MythDora — MythTV 0.2 In a Box

peterdaly writes "MythDora 3 is the first MythTV 'in-a-box' style distribution to include MythTV 0.20. Based on Fedora Core 5, MythDora 3 is designed to format your hard drive then install everything needed for a fully functional MythTV System. Here is a walkthrough of the entire MythDora installation process, including screenshots and a screencast."

Um...KnoppMyth?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

How, other than being based on Fedora, is this any different from KnoppMyth? It runs as a LiveCD and will then (if you want it to) install itself onto your hard drive, doing all the requisite steps.

I'm not panning MythDora, but it just doesn't seem totally unique, unless I'm missing some critical thing about it.

Re:Um...KnoppMyth?

[rGauntlet (54921)]

Well, right now MythDora using Myth 0.20 and KnoppMyth (Which I use, and prefer) is on 0.19. Aside from the Debian vs Fedora, that's the main difference I think. The issue I had with MythDora was that it ships with a single-processor kernel, SMP disabled. KnoppMyth worked with my simple SMP rig right outta the box, no recompilation required. If you care and find yourself with nothing better to do, and trust me there are far better things to do, my read on it is on my website [yeraze.com].

Re:

[harryk (17509)]

From the MythDora website, atleast with this release, they are indeed using an SMP kernel. Perhaps an upgrade is in order. It would be of my opinion that since they are effectively releasing a new distro, they should update the yum repositories to reflect their own, so that performing a 'yum upgrade' would grab packages based specifically on their distro as opposed to the raw Fedora distro. just a thought

Re:

[ManxStef (469602)]

You can fairly easily upgrade the latest KnoppMyth (R5D1) to the developer-provided packages, provided you're capable of using a command prompt, as explained in this thread:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1155 8 &highlight= [mysettopbox.tv]

Unfortunately registration is required for the KnoppMyth forum (I'd encourage you to join as there's a wealth of information there and they're generally very helpful folks) so I've taken the liberty of posting the relevant info below:

[Posted by Cecil, KnoppMyth's lea

Re:

[Schraegstrichpunkt (931443)]

It might have been because I restarted the mythtv-backend twice in quick succession after doing the upgrade. The error I got was:

2006-12-14 20:01:46.515 Current Schema Version: 1135
2006-12-14 20:01:46.527 Newest Schema Version : 1160
2006-12-14 20:01:46.548 New DB connection, total: 2
2006-12-14 20:01:46.571 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2006-12-14 20:01:46.573 Setting Lock for Database Schema upgrade. If you see a long pause here it means the Schema is already locked and is being up

Re:Um...KnoppMyth?

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

For a backend machine that will be performing recording, commercial detection, and transcoding, possibly of one or even multiple HD streams simultaneously?

Re:

[urbanriot (924981)]

... there's this little mobile CPU called the "core duo" which would be great for a very powerful, very small and very quiet as a multimedia system.

Re:

[thedbp (443047)]

>... there's this little mobile CPU called the "core duo" which would be great for a very powerful, very small and very quiet as a multimedia system.

exactly! [apple.com]

Re:

[arete (170676)]

First, because you need about a Ghz to make everything work at once on a single stream...

Second, because more CPUs is NOT directly related to how loud your machine is. Whether you bought good, powerful, quiet fans (case/PSU/CPU/GPU) is the single biggest factor in the noise, NOT the number of them.

Third, of course is dual-core chips...

Re:

[calibanDNS (32250)]

AFAIK KnoppMyth hasn't been upgraded from Myth 0.19 to Myth 0.20, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:

[York the Mysterious (556824)]

The standard branch is still at .19 with fixes. Tester branch is .20. Sign up to be a tester.

Re:

[calibanDNS (32250)]

I prefer to compile MythTV from source instead of using a packaged distro - it gives me as much flexibility as I want, and in my experience MythTV isn't that difficult to get working. Plus it keeps me from being tied to a particular distro - my master backend and a 2nd backend are both on Debian, while my frontend is a FC 4 box. I'm researching building a dedicated frontend for my entertainment center, and maybe one of these prepackaged distros will seem more appropriate there.

Re:

[montyzooooma (853414)]

"How, other than being based on Fedora, is this any different from KnoppMyth? "

Well for one thing hopefully it'll work with SATA drives without having to jump through hoops.

