Boston Linux Users Group

Building a PVR Using Linux and MythTV

May 19, 2004

Jeffrey Perry jeffperry_2003@yahoo.com

Building a Linux PVR w/ MythTV

Introduction Planning Installation Demo Conclusions

What is a PVR?

PVR = Personal Video Recorder

A video recorder which records to the hard disk instead of a tape

Definition varies but most include: Electronic Program guide, pause/ff/rw live and

recorded shows Other possible features ... remote viewing, web

scheduling, music etc.

Motivation

TiVo is cool, wouldn't you like one too? How much does it really cost? Ok, I want to burn DVDs too. How much now?

Interesting project Practical - no VCR or DVD player already

Commercial PVRs

TiVo ReplayTV Others....

TiVo: How much does it cost?

40 Hours - $149 * 80 Hours - $249 * 140 Hours - $349 *

*= PLUS program listing service fee of

$ 12.95/month or $299 lifetime

PLUS $99 for Home Media Option

TiVo: Home Media Option

Web scheduling Digital photos Digital music Multi-room viewing

ReplayTV How Much does it cost?

40 Hours - $150* 80 Hours - $300* 160 Hours - $450* 320 Hours - $800*

*=PLUS program listing service fee of

$ 12.95/month or $299 lifetime

Cost of DVD Recorders

Q: How much to buy a consumer device which can record TV shows to DVD?

A: Consumer DVD recorders range in price from $200- $500

Consider: PC DVD Writers

Sony 4x for $118( Jan 2004, rebate)

Sony 8x for $160 (now @ compusa.com)

Enter MythTV: Features Record TV shows, scheduled, instant record Free Program guide - via Zapdata.com, others Pause/Fastforward/Rewind Live TV, recordings Store & play music, DVD videos Watch & record at same time Check weather, news, and browse web Play and burn DVDs Skip commercials – auto detect and flag Play SNES & other video games (Xmame)

MythTVArchitecuture Strengths

Distributed modular design Frontend - the UI you interact with Backend - Tracks schedule, records, streams playback

Highly Scalable Multiple tuners

Add tuners to machines and share

Multiple back ends A single master backend coordinates the rest

Open Source

Hardware: TV Tuner Tradeoffs Hardware MPEG chip

Faster encode/decode without load on PC Result: Can use slower CPU

Tuner only Requires card support video4linux driver (or bttv

driver) Requires high speed CPU for encode/decode See: PVR Hardware Guide http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-

page.php?pageName=install_guides

Hardware: Hauppauge Tuner Cards

WinTV PVR250 (~$100) Hardware Encode

WinTV PVR350 ($200) Hardware Encode Hardware Decode Radio Tuner Comes with an IR remote

Hardware: Display Options

WinTV PVR350 has TV Out Linux ivtv driver needed

Still under development Still a bit unstable with occaisional hangs

Video card w/ TV Out support This may be the better bet for stability right now. Still need a tuner card (either simple or w/MPEG

encode/decode in hardware)

Hardware: Motherboard, DVD, Hard Drive

Beware of cheap VIA chipset motherboards. MythTV problems await! (Don't panic yet- some workarounds exist which MAY cure it)

DVD Writer (optional) Used to install Linux, archive shows

Big Hard Drive approx 1G/30 mins @ 480x480 MPEG2 better compression possible with lower res or

tweaking

Hardware: Device Drivers for TV Card &Video

TV Card Hauppauge WinTV PVR250/350

ivtv version 0.1.10pre2 or newer stable version PVR350 only - Patches to X windows (framebuffer

coexistance with ivtv framebuffer interaction)

Other tuners Video4Linux kernel module

Video card w/ TV Out X windows driver for your card

Hardware: Remote Controls

Remote control functionality: LIRC package

Supports IR and RF remotes including home made receivers

My Hardware Setup Case: AMS gBox P4 Blue CF-968L ($230, sale) CPU: 1.7Ghz celeron ($65) Motherbrd: Socket478B Chyang Fun CFI-S968L 256 meg RAM ($65) Hauppauge WinTV PVR350 ($200) Sony DVD +-RW writer 4X ($118,rebate) Seagate 200 Gig (about 100 hours) HD

($100,rebate) TOTAL Cost: $778

Installation: Choosing a Linux Distribution

Suse 8.1 too many additions & probs reported KnoppMyth R4 is not the easy way out Choose tried and true Redhat 9.0

ATRPMs has most of the rest of what you need Apt-get for rpm is your friend Still some kernel packages issues, requires forced

loading of some rpms. Getting better. Use Jarrod's guide - updated now for Fedora

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv

Installation: Choosing a Filesystem

File system choice Ext3 (my choice, simple default for now) XFS (some report better perfomance) Generally good idea to increase inode size (default is

4k, 64 meg would be better)

Installation Overview1. Install Redhat

2.Install device driver for tuner (PVR2/350 reqs extract windows driver from cdrom)

3.create mythtv user

4.Install atrpms-kickstart

5.Get latest updates (Apt-get update)

6.Get mythtvsuite and dependencies (apt-get mythtv-suite) - 54 packages in all - not perfect

7.Mythtvsetup

Installation Overview (Cont.)

