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I thought I had the hdhomerun working with mythtv last night

I saw there was a new firmware for the hdhomerun. So I downloaded the firmware and the new libhdhomerun. I upgraded the firmware and then moved over the the mythtv box. I went in and went through the normal setup process for a new tuner in myth and oh my. This time I started getting output on the scan screen. Then whe I should get digital channels it showed them. So I did a mythfilldatabase to get all guide info for the channels. After that I went and tried watching live tv from the new tuners. No luck. Could not lock on the signal for reason. I hope to work on this next week. Hopefully I am just doing something wrong.

Posted in Mythtv.


Got a cheap socket A motherboard off of ebay

Well I finally found a cheap socket A motherboard on ebay. 21 bucks shipped. Just got it last night. Nothing special. Plugged in the athlon 1700xp+ and put some memory in it and powered it up. Onboard video didn’t seem to work. I put in a new agp card and it came to life. For some reason the seller did not include the case plate for the motherboard( the plate you put in the back of your case that is pretty much special for every motherboard now). Since this had integrated view it was not a standard layout really. The seller did not include a stinking battery either. Luckily the other motherboard that the bios went bad on, had the same battery so I just popped that in the new mirco atx board. Still want to figure out the onboard video. Supprised that is not working and I can’t find anywhere in bios to enable or dissable. It has been running for just about a day now. I loaded up ubuntu dapper on it and I am giving it a good workout. Not sure what I will do with it. Maybe build up a 2003 server and get rid of my other 2003 box. It is getting very old. It would be nice to make this micro atx board a myth frontend upstairs maybe. The agp card I put in it is a nvidia 6200 with svideo out. Should be enough to play back sd shows. I need to get at least 512 meg of memory for the box though. I want to have 1gig in my windows box. It is hurting with 512 right now.

Posted in New toys.


New hardware is in and working, kind of

I had two boxes waiting for me when I got home last night.  Unboxed the memory and shutdown the myth box.  Popped the new memory in and closed it back up.  Powered the box up and all 2 gig of memory registered.  That box should be very happy now.

Unboxed the hdhomerun and hooked it up.  Everything looks great.  Started the windows gui for the hdhomerun and then upgraded the firmware right away.  Started a scan and it found all the channels I had found with my a180.  Went to my mythbox and set it up and did a channel scan.  Nothing.  So the rest of the night I played around with the linux cli of the libhdhomerun utility to make sure it was operating and also with vlc in linux and it seems to be working as expected.  I guess I will have to go out and compile my own version of myth and see what that brings me.  I believe I am running .20 with fixes since the a180 is working, but I will have to try to find out why it won’t do the channel scan.

Posted in New toys.


Good news on the mythtv front

Just checked tracking and both the hdhomerun I ordered over the weekend and another 1 gig of ddr2 memory should be delivered today.  I will be able to get 2 gig of memory in my myth box and also get the hdhomerun updated and all setup in myth.  I am working on what I want to do for a dedicated backend.  I would like to keep everything in the backend.  Eventually would like to have the hauppauge 500mce (dual sd tuner), maybe the a180 hd card I have, I may get rid of that also, and the hdhomerun setup as two tuners also.  A total of 2 sd tuners and 2 maybe 3 hd tuners.  I may just get a cheap socket A motherboard to put my athlon 1700+xp.  Or I may just go all new and get another am2 athlon and motherboard along with a little more memory and pci-e video card.  The plan would be to get an athlon x2 64 that would be put in my frontend and then I would put the athlon 64 3500 into the backend.  That would be plenty of hardware for a myth backend and a nice frontend.  Then I could put together a very small microatx box to try on the bedroom tv.  That would make a very nice network/myth system that replaces the two sd replaytv units I have.  If I can get hd playback perfect I will be very happy with this myth project I have been wanting to do since myth .18.  Myth .20 has made it so much easier to do though.

Posted in Mythtv.


Xvmc for mythtv

Well I thought I had xvmc enabled for hd playback in mythtv. I was wrong. You have to do a few things to enable xvmc in Xorg first.

The directions below were found at the www.ubuntuguide.org.