Agreed, the biggest problem with installing myth

[Smeagel (682550)]

Isn't the general mythtv installation - it's the driver installation for all your hardware (most specifically, Lirc). The only way I really see a tool like this being groundbreaking is if they manage to stick a great GUI on top of Lirc setup (which is quite a bit more difficult than a graduate quantum chemistry course). Lirc aside, mythtv setup is fairly trivial these days. And excuse me for wanting Knoppix (a distribution time-tested at dynamically picking up new hardware) as the foundation rather than

Re:Agreed, the biggest problem with installing myt

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

which is quite a bit more difficult than a graduate quantum chemistry course

Huh? I had both a serial port IR emitter and transmitter working easily (heck, the blaster worked on the first try). Configuration of the receiver was a matter of running irrecord and following the instructions, and then tweaking the lirc key mappings until I was happy with them.

Honestly, I have no idea why people have so much trouble getting lirc working.

Re:

[calibanDNS (32250)]

...started using a Hauppauge remote that required line-of-sight...

Excuse me if I'm missing something, but what kind of IR remote doesn't require line of sight?

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Excuse me if I'm missing something, but what kind of IR remote doesn't require line of sight?

An RF remote.

RF to IR relay.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I think when he was talking about a "USB remote" earlier in his comment, he meant an RF-based wireless remote. The Harmony 890 is one like this. It has a base station which is a RF receiver and IR transmitter, so you can use the remote anywhere in a 100' radius and the base station will relay the remote's commands to the appropriate device via IR.

So it's basically: [Remote] -> RF -> [Base Station] -> IR -> [Device]

I've never used the Harmony series, but they also have USB interfaces, for program

MythBuntu would be cool

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

Nothing against MythDora, but after getting burned by Fedora far too many times I don't want to go near anything Fedora-based. Basing off of Ubuntu would rock.

Re:

[strick1226 (62434)]

Just recently, I did try an Ubuntu Edgy combo backend/frontend setup on another machine (my main box runs KnoppMyth).

I found it to be incredibly easy to setup, and there are some pretty good guides ready for anyone with the interest:

http://https//help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/ [https]

For what it's worth, I did try setting up my backend about 1.5 years ago with Debian, but the dependencies and everything proved to be a bit too painful for my use. I settled on using KnoppMyth and I have to give the guys credit--i

Re:

[harryk (17509)]

Just a thought, I think someone else might have noted it though... KnoppMyth, while being stable, is out of date, atleast currently. Which is unfortunate because I think using the knoppmyth as a live CD for the front-end works great, assuming you have a .19 backend.

The other thing to note is that the 'live' CD is only good for the front-end. I've read on the site that they are trying to get a back-end running on a CD, but I think its still under development.

just my 2cents
harryk

Re:

[spyrochaete (707033)]

I haven't tried for at least a year, but last time I checked the Knoppix HDD install was in beta and very buggy. Knoppix distros aren't good for much more than LiveCD boots.

Re:

[businessnerd (1009815)]

Other than some of the arguments already stated about Knoppmyth using an older version of MythTV, there are other reasons that MythDora is a good thing. I am currently running MythTV on a Fedora Core 4 x86_64 system. It took me a couple tries to get to a point where I could live with it, and one of those tries was Knoppmyth. Since I was having so much trouble getting things configured properly (remote, some DVD issues, etc.) I decided to give KnoppMyth a try in hopes that it would be a simple and quick s

KnoppMyth as a LiveCD

[norminator (784674)]

KnoppMyth will run a frontend system as a LiveCD. Obviously, for the backend part, it would have to be installed, but KnoppMyth does have LiveCD functionality.

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

And amusingly, MythDora *won't* run as a LiveCD, AFAIK.

Crazy kids and their (Myth)Dora

[theGil (1010409)]

Enseñemos a nuestros cabritos a utilizar Linux con Dora!

Why does Myth think it's an OS

[gr8_phk (621180)]

Why not just install Fedora and then "yum install mythtv"? Why has installation of Myth always been non-trivial? Now it's to the point where someone would rather format and install the entire OS...

