KnoppMyth+Satellite TV=yes?

June 15, 2005 9:00 AM

So I saw the second episode by Kevin Rose on www.systm.org but they only seem to mention setting up your linux box with your "cable provider" without any mention of Dish or Direct TV....does anyone know whether Myth TV or specifically KnoppMyth will work with dish TV type providers?
posted by stevyb to technology (6 comments total)

Yes, if you check their FAQ I think you'll even notice a mention of hooking a DirecTV receiver up with the low speed serial jack (the low speed serial jack allows changing channels without a remote). Of course it works with DishNetwork and also cable boxes as well.

Other boxes can be controlled with an IR blaster.

BTW: I tried setting up MythTV on a 1.5 Ghz box yesterday. If I discovered anything, it's that a 2.0 Ghz machine is the absolute bottom of the line for the project. :-(

I *strongly* suggest you pick up the PVR-350 card they mention in the FAQ. It is about the only way you're going to set up MythTV nicely. Since it comes with an IR blaster as well, you're all set no matter what box you use.

My personal reccomendation would be to get a DishNetwork PVR, add an external HDD bay, and run dishrip, however...
posted by shepd at 9:36 AM on June 15, 2005

Apparently a recent firmware update disabled the serial port on many DirecTV receivers, so you'll be using the IR blaster.
posted by kindall at 10:52 AM on June 15, 2005

OT but CPU is only important if you are using software based tuner cards (as oppsed to the 250/350 and I thinkk 150 which does the encoding on the card itself and hence eliminates the cpu load. Othewise the rule of thumb is 1ghz per software based tuner, I believe.
posted by jikel_morten at 12:19 PM on June 15, 2005

jikel_morten, I was using the pvr-150.

The problem is the DECODING of the MPEG-2. It eats up CPU like mad (the decoders are, well... pathetic... sorry but I had a celeron 300 on a trident card in windows that could do DVD in software) and on the 1.5 Ghz machine the slightest amount of activity causes the picture to skip a frame or two. On the celeron 633 it was a dead loss -- huge swaths of judder and eventually A/V sync issues.

It looks great if you can ignore that. I'm just too much of a perfectionist, I suppose. :-(

The good news is the PVR-350 takes care of the problem. It has video out and a built in MPEG-2 decoder. I bet you could run a MythTV PVR on a Pentium 166 with that sort of hardware backing it! :-D
posted by shepd at 12:35 PM on June 15, 2005

And where the hell is the FAQ for systm.org?
posted by stevyb at 1:53 PM on June 15, 2005

Sorry to confuse, stevyb... I'm talking about the FAQ (More like documentation really... it's quite thorough) for MythTV. My bad for not being more explicit (stupid language -- I blame it on that, yeah!)
posted by shepd at 3:40 PM on June 15, 2005