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A brought a PC home from work a few months ago that I planned on using as a MythTV frontend. I tried installing Mythbuntu on it because I wanted to see how different it was from MythDora but Mythbuntu didn’t seem to like the onboard video nor the add-in card I had. I loaded MythDora onto the hard drive successfully. After I built the MythTV backend, I had thought about building a frontend to go with it. When I got the PC from work, I anticipated turning it into a frontend that could be connected to the main TV in the house. After I was forced to reinstall MythTV onto a new hard drive in the backend, I started looking into getting the frontend up and running. I finally got the frontend to see the database on the backend. After playing around with the hostname settings, I am now able to get the video to stream over the network so I can watch recordings and live TV.
I also just found an app that’ll allow me to use my eMac as a MythTV frontend.

Eventually, I would like to replace this frontend with an HTPC that becomes part of my home entertainment center and maybe build a few others for other rooms in the house. I’d also like to increase the storage on the backend to a couple of terabytes so that I can store all my TV recordings, music, and photos, along with ripping my entire DVD collection so I can watch any movie from anywhere in the house.

Technorati Tags: Mythbuntu, MythDora, MythTV

The hard drive inside my MythTV server crashed on Thanksgiving morning. The database that stored all the information about everything I’ve recorded was lost so I had to purchase a new hard drive and format the 500GB hard drive I’m using and start from scratch. I plan on figuring out a way to automatically have the MythTV box backup the database, compress it, and email it to my GMail account so I have a copy of it.

Technorati Tags: MythTV

With my office shutting down and everyone moving to the city, there’s a possibility they won’t need some of the computer equipment, including some of the servers. I’m thinking about grabbing one of the servers, and maybe another computer or two. My main reason for doing this is so I can setup a MythTV backend with a lot more storage than the one I just got up and running. My main concerns though, with the server, are power usage and cooling. If I get one of the servers I think I’d wind up getting, it has 3 350W power supplies in it. Which means if it used max power, it would draw 1.5kW per hour. One of the guys I work with (who’s also the guy that got me into MythTV) has the same server at home for his MythTV and has his in a separate room with a window A/C unit running 24/7/365. He told me the other day that his electric bill is $500/month!!! I don’t know if I’m ready to see that high of an electric bill.

Technorati Tags: MythTV

I finally worked out all the bugs on the MythTV server I made from my old PC. I had trouble getting the remote to work so I went out and bought another Hauppauge PVR-150 card to get the IR blaster and remote control. I had to reinstall MythDora for the remotes to work but now I have the ability to record 2 shows at once.

Technorati Tags: MythTV

I’ve finally finished my new computer to replace my 5 year old tower. The new PC has a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 processor, 2GB RAM, and 2 300GB hard drives mirrored in a RAID-1 configuration so if one of them fails, I’ll still have all my data. The box it’s replacing has a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1GB RAM, and 1 160GB hard drive. Now that I’m sure I have everything from the old PC copied over to the new PC and backed up to my external hard drive, I’ve formatted the hard drive in the old PC and installed MythDora. MythDora is a Fedora Core and MythTV “All-In-One” CD/DVD. It will allow me to do all the stuff you can do with a TiVO for free.

Technorati Tags: MythDora, MythTV

I recently purchased a WinTV-PVR 150 TV tuner card. It allows me to watch or record live TV straight to my hard drive. Because the encoder is built into the card, my PC isn’t slowed down any while it’s recording. I purchased the card because it’s one of the cards supported by Linux and MythTV. When I build my next PC, my current PC will be turned into a MythTV server so I don’t have to buy a TiVO and pay their subscription fee.

Technorati Tags: Hauppauge, MythTV