Linux HTPC

Nefarious

Nefarious

Nefarious

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1 Aug 2003
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I've looked around for various tutorials etc but from what I've read pretty much everyone recommends Ubuntu. I have never worked with Ubuntu but am familiar with Slackware (or at least I was a few years ago), Debian and am currently trying to get to grips with CentOS - what's another distribution eh?

The only Debian guide was nearly three years old and couldn't really find anything else.

I want to run a fairly user GUI (I'm not bothered about how much tinkering I have to do to set it up in the first place though) and want to take advantage of the 'virtual tuner' function due to Myth's cunning multi stream demuxing.

I'm hoping to hook up the bluetooth remote control intended for the PS3 to it so that it doesn't have to be in the same room which will eliminate the sound issue.

I want to be able to burn things to DVD with reasonable ease from the GUI but that's not essential.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a through heavy duty tutorial or just give their opinions of platform.
 
Ubuntu + KDE = Kubuntu was easiest for me when I was trialling a server OS. There are Myth based versions of both of course. Didn't try it in a media centre, was just interested in the apache side of things, but to all intents you can make it very similiar to a windows setup in look and feel which made it quick to work with. I'm guessing the coax would be difficult as you're really limited to a gfx card output, so vga/dvi/s-vhs/hdmi would be supported. Hope you have an nvidia setup too - as Myth is heavily biased towards them rather than ATI etc. in the tv side of things, and the drivers seem to be easier to tweak and get up and running at the moment. All distros have various dvd burning programs, but I used a trial of Nero to backup stuff as it was quicker and easier because that's what I use on my Windows setups.
 
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Have just come back to this and I have got to ask why you want to distribute signals via coax? Surely digital will be easier, unless it's just straight to a tv, as coax analog which has been digitally converted tends to look pants. you would have to convert it several times along the signal path, and I'm guessing it would not be worth it really. I spent a few weeks last year trying to get my nan-in-laws (!?) B & B with tv in every room, and it looked much better with an analogue signal than a digital converted to analogue via a Sky box did. The Sky signal after being amplified and distributed suffered from severe chroma noise, dot crawl and pixel popping than the "normal" tv signal. However watched on the main tv in the tv room the Sky was much better when fed through an rgb enabled scart. When we stop over, it's easier to watch something via iplayer than trying to watch a Sky broadcast away from the Sky box! The quick and dirty way of getting an analogue coax signal from a computer would involve something like a dvd recorder to convert the signal before distribution, so you're just having loads of stages to potentially ruin the signal before then distributing it around house, when you could just stream it digitally....
 
The reason for the coax is that I'm building this one for my mother. I already have my own HTPC based on Debian but built mine ages ago and was wondering where things had moved to.

I want it put out to coax so that she can have central recording but view it on other televisions in her house (she's something of a whore for television and I shouldn't really encourage this sort of behaviour). That's why, this time round, I'm quite keen for it to be VERY user friendly.

If I were to get an Elonex Scaleo Barebone - SKT775, I believe that they have native support for coax, but I'd have to forget the whole Linux aspect, as I'm guessing that it simply will not be supported.


Ooops - just checked and it looks like I'm wrong, it does work with Linux. This may be the solution then as it has native coax and SCART support :)
 
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ok, I get why you want coax, Myth + Kubuntu seems the best way to go then...like I said, get an nvidia based solution will be much much easier....
 
Mythbuntu

I've installed it on my HTPC recently and it was so easy to set up it was untrue. The machine itself is:

3GHz P4
2GB RAM
nVidia 6600GT
Onboard sound

No need to install any drivers, MythTV comes preinstalled (as the name suggests) and it walks you through the install. Couldn't have been any easier, even when setting up TV-out. Only down side is I can't seem to get good performance from 720p - under windows I could use CoreAVC but it's a bit slow on linux.

I'm not running it with a TV card at the moment, but I believe there's even a web interface for setting up recordings in MythTV.
 
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