Friday, April 22, 2005

Tad Tuner, 802.11g

The story so far...I got a backend AMD64 Linux machine connected to my Television. It records HDTV and non-HDTV content from the firewire connection okay but...
- Comcast deactivates the firewire when any of the movie channels including IFC are selected.
- Installing the new nVidia drivers has resulted in my Television display gone all awry. For the interim, I am watching the non-HD shows on my PowerBook.

To watch IFC and Encore (dont like many of their movies actually) I will need to get a TV Tuner card and connect it via S/Video. The Hauppauge 350 is an option although I have exceeded the budget.

I need to tweak with the display properties (xorg.conf)...for this I will finally need to read the television manual. I like the PowerBook option, but can not hope to use it with the HD recordings as I only have a 802.11b wireless router which supports a maximum 11 Mbps transfer rate...and my PowerBook doesnt support the 802.11g option.

Now I am staring at an 802.11g wireless gateway along with a PCMCIA card. The Apple Airport Base station and Airport Extreme look like good options although they are very pricey. If MythTV decides to support iSeeiTunes like TiVo, then it might be an interesting option.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Scope Creep - PowerBook Support

I originally intended to have only the Shuttle box in my living room...but with my Mom visiting I need to provide MythTV watching capabilities on my PowerBook as well so she can watch her Zee TV and I can watch my shows.

I tried the easy way by installing a VNCServer on my backend and a VNCViewer on my MAC OS X and running mythfrontend in a session. The GANT theme looked alright but I couldnt watch the shows or any recordings.

Luckily MythTV supports multiple front ends that can connect to a backend (very scalable). I followed the instructions in MythOnMacOsx. Instructions were easy to follow although a bit out-to-date regarding the mysql client part. I made the correction and also my first contribution to the MythOnMacOsx wiki.