the clueless american

I'm sitting here at work, practically bubbling with excitement over the prospect of my latest endeavor: MythTV.

I've been looking into an open source PVR ever since I first started reading about people hacking their Tivos years ago. Since Tivo is Linux based, customizing the system is only as hard as getting access to it. Naturally it's not easy to do that, especially on a Series-1 no-network-access machine, but not impossible. That eventually led to smart people writing open source PVR projects such as Freevo and MythTV. I don't want to start a debate on which of these is better--that would be pointless. After researching both projects MythTV felt like the right one for me, so that's what I'll do.

I initially tried to price what sounded like a decent but low-cost system by just picking components out of the air. That started approaching 2 grand so I started searching on the web. O'Reilly did a review of how to build a quiet PVR, but it, too, was well over $1000.

The cost put me off for a while until a friend who has a MythTV box said I was shooting way too high if I was spending more than $500. I did a search today for "mythtv less than $500" and came up with The $500 Dollar Mythbox Project. The writer there shows screenshots from his Newegg order for the complete system. I used his system as a max price list for each component and started looking around Newegg myself. Here's what I came up with:

1 CPU FAN|ARCTIC-COOL ACCS2L RTL - Retail
Item #: N82E16835186103

Yeah, it would have been nice to order one of these. I thought it came with either the CPU or mobo, but I was wrong :-(

About the same time e gave me the go-ahead for the MythTV box, she started asking me about a new computer for downstairs. She spends most of her time there nowadays, and the laptop she's been using seems to be getting slower and slower. The same cousin who recommended MythTV to me recommended Mac to her.

After less convincing than I expected, e announced that she was ready to make the switch. I did a lot of internet research and settled on the 20" iMac Intel Dual-Core. It's a lot more computer than e needs right now, but we're sure to grow into it as time goes by.

Since my project is on temporary hold (come on FEDEX!) I've been playing around with e's iMac a lot, and so far I like what I see. I won't say it's perfect--nothing ever is--but it seems a lot better out of the box than your standard Windows install. Who knows, maybe in a few years when my Win machine needs replacing I'll get a Mac instead. I used to think that wasn't possible, but now who knows?

After a seemingly interminable wait mainly caused by my own failure to order the correct parts, I finally had everything I needed for my MythTV box yesterday.

Installing the heatsink was a little harder than I expected, mainly because 1) I've never had an Athlon processor before and 2) the case I bought leaves very little room to work. I tried for about 5 minutes and then decided it wasn't worth the frustration, so I removed the power supply to give me easier access. Even then I had some trouble figuring out how to clip it on. I finally got it in place and re-assembled the box, and then I hooked it up to my monitor and fired up the installation.

The KnoppMyth install is fairly straightforward so I won't go into the specifics, but while the files were copying I realized I had another issue I hadn't anticipated: wireless internet access. My TV and cable outlet are in the bedroom far from the router, so my plan all along has been to use a Belkin wireless USB adapter to access the internet.

I realize that I could have plugged into the wired network in the computer room, configured eth0, and then setup the system before figuring out the wireless, but as the wireless was critical to my setup I decided to tackle it first.

Searching around the internet led me to the Atmel Wireless LAN driver at http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/downloads.html for my particular adapter; YMMV. The documentation/online forums weren't crystal clear for me so I thought I'd include the whole process here. Obviously it would have been a little easier had I initially hooked up the wired LAN.

First I downloaded the driver on a machine that is connected: http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

I then copied it to a RW CD which I threw in the MythTV box. I exited out of MythTV and fired up the terminal. I unpacked the archive by typing:

tar xjvf atmelwlandriver-3.4.1.1.tar.bz2

I changed into the newly created directory and attempted to install from there. There's no configuring to be done, so if you type "make" a menu comes up giving options for installation. The options seem to say that "make install" will install everything, but in 3 attempts nothing was installed. I finally decided to manually install the part I needed by typing:

make usb

Afterwards I typed:

make lvnet

to install the configuration program for the device.

At the end I had a new device named atml0. Now, there's surely some way to rename it to wlan0 or something more related to wireless networking, but I didn't care what it was called as long as it worked.

I configured the device with lvnet, deciding to give it a static IP address on the 198.162.XX.XX network with a 255.255.255.0 submask. I then had to edit /etc/resolv.conf to include 192.168.1.1 (the gateway) as a DNS.

After all was configured I typed "ifup atml0" and started pinging. I was able to get machines on my local network and outside, resolved addresses like www.google.com.

I did a quick restart to be sure my configuration was done, and I was sorry to see that the network did not come up. I dropped into terminal to type "ifup atml0" which made the network startup just fine.

After much searching on Google, the Knoppmyth wiki, and the mysettopbox.tv forums, I decided the most likely solution to the problem of the many I found was to find the module used by the device and then be sure to load it on startup. I knew from my previous web searching that the Atmel driver uses the usbvnetr module, so I opened up /etc/modules and added usbvnetr. I haven't had a chance to restart it yet, but I'm fairly confident the network will be up at the end.

Once the wireless network issue was resolved, I brought the computer into the bedroom and hooked it up to the TV. I fired it up and was disappointed to see: nothing.

After a few minutes of looking around and some internet searching, I realized that I had hooked up the TV to the PVR-250's video in port instead of the video card's TV out. I plugged it in without shutting down the computer and was greeted with a black-and-white MythTV screen. I also didn't have any live TV, but I noticed that the screen said "Composite 0" which didn't sound right. Turns out you need to configure the machine correctly in order for it to work. What a concept! I went to the settings and changed the PVR setting to Tuner 0, then rebooted the machine. On startup the color was ok and the TV worked great! I still don't know about the network because the /etc/modules fix I mentioned above didn't happen until later.

Now that it's mostly up and running I'm starting to play with everything. I've already figured out recording, commercial flagging, and transcoding. I messed around with the web server, and I think that will turn out to be easier than scheduling recordings on the box itself. Some snags to work out are streaming over the net (works fine with Windows but no dice on Linux/Mac), Burning to CD (ran all night with lots of errors and no DVD files at the end), transcoding to smaller format (the parameters on KnoppMyth Wiki must be for PAL because the picture looks distorted on NTSC).

Naturally there was a new version out before I installed the one I'd been given previously. Maybe I'll work on upgrading today. The worst that can happen is that I'll lose everything.