Re:Why does Myth think it's an OS

[LordSnooty (853791)]

There are many dependencies needed to provide a fully-functional set-top box affair - video codecs, players, DVD apps, games, tuner card drivers, version of X, fonts issues etc. Even an educated linux user can find a mythtv install daunting, so packages like this are a godsend.

Also I'd imagine that most mythtv installs are deployed on single-use machines - the set-top box that does TV and nothing else. Thus Knoppmyth or this example are very much useful. Just slap it on and go.

Re:

[Xugumad (39311)]

Daunting? I still have nightmares *shivers*

(Although that was on Debian, which is not the easiest platform to install MythTV on, by a long way)

Re:

[UnknowingFool (672806)]

Why has installation of Myth always been non-trivial?

Since every mythtv box might be unique in terms of hardware and sofware configurations, things might be complex at installation. The options for the TV card alone are numerous. Also MythTV has many options that you could or could not install. Like I use the MythWeather but not the phone. If everything was the same everytime, you could just put in a CD and run do a yum install and it would be done.

Re:Why does Myth think it's an OS

[Dynedain (141758)]

Because there are so many extra components you need. Outside media players, codec libraries, driver packages, various MPEG decoding/encoding libraries, etc, etc.

I tried getting MythTV installed from the Knoppix disc. Plenty of things didn't work. It took me a few days to track down DVD playback problems. I then had to mess with getting the NVIDIA binary drivers installed and xconf configured properly. And then after that I still didn't have sound support (lack of drivers for my onboard soundcard). Oh, and I still had to deal with subscribing to a program guide service (with a one month renewal process). It got to the point where it was no longer worth my time. $150 for Windows MCE, and $40 for the NVIDIA mpeg encoder and I was up and running with everything working within a few hours.

People who want to use MythTV or Windows MCE, for the most part want it run as a dedicated Tivo-like appliance. They are going to be doing little if any desktop computing on it. For that reason, it makes perfect sense to have a full OS configured specifically for it, with default large fonts and display in the GUI, drivers and codecs pre-installed for most media types, auto-boot directly into the TV/Media interface, etc.

Sure, it's nice to be able to install something like this on top of your pre-existing, pre-configured OS. But for most people who want to use this technology, they'd rather wipe the machine and start clean.

Re:

[N0decam (630188)]

People who want to use MythTV or Windows MCE, for the most part want it run as a dedicated Tivo-like appliance.

Speak for yourself - while that's certainly true of my one dedicated frontend, my backend serves as all sorts of server type things (mail, web, database, storage)

I didn't find it overly onerous installing from the gentoo portage, and the feature list can't be beat. It's also nice that I can (and do) run a frontend on any other machine in my house - laptop, mac mini, xbox. There are some rough

Re:Why does Myth think it's an OS

[Dynedain (141758)]

No you didn't. For simple TV viewing as you suggest, you can use the vesa X11 drivers and it'll output on every possible output

And how was I supposed to know this. Why wouldn't I assume that the NVidia drivers are going to be the best solution for my NVidia card? And knowing this obscure technical item doesn't mean I know the obscure solutions to the other problems, let alone the problems I anticipated having (like optical digital audio support or swapping out the analogue CRT TV for a digital LCD with HD) that I never even got to the point of being able to work on.

Sure, I could have spent a lot more time finding solutions to all the issues that I had. And I probably would have figured them out eventually and increased my knowledge of Linux at the same time. But there comes a point where I don't have time, and a commercial solution becomes much more attractive. I would have loved to have the OSS solution in place. And in the future, when I would really want some of the MythTV-only features (like one machine doing the recording/storage, and as many front-end devices as I'd like) I'll probably come back and take another look at it.

It's like the old adage: "Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything."

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

It's like the old adage: "Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything."

Or if you enjoy spending your time hacking hardware and software. I happen to, and so Myth is quite fun for me. Obviously, not everyone will feel the same.

Vesa drivers don't do MPEG-2 decode, do they?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

The problem with using the Vesa or other OSS drivers is that they don't support proprietary features of some NVidia cards, like accelerated MPEG-2 decoding. If you're trying to use an older set of hardware for your STB (like an older Celeron, or something else that can be easily passively cooled), and have a TV tuner card that records to MPEG-2 (like the WinTV PVR 150/350 series) this is a major issue. Offloading the decompression to the GPU saves a lot of CPU cycles.

