While listening to the linux link tech show (www.tllts.info) podcast (I think #139) they talked about how easy knoppmyth is to get a mythbox up and running and how difficult it can be with other distro's. They mentioned that they are trying to schedule Cecil as a future guest. Cecil, can you let us know when you find out?

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Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

Certainly, I'll le tfolks know when I'll be on. Probably won't be until July....

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

http://www.tllts.info/calendar/calendar ... 6&month=07
http://www.tllts.info/calendar/day.php? ... =07&day=19

Bump!

Tomorrow - tune in!

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ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
Athlon 2200 processor
512K Kingston PC2100 Memory
MicroAtx Case
2 PVR250's w/remote
eVGA e-GeForce mx4000 (64 Ram with Tv/Out (Svideo))
Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital

Bummer, I missed it
Mike

You can download it in mp3 or ogg format. Episode 149.

http://tllts.info/index.php

I have not got though the whole interview yet (50minutes in) and great interview Cecil.

Hi,
Yes, I pulled the archive last night. I liked Cecil's side, but I thought there were some unreasonable requests from the interviewers. A $300 KM box fully loaded with tuner card... how would one be able to make enought $ to even pay for the electricity to test it let alone buy groceries.

Over all, I think it was very good and Cecil, being the gentlman that he is, set a high standard for the conduct. With out some editting, I would not play it in a room full of kids which means I have to listen at night.

Thanks for the reminder, non I wonder why my recorder didn't pick up the stream .....

Mike

To skip to Cecil's section:

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The only confusing thing about the dialog so far is that they seem to be focused on NTSC technology, at the near exclusion of HDTV. Their request to have a generic box that you could upgrade from NTSC to HDTV would either mean a very expensive overpowered NTSC box or a cheap underpowered HDTV box - at least in current technology. (Still waiting on XvMC to stop sucking for HD.)

EDIT: They finally asked about HDTV. I think they don't realize the hardware requirements for playback of HDTV vs NTSC, especially if they use the PVR-350's TV out.

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Hi Human,

Great, thanks for the"trim" to the file.. to get past the ruff parts.

I guess a lot could only be touched upon as there was a time limit. Cecil didn't even have a chance to mention that there are folks in the world and not everyone is NTSC. There is a PAL following also.

I haven't looked too deeply into the hd area but isn't that about standard all over?

Anyway, those that have the oppertunity to listen may get a better understanding and appreciate the work that has been put in to KM.

The guy with the 500mhz Dell, if he were to stuff a 350 card in it and with in an hour could leaning back watching live tv with a happy KM system.

Have a great day!
Mike

Nope.

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This is Pat from TLLTS. I've been playing with MythTV for a couple of years now. Most of the other guys on the show don't run MythTV and are not hands-on with it. To answer some of your questions:


I was trying to get the point out of how much a decent tv capture card would cost for someone looking to try out MythTV for the first time. Currently most people (at least in the USA) don't have a HDTV. It's still fairly expensive. I must be in the minority that thinks that having to finance a tv is a little ridiculous.


My point was that every pre-built MythTV box I see being sold is still very expensive. IMHO a pre-built MythTV box has to be around $300 for it to successfully compete with tivo. Until we see a commercial low cost MythTV offering, mass adoption of MythTV is just a pipe dream. We all know is that we just have to swap out the capture card to upgrade to HDTV. You can't do that with tivo.


I did ask Cecil for his recommendations on HDTV cards. Also my first tv tuner card was a Hauppauge 350 and I ran it using an 800mhz machine. Like I said I'm the only co-host who's used MythTV for quite a while. I plan on upgrading to a HDTV card in the next couple of years.

Here are direct links for the show:
http://tllts.org/archives/tllts_149-07-19-06.ogg
http://tllts.org/archives/tllts_149-07-19-06.mp3

Cecil was a great interview and we'd love to have on again. He's always welcome.

Hi, Pat!



This is fine, but do they necessarily realize that it's dead-end technology? Everyone who is either in control of their own transmission mechanism, or is controlled by the FCC, will be transitioning away from NTSC as soon as it's feasible for them. Buying an NTSC capture card is fairly cheap and will work well in an older (or newer but underpowered) system and is indeed a good way to get people to try MythTV, but I would have hoped that this advice would be tempered with the countdown to NTSC going away.


Well, you don't actually need an HDTV set to watch HDTV. HDTV looks great on any computer monitor. I much prefer watching HDTV on a little 17" LCD monitor than watching NTSC on a 32" NTSC tube.




True, most people don't realize that MythTV boxes are general-purpose computers that have tuner cards in them, whereas a Tivo is a proprietary box designed to charge you a monthly fee or else do nothing at all. You can reinstall your MythTV box however you like, but if you don't want your Tivo anymore, you can either sell it or let it collect dust.

It's really like comparing a railpass to a car, though. A train/subway will take you lots of places cheaply, but it's not going to accomodate deviation from what it wants to do. A car is a lot more expensive and requires maintenance, but it'll take you anywhere you want to go (even overseas if you put it on a boat). So should we say that until cars are as cheap as railpasses, the widespread adoption of cars is just a pipe dream?

Maybe the real problem is that people compare a Tivo to a MythTV box and see dollar signs, but they would think nothing of spending the same amount of money on their home computer. Maybe the mentality is that a MythTV box can only do MythTV, which is far from the truth.



We know that for the backend, but a frontend that was only designed for playback of NTSC may not work right if it's now expected to play back HDTV. Yes, you could transcode it down to a playable resolution, but transcoding is CPU-intensive, too. A low-end box would take a very long time to transcode, since it still has to decode the MPEG-2 data (as with playback) but just not in real-time.

Currently, any system where all you had to do was swap out the NTSC tuner card for an HDTV tuner card and have no playback issues would have to be overengineered (and overly expensive) for NTSC playback. As I mentioned before, as XvMC improves, it may be possible to offload a large portion of the decoding to the video card, in which case it may become feasible to do this.

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