Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
Hi All,
OK, I'm just asking for opinions here on some application
software.
Like most people we have a nice big 21" TV set that will be
obsolete in Feb. I have been thinking about replacing this with a
big screen TV set but the prices on them are still way, way
way out of my budget (I just can't see spending $500 for
a TV set, sorry!!!!)
I can pick up really high quality, large, old-style
video monitors from a computer surplus place near here for
next to nothing.
I'd like to setup a PC and put a HDTV tuner card in it
for over-the-air HDTV broadcasts, and use that as a TV.
We also have a ton of DVD's and I'd like to rip these
to video files and put them on the PC. Then when anyone
wants to watch a movie they just watch it off the PC.
I've already started doing this under Windows and it works
great - it's even better since I can remove all those
movie previews that the studio wants to force you to
watch.
Has anyone done this with FreeBSD and open source
software, and has recommendations on what hardware to get
and what software works with it?
PREFERABLY cheap - since ultimately we likely will get
a big screen TV set once the prices fall.
I've read the thread and have to vote for a Linux install and MythTV.
It will do everything you require rather well. I started down the FBSD
path for a PVR and quickly ran into trouble back in 2006. From what I
understand, it hasn't gotten much better due to the driver issues.
Anyway, next I tried building MythTV on Fedora Core as it seemed to be a
popular platform and Jerrod Wilson had a nice guide. Being from the
FBSD world where the ports system worked so well, I quickly found myself
in "rpm hell", especially when Fedora Core didn't support my SCSI card
at the time. I found a nice home with Gentoo Linux as it's "portage"
system is much like ports.
The biggest issue with OTA HDTV streams is that the processing power
required to playback is pretty significant. I used an Athlon XP 2800
and it was barely adequate for HDTV. I had to suffer occasional skips
and pauses but it was still watchable. I have since upgraded to a
Athlon X2 3800 and the dual cores have really helped out. One can
playback while other system tasks are handled by the other core.
Another issue is that HDTV is huge. About 8 GB per hour.
However if you have the hardware around and want to give it a try, I
suggest the HDHomerun tuner. It's a network attached dual ATSC tuner
that works well with both Windows and Linux for about $160 as I recall.
MythTV supports it directly as well. With that, a spare PC, and some
drive space you could at least experiment. And the beautiful part is
that once you get your nice, new LCD, you will have already built the
PVR and will continue to enjoy commercial free television.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. I love my MythTV build
and wonder how I ever watched TV without it.
Cheers,
Drew
P.S. I was born in 1965 and remember the way tv was as well. :)
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