1. Boston Linux Users Group Building a PVR Using Linux and MythTV May 19, 2004 Jeffrey Perry jeffperry_2003@yahoo.com

2. Building a Linux PVR w/ MythTV  Introduction  Planning  Installation  Demo  Conclusions

3. What is a PVR? PVR = Personal Video Recorder A video recorder which records to the hard disk instead of a tape Definition varies but most include:  Electronic Program guide, pause/ff/rw live and recorded shows  Other possible features... remote viewing, web scheduling, music etc.

4. Motivation  TiVo is cool, wouldn't you like one too?  How much does it really cost?  Ok, I want to burn DVDs too. How much now?  Interesting project  Practical - no VCR or DVD player already

5. Commercial PVRs  TiVo  ReplayTV  Others....

6. TiVo: How much does it cost?  40 Hours - $149 *  80 Hours - $249 *  140 Hours - $349 * *= PLUS program listing service fee of $ 12.95/month or $299 lifetime PLUS $99 for Home Media Option

7. TiVo: Home Media Option  Web scheduling  Digital photos  Digital music  Multi-room viewing

8. TiVo Combo Units How much does it cost?  DirectTV & TiVo  $4.95/month (waived w/Total Choice Premier subscription)  DVD & TiVo, DVD Recorder & TiVo  Basic Free, TiVoPlus ($12.95/month or $299) Source: http://www.tivo.com/1.1.1.10.asp

9. ReplayTV How Much does it cost?  40 Hours - $150*  80 Hours - $300*  160 Hours - $450*  320 Hours - $800* *=PLUS program listing service fee of $ 12.95/month or $299 lifetime

10. Cost of DVD Recorders Q: How much to buy a consumer device which can record TV shows to DVD? A: Consumer DVD recorders range in price from $200- $500 Consider: PC DVD Writers Sony 4x for $118( Jan 2004, rebate) Sony 8x for $160 (now @ compusa.com)

11. Enter MythTV: Features  Record TV shows, scheduled, instant record  Free Program guide - via Zapdata.com, others  Pause/Fastforward/Rewind Live TV, recordings  Store & play music, DVD videos  Watch & record at same time  Check weather, news, and browse web  Play and burn DVDs  Skip commercials – auto detect and flag  Play SNES & other video games (Xmame)

12. MythTVArchitecuture Strengths  Distributed modular design  Frontend - the UI you interact with  Backend - Tracks schedule, records, streams playback  Highly Scalable  Multiple tuners  Add tuners to machines and share  Multiple back ends  A single master backend coordinates the rest  Open Source

13. MythTV [ Diagram]Distributed Architecture Diagram- xxx be sure to show frontend, backend process, mysqldb, multiple tuners, multiple backends and multiple frontends including display only frontends

14. Hardware: TV Tuner Tradeoffs  Hardware MPEG chip  Faster encode/decode without load on PC  Result: Can use slower CPU  Tuner only  Requires card support video4linux driver (or bttv driver)  Requires high speed CPU for encode/decode  See: PVR Hardware Guide http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki- page.php?pageName=install_guides

15. Hardware: Hauppauge Tuner Cards  WinTV PVR250 (~$100)  Hardware Encode  WinTV PVR350 ($200)  Hardware Encode  Hardware Decode  Radio Tuner  Comes with an IR remote

16. Hardware: Display Options  WinTV PVR350 has TV Out  Linux ivtv driver needed  Still under development  Still a bit unstable with occaisional hangs  Video card w/ TV Out support  This may be the better bet for stability right now.  Still need a tuner card (either simple or w/MPEG encode/decode in hardware)

17. Hardware: Motherboard, DVD, Hard Drive  Beware of cheap VIA chipset motherboards. MythTV problems await! (Don't panic yet- some workarounds exist which MAY cure it)  DVD Writer (optional)  Used to install Linux, archive shows  Big Hard Drive  approx 1G/30 mins @ 480x480 MPEG2  better compression possible with lower res or tweaking

18. Hardware: Device Drivers for TV Card &Video  TV Card  Hauppauge WinTV PVR250/350  ivtv version 0.1.10pre2 or newer stable version  PVR350 only - Patches to X windows (framebuffer coexistance with ivtv framebuffer interaction)  Other tuners  Video4Linux kernel module  Video card w/ TV Out  X windows driver for your card

19. Hardware: Remote Controls Remote control functionality: LIRC package  Supports IR and RF remotes including home made receivers

20. My Hardware Setup  Case: AMS gBox P4 Blue CF-968L ($230, sale)  CPU: 1.7Ghz celeron ($65)  Motherbrd: Socket478B Chyang Fun CFI-S968L  256 meg RAM ($65)  Hauppauge WinTV PVR350 ($200)  Sony DVD +-RW writer 4X ($118,rebate)  Seagate 200 Gig (about 100 hours) HD ($100,rebate)  TOTAL Cost: $778

21. Installation: Choosing a Linux Distribution  Suse 8.1 too many additions & probs reported  KnoppMyth R4 is not the easy way out  Choose tried and true Redhat 9.0  ATRPMs has most of the rest of what you need  Apt-get for rpm is your friend  Still some kernel packages issues, requires forced loading of some rpms. Getting better.  Use Jarrod's guide - updated now for Fedora http://wilsonet.com/mythtv