1.Mythfilldatabase

2.Start mythbackend

3.Start mythfrontend, visit setup section and config

4.Configure each module - (see docs at mythtv.org)

5. (some modules )Additional tweaks outside GUI (example: Installing a new Video for MythVideo)

Installation tweaks Turn off automount of Cds (mythmusic ripper) Turn off esd or artsd Remove ~mythtv/.kde/Autostart/Autorun.desktop Chkconfig autofs off, apmd off, httpd on

(mythweb) Ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/dvd (MythDVD) Edit channels (~mythtv/<sourcename>/.xmltv &

tweaks to associated DB tables) Turn on DMA on HD (hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda)

Demonstration MythTV

MyhtvSetup Mythfilldatabase MythFrontend Setup TV Video DVD Music

News Weather Web Images Games (not setup)

Conclusions: MythTv Rough spots

PVR250/350 record to MPEG2 directly so Commercial cutting must be done manually. Still not perfect. A/V sync is a challenge for MPEG2 w/o having to rencode whole file (takes hours)

Integration is not as seamless as it may seem (ex: Remote control of MythVideo requires edits to your lirc config file) [mplayer]

Installing videos not ripped from DVD is done outside the GUI by copying, then back to GUI to "scan" for new files

MythTV Rough Spots (Cont.)

Mythfrontend UI

Selecting exit, then yes does not shutdown the machine

Icons for recorded state non obvious - MythWeather (simple, easy to use, does it's job well :-)

A few small bugs Zip code feature is not obvious.

MythTV - generally non existent end-user documentation.

Conclusion: MythTv Strengths

Recording scheduling flexibility & prioritization Playback features including FF, Pause, Rewind More features than TiVo Excellent modules: MythTv, MythMusic,

MythDVD, MythWeather and MythNews Flexible distributed architecture Clever design makes apps appear mostly

seamless (xml config files control app integration & gui themes)

Conclusion & RecommendationsBuilding a reasonably priced full-featured Tivo

alternative with more features including DVD writing is possible - the result is very usable and enjoyable but will take some effort

Recommendations TV Out: Buy a video card with TV output Tuner: PVR 250/350 Redhat 9.0 / Fedora & Jarrod's walkthrough DVD Writer, Hard Drive (BIG)

Resources - Start Here

MythTV http://www.mythtv.org IVTV (Hauppauge PVR250/350 Driver)

http://ivtv.sourceforge.net PVR Hardware Guide

http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-pvrhwdb.php Jarrods Redhat 9.0 and Fedora Install Guide

http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv

Resources - MythTV

Myth TV Main site (download, docs, etc) http://mythtv.org

MythTV Mailing list archives (links to lists at bottom) http://mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInfo

MythTV forums http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/

Windows front-end for MythTV http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/

Jarrod's MythTV install walkthrough for Fedora, other info http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/

Resources - LIRC & IVTV

LIRC Remote control http://www.lirc.org

Ivy Wiki (ivtv community)http://ivtv.writeme.ch

IVTV Sourceforge pagehttp://ivtv.sourceforge.net/

IVTV Development list archiveshttp://www.poptix.net/ivtv/

Resources - PVR Hardware

PVR Hardware Newshttp://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-view_articles.php

PVR Hardware Guidehttp://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-pvrhwdb.php

PVR Hardware Install guides for MythTV, others http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tikipage.php?pageName=install_guides

Resources - Edit/cut commercials

Avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

Note on running dvdauthor w/ avidemuxhttp://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p=152219&postcount=9

Gopchop http://sourceforge.net/projects/gopchop/http://outflux.net/unix/software/GOPchop/

Cinelerra Video Editorhttp://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

MythMkMovie (output not mpeg, requires transcoding)http://www.icelus.org/

Resources - DVD Burning Dvd-rw-tools & growisofs http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW

DVD Author http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/

GUI front-end for dvdauthor http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/

DVDStyler - GUI front-end for dvdauthor http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/

DVD Slideshow http://dvd-slideshow.sourceforge.net/

Linux Journal artile on DVD authoring http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6953

Linux Gazette DVD burning howto http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue83/stoddard.html

Cdrecord (limitation on burn size w/o agreeing to license and getting free key)http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html

Computer burned DVDs - info on compatibility w/ consumer DVD players http://www.videohelp.com/

Resources - Misc.

Libmpeg http://libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

Transcode http://www.theorie.physik.unigoettingen.de/~ostreich/transcode/

Commercial DVD burning package - GearPro for Linuxhttp://www.gearsoftware.com/products/ProLinux/index.cfm

Linux video studio - GUI for editing http://packages.debian.org/stable/graphics/linuxvideostudio