Build a MythTV box

I need parts that I can’t afford at the moment, but I do know what it is I need to do.

I need a new motherboard.
A decent video card.
Large amounts of hard drive space.

The PVR card is on it’s way.

Either way, this has been fun to obsess over the past few days.

I put four of my dvds on this system just to test it out. There are several ways you can save a dvd, but making an iso image preserves the menu, though it takes up a lot of room. I think other versions will have the dvd shrink package included but right now, I am averaging about 6 gigs per dvd. That means on a one Terrabyte drive, I should be able to fit about 150+ dvds. Not too bad as I don’t think I have that many, but it is growing. I can save room by ripping the dvds differently that I don’t actually need a menu for.

Also, putting music on is pretty cool but it does not seem to automatically add the album art.

I also need to get it running with a better vid card and opengl, That may give me the sweet eye candy parts that are currently missing. Not that I need them, but … Well, you know. :-)

And of course, getting the tuner working is pretty important for that one show per week I watch. Though, my son really likes Heroes and I really would like to see it. So .. that would be next.

This is fun. :-)

With some old parts, I was able to assemble a prototype. Importing CDs and DVDs works. Have to see if I can hook it up to the tv to see if that works but otherwise, all seems to be going well.

The main goal, even more important than being able to record the one tv show I watch ( so not so important ) is just to have all my media imported to it. All my dvds and music could be boxed up and put away freeing even more room.

I think I am becoming a minimalist in my way.

It took a while, but it’s finally done. I will admit that it can take time to get everything working, but it really changes the way you watch tv.

The only problem I have now is that I’ll be running out of hard disk space soon.

I’ve got Fedora running on my Shuttle XPC and got MythTV mostly running…but with a few TODOs still:

I need to switch from mplayer to xine so I can play DVDs with menus

I need to fix a problem where the eject button on my DVD player stops working…the DVDs aren’t mounted, they just won’t eject.

I need to figure out how to activate DMA on my HD and DVD

I need to figure out how to rip DVDs

I want to set up Stepmania

I want to set up MythGame

I want to set up MythKaraoke

I picked up an old Dell from work (smallish case, decently quiet). It has:
*a 933Mhz Pentium III
*384 MB RAM
*using an old keyboard and mouse
*old Dell monitor (15” for set up)
*120 GB hard drive (had it lying around… probably $40 – $60 these days)
*Haupaggue PVR-350 (just under $200 with shipping).

The total cost to me has been about $200 so far (not including my time :p)

1.8 Ghz Celeron
256 MB RAMPVR-150