22. Installation: Choosing a Filesystem  File system choice  Ext3 (my choice, simple default for now)  XFS (some report better perfomance)  Generally good idea to increase inode size (default is 4k, 64 meg would be better)

23. Installation Overview 1. Install Redhat 2.Install device driver for tuner (PVR2/350 reqs extract windows driver from cdrom) 3.create mythtv user 4.Install atrpms-kickstart 5.Get latest updates (Apt-get update) 6.Get mythtvsuite and dependencies (apt-get mythtv-suite) - 54 packages in all - not perfect 7.Mythtvsetup

24. Installation Overview (Cont.) 1.Mythfilldatabase 2.Start mythbackend 3.Start mythfrontend, visit setup section and config 4.Configure each module - (see docs at mythtv.org) 5. (some modules )Additional tweaks outside GUI (example: Installing a new Video for MythVideo)

25. Installation tweaks  Turn off automount of Cds (mythmusic ripper)  Turn off esd or artsd  Remove ~mythtv/.kde/Autostart/Autorun.desktop  Chkconfig autofs off, apmd off, httpd on (mythweb)  Ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/dvd (MythDVD)  Edit channels (~mythtv/ /.xmltv & tweaks to associated DB tables)  Turn on DMA on HD (hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda)

26. Demonstration MythTV  MyhtvSetup  Mythfilldatabase  MythFrontend Setup  TV  Video  DVD  Music  News  Weather  Web  Images  Games (not setup)

27. Conclusions: MythTv Rough spots  PVR250/350 record to MPEG2 directly so Commercial cutting must be done manually. Still not perfect. A/V sync is a challenge for MPEG2 w/o having to rencode whole file (takes hours)  Integration is not as seamless as it may seem (ex: Remote control of MythVideo requires edits to your lirc config file) [mplayer]  Installing videos not ripped from DVD is done outside the GUI by copying, then back to GUI to "scan" for new files

28. MythTV Rough Spots (Cont.)  Mythfrontend UI  Selecting exit, then yes does not shutdown the machine  Icons for recorded state non obvious  - MythWeather (simple, easy to use, does it's job well :- )  A few small bugs  Zip code feature is not obvious.  MythTV - generally non existent end-user documentation.

29. Conclusion: MythTv Strengths  Recording scheduling flexibility & prioritization  Playback features including FF, Pause, Rewind  More features than TiVo  Excellent modules: MythTv, MythMusic, MythDVD, MythWeather and MythNews  Flexible distributed architecture  Clever design makes apps appear mostly seamless (xml config files control app integration & gui themes)

30. Conclusion & Recommendations Building a reasonably priced full-featured Tivo alternative with more features including DVD writing is possible - the result is very usable and enjoyable but will take some effort  Recommendations  TV Out: Buy a video card with TV output  Tuner: PVR 250/350  Redhat 9.0 / Fedora & Jarrod's walkthrough  DVD Writer, Hard Drive (BIG)

31. Resources - Start Here  MythTV http://www.mythtv.org  IVTV (Hauppauge PVR250/350 Driver) http://ivtv.sourceforge.net  PVR Hardware Guide http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-pvrhwdb.php  Jarrods Redhat 9.0 and Fedora Install Guide http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv

32. Resources - MythTV  Myth TV Main site (download, docs, etc) http://mythtv.org  MythTV Mailing list archives (links to lists at bottom) http://mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythInfo  MythTV forums http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/  Windows front-end for MythTV http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/  Jarrod's MythTV install walkthrough for Fedora, other info http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/

33. Resources - LIRC & IVTV  LIRC Remote control http://www.lirc.org  Ivy Wiki (ivtv community) http://ivtv.writeme.ch  IVTV Sourceforge page http://ivtv.sourceforge.net/  IVTV Development list archives http://www.poptix.net/ivtv/

34. Resources - PVR Hardware  PVR Hardware News http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-view_articles.php  PVR Hardware Guide http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-pvrhwdb.php  PVR Hardware Install guides for MythTV, others http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tikipage.php?pageName =install_guides

35. Resources - Edit/cut commercials  Avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/  Note on running dvdauthor w/ avidemux http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p=152 219&postcount=9  Gopchophttp://sourceforge.net/projects/gopchop/ http://outflux.net/unix/software/GOPchop/  Cinelerra Video Editor http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3  MythMkMovie (output not mpeg, requires transcoding) http://www.icelus.org/

36. Resources - DVD Burning  Dvd-rw-tools & growisofs http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW  DVD Author http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/  GUI front-end for dvdauthor http://qdvdauthor.sourceforge.net/  DVDStyler - GUI front-end for dvdauthorhttp://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/  DVD Slideshowhttp://dvd- slideshow.sourceforge.net/  Linux Journal artile on DVD authoring http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6953  Linux Gazette DVD burning howto http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue83/stoddard.html  Cdrecord (limitation on burn size w/o agreeing to license and getting free key) http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/ private/cdrecord.html  Computer burned DVDs - info on compatibility w/ consumer DVD players http://www.videohelp.com/

37. Resources - Misc.  Libmpeg http://libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/downloads.html  Transcode http://www.theorie.physik.unigoettingen.de/~ostreich/transcode/  Commercial DVD burning package - GearPro for Linux http://www.gearsoftware.com/products/ProLinux/index.cf m  Linux video studio - GUI for editing http://packages.debian.org/stable/graphics/linuxvideostudio