After six months trying to get a working PVR built, I gave up doing it the hard way and used KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth and MythTV are great software.

Almost tier 1. Things I had to fix (which are possibly more related to my inexperience with Linux, than KnopMyth):

Give access to DVD -chmod a+rw /dev/scd0
Turn on DMA for DVD with hdparam
Bypass suid warnings with mythfrontend and mythtv using chmod + s
Had to use a different distribution to install a good bootloader on a rebuild.
Fix up LIRC - rebuilt for my remote.
Add a new network card to get around kernel panic during boot (was using built in sis900).
Turned off commercial flagging and ran it as an anacron job to avoid mythbackend segmentation fault during boot.

Mmm - it doesn't seem like much, but it took a while. I found nearly all the info I needed on the wiki or in forums.

Things I chose to do:

Used wakeup_clock along with sleep facilities to shutdown/wakeup the box. The machine is now only sucking power a few hours a week when its recording or being watched. This is great as it effectively replaces a TV, VCR, DVD which all used power in standby mode. We'll get this house running on solar power yet.

Minor alterations to tv_grab_au to improve chances of recording my footy team. I think this won't be a problem in R5 with its more flexible recording specifications.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to the software and various documentation projects and forums.

Andy

After six months trying to get a working PVR built, I gave up doing it the hard way and used KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth and MythTV are great software.

Almost tier 1. Things I had to fix (which are possibly more related to my inexperience with Linux, than KnopMyth):

Give access to DVD -chmod a+rw /dev/scd0
Turn on DMA for DVD with hdparam
Bypass suid warnings with mythfrontend and mythtv using chmod + s
Had to use a different distribution to install a good bootloader on a rebuild.
Fix up LIRC - rebuilt for my remote.
Add a new network card to get around kernel panic during boot (was using built in sis900).
Turned off commercial flagging and ran it as an anacron job to avoid mythbackend segmentation fault during boot.

Mmm - it doesn't seem like much, but it took a while. I found nearly all the info I needed on the wiki or in forums.

Things I chose to do:

Used wakeup_clock along with sleep facilities to shutdown/wakeup the box. The machine is now only sucking power a few hours a week when its recording or being watched. This is great as it effectively replaces a TV, VCR, DVD which all used power in standby mode. We'll get this house running on solar power yet.

Minor alterations to tv_grab_au to improve chances of recording my footy team. I think this won't be a problem in R5 with its more flexible recording specifications.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to the software and various documentation projects and forums.

Andy