MythTV, now in digital
Thanks to the generousity of grahame, I now have a DTV tuner card for my myth box.
Installation:
Hardware install was straight forward, except that the card is just a shade too tall - fitting the top cover back on the box involved more force than I'm entirely comfortable with.
Software install was trivial. Ubuntu detected the card, MythTVSetup knew all about it. All I had to do was associate it with an input source and scan for channels (every channel found with no problems).
Setup
TV Guide took a small amount of doing. I had some issues with my configuration file for tv_grab_au_reg:
My line for Go! was initially causing the grabber to crash. Probably just a typo in it, when I recrated it all worked well.
The config file claims that the timezone field for non-local channels (eg ABC2, which the source timestamps for EST) should be relative (eg set ABC2 to -0200). Turns out it should be set to my timezone.
Other than that, just a matter of editing the XMLTV names in myth to match those in my grabber config file. The source is missing data for most of the HD channels (and also for ABC's audio channels), I'm yet to get the over the air guide working.
Use
Transcoding works after a fashion (recall that transcoding from analogue recordings hasn't been working in this install), at least for SD:
Lossless transcoding with a cutlist works.
MPEG2->MPEG4 with a cutlist segfaults.
MPEG2->MPEG4 with no cutlist 'works', but the output has no audio.
A 1 hour show from SD (actually ~1:08 recorded, 0:40 without ads) is approx 2.5GB with ads (MPEG2), 1.4GB after ads removed (MPEG2), 900MB after transcoding to (MPEG4 full frame size, default data rate). I haven't yet done size testing of HD.
Playback of SD takes ~10-15% CPU, HD is 20% CPU. In theory I have VDPAU enabled, I haven't yet checked whether these CPU values indicate it's working correctly. Most HD channels play back with no problems, but I was having serious audio sync problems on One HD last night.
Recording of 2 different channels from the same stream simultaneously (eg ABC1 and ABC2) works. The added benefit of this is that consecutive recordings on the same channel are allowed to overlap (I can now safely set NCIS to always record 5 minutes past the end without this causing a conflict on back-to-back episodes - the 5 minutes overlap will be recorded to both episodes).
Installation:
Hardware install was straight forward, except that the card is just a shade too tall - fitting the top cover back on the box involved more force than I'm entirely comfortable with.
Software install was trivial. Ubuntu detected the card, MythTVSetup knew all about it. All I had to do was associate it with an input source and scan for channels (every channel found with no problems).
Setup
TV Guide took a small amount of doing. I had some issues with my configuration file for tv_grab_au_reg:
My line for Go! was initially causing the grabber to crash. Probably just a typo in it, when I recrated it all worked well.
The config file claims that the timezone field for non-local channels (eg ABC2, which the source timestamps for EST) should be relative (eg set ABC2 to -0200). Turns out it should be set to my timezone.
Other than that, just a matter of editing the XMLTV names in myth to match those in my grabber config file. The source is missing data for most of the HD channels (and also for ABC's audio channels), I'm yet to get the over the air guide working.
Use
Transcoding works after a fashion (recall that transcoding from analogue recordings hasn't been working in this install), at least for SD:
Lossless transcoding with a cutlist works.
MPEG2->MPEG4 with a cutlist segfaults.
MPEG2->MPEG4 with no cutlist 'works', but the output has no audio.
A 1 hour show from SD (actually ~1:08 recorded, 0:40 without ads) is approx 2.5GB with ads (MPEG2), 1.4GB after ads removed (MPEG2), 900MB after transcoding to (MPEG4 full frame size, default data rate). I haven't yet done size testing of HD.
Playback of SD takes ~10-15% CPU, HD is 20% CPU. In theory I have VDPAU enabled, I haven't yet checked whether these CPU values indicate it's working correctly. Most HD channels play back with no problems, but I was having serious audio sync problems on One HD last night.
Recording of 2 different channels from the same stream simultaneously (eg ABC1 and ABC2) works. The added benefit of this is that consecutive recordings on the same channel are allowed to overlap (I can now safely set NCIS to always record 5 minutes past the end without this causing a conflict on back-to-back episodes - the 5 minutes overlap will be recorded to both episodes).