If there are OSS drivers that support th

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Umm... installing Myth *is* trivial. Installing all the hardware drivers and so forth, not so much. Fortunately, there are resources like Jarod's Myth-on-Fedora HOWTO [wilsonet.com] which make this process much less painless. Personally, I had my backend installed on FC5 in an afternoon. My frontend took a little longer, only because I'm using a fairly recent VIA EPIA board, and so the OpenChrome drivers were a bit troublesome.

Re:

[Hel Toupee (738061)]

there are resources like Jarod's Myth-on-Fedora HOWTO which make this process much less painless.

I've found that many online instructions make things much less painless, also.

Personally, I had my backend installed on FC5 in an afternoon.

I prefer my backend to be installed on the couch most afternoons :)

My frontend took a little longer, only because I'm using a fairly recent VIA EPIA board

I'm not even gonna touch that one.

Seriously, though, good link, and I'm glad it worked out so well f

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Ha ha ha... doh. :) Sad thing is, it took a couple reads before the typo popped out. Stupid brain...

Re:

[itsdapead (734413)]

Why has installation of Myth always been non-trivial?

Er, lets see: do you use satellite or terestrial TV? Is that analogue or digital? European-style DVB or the US equivalent? Does your tuner card need a firmware blob to work? Does your tuner card have onboard MPEG decoding? If not, does your video card have MPEG acceleration and is it supported by Xorg? How do you enable TV-out and set it to native PAL or NTSC resolution with sensible overscan? (anybody using a low power Via Epia system as a HTPC should b

My 2 cents

[rgavril (805158)]

If you're willing to install a linux distribution in your living room you should give Pluto [plutohome.com] a try. It incorporates myth and many more from media to home automation and is a free as in beer Debian based Linux.

Maybe it's just because I have kids...

[Zordak (123132)]

The first image that came to mind on reading the title was a MythTV box dedicated to recording episodes of "Dora the Explorer." And then my brain let out a primal scream, because if there is one thing I don't need in my house, it's more Dora.

(totally OT now)

[revlayle (964221)]

I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map.....

I'M THE MAP!


*proceeds to play Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver*

Re:

[mikelieman (35628)]

I see your Dora and raise you the Doodlebops...

Core 6 mythtv in my living room

[Beelub (252407)]

I'm running a Fedora Core 6 box in my living that runs mythtv full time and is serving me as general purpose linux box. It's working out very well for me, (though admittedly I'm a bachelor and have no wife in charge of my decor). Twinview with myth on the TV and computer stuff on the monitor. With mythweb running, it can't be beat.

It's easy to set up. "yum install mythtv-suite" installs -all- the myth packages including mythweb and such. Pretty minimal configuration involved. I'd say that starting wit

MythDora won't install for me.

[bgarcia (33222)]

I tried installing MythDora on a Dell XPS 410. Didn't work. Knoppmyth wouldn't install either.

The problem is that my desktop has no legacy interfaces. In particular, the DVD drive is SATA, and the keyboard is USB. Knoppmyth and Mythdora cannot currently handle installing from a SATA optical drive. Knoppmyth kindly popped me out to a shell when it couldn't find the installation source directory, but the drivers for the USB keyboard apparently hadn't been loaded, so I couldn't type anything anyhow.

I'm currently installing Myth 0.20 over Fedora Core 6 with the help of the MythTV on Fedora HOWTO [wilsonet.com] by Jarod Wilson. It's been very helpful, but I still find myself spending a lot of time tweaking things to get everything working correctly. MythTV installation is just plain hard.

Myth is frustrating on every out-of-the-box distro

[kimvette (919543)]

. . . and considering that Fedora 5 comes with 2.6.16 (at best) it's not likely to fare any better on current-generation hardware. I'd still have to download the vanilla kernel, track down any vendor-specific optimizations, merge those in if the process isn't too time-consuming, then figure out which combination of kernel modules/firmware/tuner settings work with each rev of each card. Combine that with the suck that is Hauppauge -- I bought a PVR-150, chose it over the PVR-500 because I was skeptical and now I'm glad I saved my money on the dual tuner card. With a 500ms or so delay on the display it renders the cable guide totally worthless -- and you have a recipe for a craptacular HTPC. I then ordered an uber-cheap-but-easy-to-configure MSI TV@nywhere, and I had that card up and running in literally five minutes, compared to 3-4 hours of trying various firmware and tuner setting combinations with the Hauppage. Not only that, the MSI does hardware MPEG2 encoding, hardware-assisted MPEG4, plus NO appreciable delay in the display. Not only that, the MSI works with standard TV apps like xawtv and kdetv, whereas the Hauppauge works ONLY with Myth.

