Wooohooo- Mythbuntu driving my Home Entertainment System

[GuiGuy]

Hi Guys,

I need to share- for about two years I've been on a mission to replace the M$ Media Center in our house. My awful Vista experience made me even more determined.

I am pleased to report that Mythbuntu 8.04 has now replaced our Vista MC. Three digital tuners, all working.

Upside? It's Linux

Downside?


I've had to come to terms with not using my two Compro E700 PCIe tuner cards. MythTV doesn't do PCIe as best as I can work out.
I couldn't get my Dvico Fusion 4 dual tuner to work either.
I can't get SPDIF sound out working.


So the tuners are a mix of old ones I had at hand. I suppose one could argue that you don't need the latest hardware with Linux. I'd qualify that by saying "Linux works best with old hardware".

Anyway, overall I'm pleased for now and I am sure the rest will be sorted out soon enough.

Cheers

[madjr]

wonderful :o

i would like to setup one of these also :D

how easy was the full configuration, how long till you had everything setup the way u like

[GuiGuy]

wonderful :o

how easy was the full configuration, how long till you had everything setup the way u like

Extremely easy, although the MythTV backend configuration has to be confronted. I really think this could be done a whole lot better. Some of the setting up seems almost redundant or perhaps could be scripted from earlier choices made by the admin. But that's a general criticism of mine about Linux, so I'll get off the soapbox.

My DBTV cards are 2 X TWINHAN and 1 X WINFAST DBT1000. They were the cards I bought for my first multimedia attempts a few years back.

I'm running it on an ASUS M3A mobo, 2G RAM, Athlon X2 4800+, NVIDIA 7300GT Silent Pipe. Using the M$ remote.

The installation recognised & configured everything nicely, including wireless networking.

I notice that when all three tuners are in use images start to stutter slightly, suggesting a fourth tuner will strain the friendship.

BTW, I finally got SPDIF working this morning. In the end it was easy. There's a nice configuration panel on the desktop to sort out hardware etc in the GUIest of ways. :)

From the time I ran the MythBuntu install to the time I was watching television, less than two hours. Tweaking will be on going, of course ;)

[gdownes]

The "Compro (or VideoMate) E700 Dual DVB-T PCI-Express TV Card" is a cheaper alternative to other mainstream Dual Tuner cards and I find it very hard to believe that it is not supported by linux at all.

This is a major miss for Mythbuntu as the idea for linux users is a lower cost solution - I don't see how they advocate more expensive hardware.