This is my first post, so 2 lines about me: I am waiting for my PVR350 to arrive, I am a linux user (USER, which means I can open and close programs, cat, tail, find and grep, not much else!) I am coding a handheld bluetooth remote control for myth (planning stage - Java on PDA (superwaba.com.br)) with the idea of giving you a portable interactive remote that shows thumbnails of shows and lets you plan and 'stuff' (more ideas welcome). Also one cute feature is remote headphones, mute TV but listen to audio through headphones on PDA.

The reason for this is my main box will be in my office, and the TV in the lounge, I am going to use a RF based connection from my office to lounge I have seen them on sale, of course, this remoteness will stop IR remotes working happily! SO bluetooth it is, and my PDA's are the only bluetooth devices in my house.

OK Enough about me!

1: I am hoping to xvid my recordings to around 2mb a minute (50mb shows excl. adverts). I think this quality is acceptable to me, how does the MythTv handle this setup? Of course, some shows / movies I may want slightly higher.

2: I would also like to schedule DVD backups (and remove the content from HDD) does Myth or a module handle this?

3: I love the idea of using MythTv as a DVD jukebox, for instance, Seinfeld 1-3 and 4 when it is out, I would like to place them into my HDD to watch them in a more ad hoc way (I hate fishing out DVD's). I have seen the MythTv shots for the DVD frontend, but will it handle ep ripping for me? (again to about 50mb an ep)

4: Cheapest GB cost on the market for HDD that you would recommend? (although my main point here is, what is the bitrate people use? is 2mb a minute too little?)

5: Sound cards - I think many people have performance problems for using their on board sound cards, also I want 5.1 sound, what 5.1 sound card works well with: MythTv and a RF wireless AV transmitter.

OK Hope I didn't confuse or break board etiquette.

Oh I wondered about advert skipping - does it work? I noticed in some txt file there are 3 modes?

Comment on HDTV : if you can get a HDTV -> regular converter I will happily record HDTV downsampled at normal res, who needs the hassle of HDTV filesizes, even if computer storage explodes. (i.e. HDTV doesn't sell to me)

(OK I can mount/umount edit fstab edit x11conf and crontab and change init modes and su to do tasks, but nothing much else)

1. MythTV doesn't record in Xvid.
2. MythBurn and Nuv2disc are both capable of producing DVDs. However, I'm unaware of thier full scheduling capabilities.
3. KnoppMyth doesn't support the ripping of encrypted DVDs.
4. Perhaps a search of the forum.
5. Perhaps a search of the wiki and forum. I'd think you'd want a remote of the entire system, not just for your soundcard.
6. Skipping adverts works fine. It has improved, but that does mean it will catch all adverts.
7. HDTV does, sell you?! I don't have an HDTV and am impressed with the quality when compared to the same show when record in "SD". You can transcode the files.

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

What I was thinking is supporting an extra transcoding step to reduce hard disk usage.

About the 'doesn't rip <s>encrypted</s> DVD's' do you mean if I install xine and the DeCSS (are we allowed to talk about that?) I can jukebox the DVD;s that I pay good money for? I want to put a star rating on each ep to, so I can quick browse my favs, know which eps I have seen recently...

Didn't understand what you said about the remote sound card :-/ thanks though

Another legit reason to rip and transcode my DVD's is when I travell I want to pack a DVD with 5/6 DVD's on it, I mean, I paid for it, why can't I take it with me!

If I wanted to break the law I would just download the movies, instead of wanting to rip them for personal use! ;-)

Anyway, I hope xine and the plugins can help me on this.

Thanks for your reply

no

with the proper illegal plugins yes the ripping works.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

I bought a handful of the Seagate PATA 400GB drives when they were on special from $210-$260 a while back. They've since gone up in price. The 300GB ones seem to be priced OK. The dirt on the Seagates is that they also come with a 5-year warranty which is significantly better than the other brands.

I'd suggest using tools such as froogle.google.com and pricewatch.com to narrow down pricing.

On the issue of transcoding: the default settings for mythtv SDTV recording are rather high bitrate. You can tweak them. But when it comes to transcoding to other codecs not included with the knoppmyth build, you're somewhat on your own.*

-brendan

* My understanding is that some of them may have legal issues in the US and perhaps elsewhere. I read that XVid folks say it is legal, but others are concerned about known patent issues.