Boston Linux Users Group

1
Boston Linux Users Group

• Building a PVR Using Linux and MythTV
• May 19, 2004
• Jeffrey Perry
• jeffperry_2003_at_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

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TiVo Combo UnitsHow 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

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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

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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 _at_ compusa.com)

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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 DiagramDistributed Architecture
Diagram- xxx be sure to show frontend, backend
process, mysqldb, multiple tuners, multiple
backends and multiple frontends including display
only frontends
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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?pageNameinstall_guides

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Hardware Hauppauge Tuner Cards

• WinTV PVR250 (100)
• Hardware Encode
• WinTV PVR350 (200)
• Hardware Encode
• Hardware Decode
• Radio Tuner
• Comes with an IR remote

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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)

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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 _at_ 480x480 MPEG2
• better compression possible with lower res or
  tweaking

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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

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Hardware Remote Controls

• Remote control functionality LIRC package
• Supports IR and RF remotes including home made
  receivers

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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

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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

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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)

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Installation Overview

• Install Redhat
• Install device driver for tuner (PVR2/350 reqs
  extract windows driver from cdrom)
• create mythtv user
• Install atrpms-kickstart
• Get latest updates (Apt-get update)
• Get mythtvsuite and dependencies (apt-get
  mythtv-suite) - 54 packages in all - not perfect
• Mythtvsetup

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Installation Overview (Cont.)

• Mythfilldatabase
• Start mythbackend
• Start mythfrontend, visit setup section and
  config
• Configure each module - (see docs at mythtv.org)
• (some modules )Additional tweaks outside GUI
  (example Installing a new Video for MythVideo)

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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)

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Demonstration MythTV

• MyhtvSetup
• Mythfilldatabase
• MythFrontend Setup
• TV
• Video
• DVD
• Music

• News
• Weather
• Web
• Images
• Games (not setup)

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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

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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

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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?nameMythInf
  o
• MythTV forums
  http//www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/
• Windows front-end for MythTV http//winmyth.source
  forge.net/
• Jarrod's MythTV install walkthrough for Fedora,
  other info http//www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/

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Resources - LIRC IVTV

• LIRC Remote control http//www.lirc.org
  
• Ivy Wiki (ivtv community) http//ivtv.writem
  e.ch
• IVTV Sourceforge page http//ivtv.sourceforg
  e.net/
• IVTV Development list archives http//www.popti
  x.net/ivtv/

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Resources - PVR Hardware

• PVR Hardware News http//pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-v
  iew_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?pageNamein
  stall_guides

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Resources - Edit/cut commercials

• Avidemux http//fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
• Note on running dvdauthor w/ avidemux http//www.d
  ealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p152219postco
  unt9
• Gopchop http//sourceforge.net/projects/gopchop/ h
  ttp//outflux.net/unix/software/GOPchop/
• Cinelerra Video Editor http//heroinewarrior.com/c
  inelerra.php3
• MythMkMovie (output not mpeg, requires
  transcoding) http//www.icelus.org/

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Resources - DVD Burning

• Dvd-rw-tools growisofs http//fy.chalmers.se
  /appro/linux/DVDRW
• DVD Author http//dvdauthor.sourceforge.net
  /
• GUI front-end for dvdauthor http//qdvdauthor.s
  ourceforge.net/
• DVDStyler - GUI front-end for dvdauthor http//dvd
  styler.sourceforge.net/
• DVD Slideshow http//dvd-slideshow.sourceforg
  e.net/
• Linux Journal artile on DVD authoring
  http//www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid6953
• Linux Gazette DVD burning howto http//www.linuxg
  azette.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/

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Resources - Misc.

• Libmpeg http//libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/downloads
  .html
• Transcode http//www.theorie.physik.unigoetting
  en.de/ostreich/transcode/
• Commercial DVD burning package - GearPro for
  Linux http//www.gearsoftware.com/products/ProLinu
  x/index.cfm
• Linux video studio - GUI for editing
  http//packages.debian.org/stable/graphics/linuxvi
  deostudio