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I'm pretty much completely oblivious to this whole thing. Here's what I want to do, can someone tell me if it's possible? My roommate and I have Comcast Digital Cable, with a DCT700US cable box. We've got a Mac Mini with Front Row, and a big-ol' box running Ubuntu, something like a 2.4 athlon with a gig of ram, with a bunch of hard drives in it. At this point, we can play all the media on the big-ol' box in Front Row, because Perian is awesome. The big-ol' box is running Ubuntu. It can be running something else if that'd be easier, but right now it's running Ubuntu. If we got a tuner card, would we be able to record digital cable? Would it only take some channels? Would we be able to watch one channel and record another one? If it could work, what would it look like? I would assume it'd be like this: Cable comes in from the wall, into the cable box. It goes out into a coax splitter, one end plugged into the TV, one end plugged into the tuner card. Or would we have to get another cable box? The cable box also has RCA composite out, could we just plug that into the capture card? Would that change things? I sort of assume we wouldn't be able to watch a channel and record another one with one box, but could anyone tell me if this is possible?
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Apr 28, 2007 19:41
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drivel posted:Either solution will only let you watch one channel at a time. I'm no cable guru so I'm not sure if its possible to receive two channels simultaneously even with a dedicated tuner card. Even if I have two cable boxes? If I had 2 TVs, I'd just need two boxes to get cable on both of them, right?
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May 2, 2007 18:03
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Ok, I think I've got the parts for my first HTPC build all set. The purpose is: * XBMC replacement that plays x264 and 720p MPEG4/WMV9-encoded files over the network * Running Linux/Myth unless it's way too troublesome/doesn't work * In the future maybe recording from cable (probably just SD, but who knows) * Has a remote * As cheap as possible given those constraints Here's the parts list: Case: Antec Silver/ Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel/ Aluminum plate front bezel Veris Fusion 430 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case - Retail Motherboard: ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition Processor Model ADO5000DSWOF - Retail Cooler: ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-5400c4 - Retail HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM Remote/IR receiver: Microsoft A9O-00007 WinXP Media Center Infrared Remote Control I went with the ASUS board over the Gigabyte mentioned above because they seemed pretty similar - same onboard video, same north/southbridge, etc, and for some reason I trust ASUS more. Any real reason to go with the Gigabyte? Also, can I be reasonably sure all this hardware will work under Linux (likely Ubuntu)? All in all it comes to $495, which is pretty reasonable, I think.
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Apr 8, 2008 01:13
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dealmaster posted:I'd get this CPU instead: This is exactly the criticism I was looking for. I have 2 FireWire drives, which while I'll probably not end up hooking up to the HTPC, at least I *can*, plus the S/PDIF out and better sound makes it worth the extra $5 and the leap of faith to Gigabyte. Strangely, I didn't even realize the RAM I linked wasn't DDR2-800, so thanks for that as well. The proc looks good, I figure since mid-low-range procs have been going down in price, that'll be a cheaper upgrade, so I might as well save money now, and that looks like a good buy. Thanks again, I'll probably go with that build. edit: additional plus: no mailin rebates, which since I'm usually to lazy to turn them in, just means extra cheap which is always good. more falafel please fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Apr 8, 2008 |
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Apr 8, 2008 08:12
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For an Ubuntu/Myth setup, assuming I don't want recording support (at least for the time being), I only need to set up Mythfrontend, right? If I decided to add recording support in the future, would it be exceedingly difficult to add a backend as well, without redoing my frontend setup? For now, I just want it to be able to stream video (maybe audio too) over SMB. I'd use the XBMC Linux port, but it seems pretty immature at the moment. I'm pretty experienced with Linux, but I don't want to spend a lot of time loving with it to make it work -- I want this to be pretty turnkey. edit: MythTV may be more trouble than it's worth, has anyone used Elisa before? more falafel please fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 13, 2008 |
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Apr 13, 2008 19:37
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For a straight-up media playback HTPC (no recording), would I be better off going with XP MCE, Vista MCE, or Ubuntu? I'm experienced with Linux, but basically I don't want to have to have a keyboard or mouse connected to the thing for more than like 2 hours when I set it up, I don't ever want to have to mess with it, so that goes for both spending 6 hours tweaking my xorg.conf and for spending 6 hours tweaking drivers to make poo poo work in Windows. My initial thought was to use Ubuntu, but if it takes too much effort to get poo poo to work and essentially work like XBMC (read: I turn it on and it works), and it'd be easier to make work in Windows, then I won't hesitate.
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Apr 29, 2008 00:30
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Ok, revised build. The $44 proc that was suggested is no longer on Newegg, so I changed it up a little. Also, I realized some stuff I could get rid of, like the remote, the case I'm looking at has an IR receiver and I can just use my Xbox remote, the hard drive (I have a 160 gig drive lying around), and the cooler (the new proc comes with a cooler and is 45w so it shouldn't be much of a problem). https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/MySavedWishDetail.asp?ID=9233868 My economic stimulus package just came, so I think I'm going to drop it all on this on a few big hard drives for media.
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May 7, 2008 22:32
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I have an HTPC running Mythbuntu (but not actually MythTV ironically) that I've been thinking about putting a tuner card in. I'm probably also going to reinstall the OS (I decided to run 64-bit, bad idea), but I can worry about that later. Basically, I have a couple questions. Is it possible (and relatively easy) to get MythTV working and recording, preferably just dumping the encoded files into directories sorted by show, without using a Myth frontend? I'm old hat at Linux in general but I've never messed with recording or MythTV basically at all. Also, what tuner card should I buy? I get Comcast digital cable in Chicago, and while I don't care about getting *all* the channels, I'd like to get most of them at least.
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Dec 16, 2008 22:49
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