > > Has anyone used this? Experiences? Warnings? Words of wisdom?
> > > 
> > > http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
> > 
> > I haven't used it personally, but I'm on the MythTV mailing list and
> > I've have read a lot about it.
> 
> I saw a video demonstration of the install using Knopmyth. It looked
> pretty straightforward as long as the TV card was supported.

Yes, I've heard it's a nice and easy setup.
I'm sure either knopp or FC would do a good job for you.

I get the impression that the FC RPM repository is more quickly updated
when a new release comes out (if you care about that).  Plus, the VAST
majority of the users on the mailing list are running FC.  It may be
easier to get questions answered if you're running FC, don't know.
(or maybe FC users are on the only ones with problems? ;)

It wouldn't be hard to try both distros, if you want to spend a little
time evaluating them.  They're both free (as in beer)!  :-)

> > The MOST IMPORTANT thing you need to do is be careful purchasing your
> > hardware to make sure everything is Myth compatible.  This is much more
> > important than choice of distros!  :-)
> 
> What card do you use? The Hauppage (sp?) cards seem to be plentiful, but
> there is a different card made mainly for Linux too...at least there was
> on the video I saw. I currently have a Hauppage...the model of which I
> am not sure. They were on clearance some time ago at an office supply
> place. I remember thinking, "Hey, if this works with Myth, great. If
> not, it was cheap and and I can ebay it to get my money back."

When I first started, I had one el'cheapo bt878 chipset based card
because I wanted to go cheap to see how Myth ran.  After becoming sold
on Myth I upgraded my encoders cards and I'm now running (2) Hauppauge
PVR-250 cards, with an NVidia video card with S-video out for the TV.

The cheap cards are software based encoders, and take a LOT of CPU power
to run.  The better Hauppauge cards have a hardware encoder, and are
_MUCH_ better.  Lower CPU usage (almost nil), and the recordings are a
much higher quality!

The newest Hauppauge cards (PVR-150/PVR-500) are supported by Myth, but
I get the impression from the mailing list that they are not supported
as well as the older PVR-250/PVR-350 cards (yet).  So it's probably be
easier to get a system running with the later, if you can find them.

I'm very happy with the TV-out of the NVidia video card, so I never
spent the extra bucks on the Hauppauge PVR-350 (with hardware DEcoder),
besides the TV-out part of the PVR-350 sounds like a pain to configure
in Linux.

This of course assumes you are talking about standard TV.  
HDTV is a whole different animal ...   :-)

 - BS