Setting up an HTPC with MythTV

Monday, June 02, 2008

One of the reasons I wanted to move my blog to my personal site was so that I could blog about things I'm interested in other then BEA products. Make no mistake, BEA (now Oracle) products rock but when I go home at night I'm not thinking "Gee, I really feel like doing more work on WebLogic Portal". Thus you can expect to see some entries about things not related to WebLogic or Java but still of a technical nature.

One of my more technical hobbies is home theater. I got into home theater when my wife and I had our son, as any parent knows it becomes more difficult to enjoy an evening out at the movie theater and as a result we ended up spending some money putting a basic home theater system in place. Over the years equipment has come and gone but the basic structure of the system has stayed the same. Like most folks, I don't have one of those expensive dedicated home theaters in the basement that was custom built for $50K. In fact, I live in a century home and the only thing the basement is good for is storage. Thus the structure of my system is the same as most folks, a television, a 5.1 surround system and various peripherals like a Blu-ray player, XBox 360, Wii and, what most of posts in this area will cover, a home theater computer (HTPC).

I've used an HTPC for almost five years now. The primary uses for the HTPC are to watch downloaded TV shows (shhh, don't tell anyone) and to act as a PVR by recording television shows. My first system was a P4 system that I built using an Antec Aria case. The Antec Aria case was great but working on it was a pain since everything is so tight in a case that small. I was happy with that system until it got fried a couple of years ago, I never figured out what happened as it just stopped working. With that computer gone, I replaced it with a computer I originally bought for my mother-in-law but reclaimed when she found she was never using it.

So that brings me to the here and now where it is time to get a new HTPC. After looking around for awhile I decided to get an HP media center computer as I didn't really feel like building one from scratch again. The HP machines are nice in that they typically have everything you need such as a TV tuner card and a remote control. Here in Canada these machines typically come up for sale as refurbs or discontinued models.

After keeping my eye out for one I decided to pick up a HP m9150f elite media center machine as bestbuy.ca had a refurb for $699. It got to my house within a few days and I immediately unpacked and set it up. Here is a picture of it sitting on my desk in my office.

I left my current HTPC in the living room for now so I could work on this one unfettered by the demands of my wife and seven year old to use the TV. For some reason, it is really hard to make progress setting up an HTPC when you never get to use the system because of other family members. If you look closely at the picture you can see a Rogers 4250HD terminal sitting next to it, one of my goals is to get the firewire going off that box to the HTPC. This goal is what is driving the project I will likely be blogging about for the next while, setting up MythTV on my HTPC.

I always wanted to give MythTV a try but I found Windows to be good enough for my needs that I didn't want to go through the trials and tribulations of setting up Linux and MythTV. However the firewire port on the Rogers HD terminals changed my mind because apparently the firewire port works best on Linux. Looking at this thread it was apparent that both Mac and Windows users were running into issues with firewire, albeit different issues. On the Mac people could record HD fine but were unable to change the channel. On Windows people could change the channel but HD recordings were littered with artifacts. Linux users reported positive results though and that spurred me on to bite the bullet and give MythTV a try.

So keep following this blog for the trials and tribulations of working with Linux and MythTV. I'm hoping for a hassle free ride but expect a few bumps in the road, we'll see how it goes.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 8:51 PM | Categories: Home Theater | | | Permalink