Media Centre Question

GarethDW

GarethDW

GarethDW

Soldato
Joined
22 Jun 2006
Posts
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Location
Swindon
I'm thinking again about building a media centre using either MythTV or LinuxMCE. However, I've got a noob question about setting it up that hopefully someone can help with.

Currently I've got my Sky digibox, VCR, DVD player and Wii all hooked up to a scart selector box thingy. Would I just change the digibox so that instead of hooking it up to the scart selector I plug that into the "video in" on the PC, and then plug the "video out" into the scart selector? Or have I misunderstood something...?

Cheers.
 
Depends what you wanna do - there are hundreds of ways you can go about this..

Start by deciding what sources you want to only watch, and only record, and ones you do both.

Then work out which ones you want to record and watch at the same time.

How many concurrent recording sessions?

Are you limited by no. of scarts on tv, box, MythBox ?

Ideally your mythbox could accept all inputs, record all inputs at the same time, and allow you to watch any input or recorded video all at the same time. But that can get difficult :)
 
So now you have it as:
Devices -> SCART box -> TV
right?

With Myth I'm not sure you'd want to capture the output from anything but your Sky box.
You'd attach the Sky box to Myth via firewire or some other form of video in. Then you'd pipe the video out from Myth to the SCART box. Leave the Wii and other devices out of the equation.

BTW, since we're on the subject, I recommend Mythbuntu highly. It's powerful and pretty easy. There're plenty of tweaks you can make as well. :)
 
Yep, limited by no. of scart sockets both on the telly and the scart box - one on each, although I could ditch the VCR as I've not watched a video for years, to be honest.

I'm only really interested in recording from Sky, in a PVR kinda way.

BillytheImpaler said:
So now you have it as:
Devices -> SCART box -> TV
right?

With Myth I'm not sure you'd want to capture the output from anything but your Sky box.
You'd attach the Sky box to Myth via firewire or some other form of video in. Then you'd pipe the video out from Myth to the SCART box. Leave the Wii and other devices out of the equation.

BTW, since we're on the subject, I recommend Mythbuntu highly. It's powerful and pretty easy. There're plenty of tweaks you can make as well. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, exactly like that, mate. All plug into the scart box, and then I can switch between whichever source I want to watch.

Hadn't thought about using Firewire... will look into that.

Will definitely look into Mythbuntu :)
 
Last edited:
Sorry, I ninja edited it... I meant the 350, cause I can't find anywhere that sells the 250 any more. Nice link though... that site has info on the 350 too :)
 
I've thought about making something like this. what sort of realistic spec would I need to record from sky? I had thought about something mATX and filling an old vcr case. don't really need a dvd drive just a hdd. what ya reckon?
 
I don't know much abut sky, but you'd be looking at perhaps at least a 2 GHz dual core proc with a gig of RAM and a few hundred gigs storage. If you can capture it over firewire that'd be the way to go. If not, you want a digital or analog capture card with hardware encoding.
 
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