  • Enable XvMC by creating the nVidia XvMC configuration file
nano /etc/X11/XvMCConfig
  • Insert the following line into the new configuration file, to tell the players the name of the nVidia XvMC shared library:
libXvMCNVIDIA_dynamic.so.1
  • To use XvMC to accelerate video playback, use the following flags.
xine -V xxmc filename.ts
mplayer -vo xvmc -vc ffmpeg12mc filename.ts

Posted in Mythtv.


Ubuntu Edgy on the averatec

Last night I finally got around to redoing jenny’s old notebook. Over the weekend we purchased a compac presario notebook. Was just a great deal. After rebate we will have paid 550 bucks and given a free printer to jenny’s sister. Last night I finished looking over jenny’s old notebook and deactivating her itunes account on that notebook. I then popped in the edgy cd and started the install. I was very happy that it found the dlink wireless card and just about everything else in the notebook. Everything seems to be running just fine. Not as fast as the new one but not bad at all. I think I may have to retire the old dell inspirion 7500 I have been using for the last few years. I also may search for some more memory for the averatec 3150. It has 254 right now but I think it will be nice and snappy if I put 512 in it and take the 128meg module out. The only thing that is not fixable on it is the left mouse button is a bit touchy, well you really have to touch it to make it work is what I mean. Maybe a few more years of life in the notebook thanks to ubuntu.

Posted in Linux.


Good news, Good news

Today I found some memory on sale at bestbuy. Got 2 512 meg ddr2 memory modules for 43 bucks each. I may have to go get one more. I used to have 512 in the mythtv box but just put both of those in and took the old one out so I have 1 gig. Myth is back up and running pretty good. Now I can pause hd or digital channels and then play again and it does not jump around. That may have solved my jumping problem. Now to decided if I want to get a hdhomerun. Think that is the way to go. Then I can put together a little faster myth frontend and leave the current box as a backend. That I would think is going to be the best setup.

Posted in Mythtv.


Hardware has arrived

Hopefully with any luck I will have a partial gigabit network up and running at home tonight.  Most of the hardware I am getting in this order will be for a new box I will be putting together in the next month.  This box will replace the athlon 1700xp that went belly up last week.  Still deciding on the motherboard processor combo I want.  I have pretty much everything else.  Just got a really cheap pci-e video card.

Posted in New toys.


Newer box at bluehost

I have been having and reporting problems daily on my old box63 at bluehost.  They just moved me to a shiny new box186.  Very fast and a bit different.  Took about 12 hours instead of the 4 hours they claimed.  They messed things up and then again.  I still don’t know if everything made it.  I have checked most everything but I am pretty sure I will continue to fined problems.  Never assume that a host is going to do what they say.  Yes we have backups but they may not be good and we may not know how to restore from them or use them.  Amazing the stuff they will try to tell you.  Think it is mostly working after about 5 calls and only 12 or so hours.  Hope important emails were not sent to me today, they were just bouncing them, not even saying try again later.  Just bounce no user here.  Can you tell I am not very happy with them.  I will be canceling my hosting agreement shortly if they do not clean up their act quick.

Posted in General.


setup to stream from mythweb

apt-get build-dep ffmpeg
apt-get install lame ruby w32codecs
apt-get install liblame-dev libsdl1.2-dev faac libimlib2-dev libfaad2-dev libfaac-dev
apt-get install liba52-dev libdts-dev texi2html libraw1394-dev libdc1394-13-dev
apt-get install libtheora-dev libgsm1-dev libxvidcore4-dev
download source from svn
svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
./configure –enable-faad –enable-gpl –enable-dts –enable-faac –enable-xvid –enable-mp3lame –enable-a52
make
make install
download flvtool2
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/9225/flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6.tgz
tar xzvf flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6.tgz
cd flvtool2_1.0.5_rc6
ruby setup.rb config
ruby setup.rb setup
sudo ruby setup.rb install
cp /dvr/files/stream/mythflash.sh /usr/bin/
cp /dvr/files/stream/flvplayer.swf /var/www/mythweb/data
cp /dvr/files/stream/streamer.php /var/www/mythweb/data
in /var/www/mythtv/modules/tv/tmpl/default/recorded.php
make changes listed in /dvr/files/stream/changes.made.to.recorded.php

Posted in Mythtv.