I have been lurking around the forums for about 2 days. I have found lots of information about installation, usage, and all of those good things. But I still have questions. I already did several forum searches and couldn't find any answers. I hope anyone in here can help me and that I made my post on the correct forum.... Anyways, my questions are:

1. I'm assuming I can run the backend server without the frontend and the xorg running, right? It's a matter of removing the line that runs xorg during system initiation? I couldnt find a single post about it nor could I find anything at the mythtv wiki either. So, I'm assuming not many people are doing something like this. What I did find is that mythtv uses an xserver for configuration. I dont mind manually starting xorg to configure it once in a while... in other words, can I use mythtv without running the frontend?

2. I got an old mini-itx (M9000) with a PVR-150 running on it. The sytem works perfectly. It almost never lags, except when the frontend is started. During start up, the frontend shows the background and takes anywhere from 30 to 45 secs for the menu to be shown. I'm not going to be using the frontend at all on this machine, but I Was wondering if that small pause is normal or if it's a reflection of my old and slow cpu. Should I be worried? I can even watch live tv with no slowdowns; except for the osd, but it seems this is a problem several people are having, so I'm not worried much about it. So, the question is: Does mythtv frontend take a while to show the menu after it has drawn the background or is my machine way to slow?

3. I'm still using several defaults and I notice that the resolution for recording is 480x480 or something like that... I'm using a pvr-150 and I'm not sure if this is the correct resolution. Soooo.. what should I do? keep that resolution, would my card be able to record on any higher resolution? I'm lost on this one, as not even the hauppaugen website says anything about resolutions.. either that or I'm blind ><. What's the best resolution for mythtv using a pvr-150?

4. This might be better on the linux forums, but a quick yes or no would be sufficient.... please dont slap me To change the pic that is shown while starting the machine (framebuffer) needs a kernel recompile right? or can I change it without a recompile? most of my linux computers are servers so I dont even have monitors hooked to them.. I've never used anything like that but I've seen some frame buffer options at the kernel menu thingy....

5. Last but not least, what files does mythtv record to? I read about .nuv files and some nuv to avi converters, etc. But when I went to check on my filesystem, I noticed that the files found in /myth/tv are all mpg. in fact, using the file program it gave me:


Thanks for any kind of help. If you want me to brake up the questions into several threads or just move the post away.. I Can do that.. Thank you...

That's what I do for my master backend. With the latest KnoppMyth release - R5E50 - just comment out the line that has 'startx' in /etc/inittab, I think it's the last line. Otherwise, when you want to start the frontend just login as mythtv and type 'startx'.

1) It may actually be possible to forward your X session to another computer that is running X and hot even have it installed on your backend. I can't say for wure that it would work but if your trying to slim down the machine it might at least be worth a little reading on X forwarding. Can't say I've tried it but thought I'd throw it out there to you.

3) You should change your recording resolution to 720x480. That is the max your PVR-150 can do. There is actually a potential display problem that could crop up running at 480x480 so it's win-win. Be sure to check the R5E50 upgrade thread in the tips and tricks section as I think there's more info in there.

Martian

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