Or, install Windows Media Center and have it all work out of the box. MythTV may be GORGEOUS and offer tons and tons of functionality Windows Media Center will never provide, but Windows Media Center can be installed and fully configured out of the box in a half hour to 45 minutes.

I like Myth, really, and plan to put time into getting it to work perfectly, but it's hard to put aside an entire day to devote to setting up a TV/PVR application.

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

He probably means the buffering. The PVR-*50 and 500s don't just pop what they're capturing onto the screen in Myth in real time. They actually do about a 2 second buffer before showing something on the screen. Whether that's the drivers for linux or Myth I don't know.

That has nothing to do with the Hauppauge cards and everything to do with Myth and, in fact, ffmpeg (which apparently chokes if you give it a partial frame, and so Myth buffers conservatively in order to ensure this doesn't happen). The same

Been down this road!

[old_skul (566766)]

Having started with Knoppmyth, and then moved briefly to Mythdora, I settled in on a manual compile of Myth 0.19 on Suse 10.1. It was this configuration that worked best for me - because I had invested in 2 PCHDTV HD-5500 tuners. I could not get them working in Myth 0.20 at all, and finally made them work in 0.19. The feature set between the two is minimal, with 0.20 being a lot of fixes and optimizations, so there's not a lot of love lost.

Myth is not an easy thing for even the experienced admin to make work. Because of the dependencies and the hardware involvement, this is more than just installing an application and having it work. For people new to the Myth infrastructure, it's actually rather nice to have a live CD install everything that's necessary. For 90% of the folks wanting to try it, they're going to have a dedicated PC for it anyway. Of course, if you want to just throw in a tuner card and try it that way, you can compile it too.

If you're a Suse person, you can check out a HOWTO I put together for 10.1 and PCHDTV cards here [pchdtv.com]. It covers all the stuff one has to do to make a Myth box work with HD under Suse 10.1. While there are RPMs available for Myth 0.20 on Suse 10.1, the package doesn't support HD, which is what my project was specifically designed to be.

If you do plan on doing HD - be vigilant in your hardware selection! HD playback takes a considerable amount of computing horsepower. I really recommend getting an nVidia 5200 card for playback - not only are they super cheap, and sometimes fanless (read: noiseless), but they also support the nVidia XvMC playback driver, which accelerates MPEG2 streams, offloading decoding from your processor. It also does a fine job at Bob2X deinterlacing, required for watchable HD.

Re:Typo: Myth is at .20 not 2.0

[broller (74249)]

Typo: Myth is at .20 not 2.0

That's the same number, right [slashdot.org]?

Re:Now I wish I could get my Torrent Shows on Myth

[businessnerd (1009815)]

YOU CAN! Here's how I do it. Every Myth setup has a Video section. This is a file browser that will launch mplayer or your media player of choice. In the Video Setup secion, it will ask you to define the directory for video (this is separate from your Myth recorded TV shows). Specify a directory (mine is /video/movies). Then all you have to do is just place some media in that folder. If you're downloading a DVD rip of a tv show from BitTorrent, you will be downloading a folder containing mulitiple mpeg's or avi's. Simply tell bittorrent to save the files to your MythTV video directory and the files will automagically appear in the Video browser.

In my apartment, the MythTV system acts as my file server. The /video partition (where all of the mythv media sits) is shared out to the rest of my computers via NFS. Using the computer in my office, I can browse for torrents and download them directly to the shared folder and then enjoy them from the living room couch. This is also great for my mp3's and oggs. All downloaded or ripped music goes to the Myth box and then you can listen to music either at my desk with xmms, in the living room through the stereo system and MythMusic, or from the laptop in any room (or even outside while in range of my router). The great thing about Myth is that it is a server for ALL of your media.