LUG GT : MythTV

1
LUG _at_ GT MythTV

• March 29, 2006
• Charles Brian Quinn me_at_seebq.com
• http//www.seebq.com/

2
MythTV Overview

• "MythTV is a homebrew PVR project that I've been
  working on in my spare time. It's been under
  heavy development for almost four years, and is
  now quite useable and featureful." -- Issac
  Richards
• MythTV is a GPL open source application for Linux
  designed to allow any computer (that meets the
  specified minimum requirements) to function as a
  personal video recorder. -- Wikipedia

3
Recent Press and News

• washingtonpost.com 1 MythTV Invades Realm of
  Cable and TiVo thorough intro, and history of
  MythTV -- compares purchased ready-made MythTV
  box to TIVO box, financially featurewise
  (Digg.)
• Linux.com reviews MythTV 0.19 (LWN)
• Championed by EFF stalwarts Wendy Seltzer, and
  EFF Chairman Brad Templeton
• Juicy Gossip Jarod Wilson (of Fedora Guide) now
  working at RedHat.

4
MythTV Features

• distributed "Frontend/Backend" architecture which
  allows multiple machines to remotely serve
  content from a single server
• ability to analyze recorded shows for commercials
  and give users the option of skipping commercials
  during playback
• ability to watch recordings at an
  accelerated/decelerated rate, adjusting the audio
  pitch as necessary
• ability to intelligently schedule recordings and
  avoid conflicts as needed

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MythTV Features cont

• availability of free guide data for TV listings
  (in the United States and Canada, thanks to a
  gracious third-party vendor Zap2it Labs), as well
  as support for XMLTV listings in most other
  countries
• ability to pause, skip, and rewind live TV
• ability to schedule, administer, or list many
  functions of the system via web-based interface
• Support for both ATSC and DVB high-definition
  television
• Support for multiple tuner cards for multiple
  simultaneous recordings and picture in picture

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MythTV Features cont

• And lots more

7
Hardware

• Hardware selection is often the most complex and
  most frequently asked
• MythTV exercises your hardware more than a
  typical desktop
• Mark Cooper has setup a hardware database at
  http//pvrhw.goldfish.org/.
• the archives of the mythtv-users mailing list at
  http//www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/ are
  a good resource
• post to the mythtv-users mailing list

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Hardware cont

• Video Capture Devices
• Frame Grabbers - see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/
  video4linux/bttv for a partial listing
• Hardware MPEG-2 Decoders - Hauppauge
  PVR-150/250/350/500, Avermedia M179, Hauppauge
  "Freestyle" or Yuan M600 cards will allow you to
  use dedicated hardware encoders rather than your
  CPU (using the IvyTV drivers)
• DVB Capture Cards - primarily found in Europe
  (where it comes in DVB-C, DVB-T and DVB-S
  varieties for Cable, Terrestrial and Satellite) -
  the interface for HDTV as well -- see the DVB
  Wiki at http//www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main
  _Page
• HDTV Capture Cards - Air2PC PCI (8VSB),
  pcHDTV-2000 (8VSB), Air2PC HD5000 (8VSB, QAM256),
  pcHDTV-3000 (8VSB, QAM256), dvico Fusion HDTV
  Lite 5 (8VSB, QAM256)
• Firewire - the Motorola DCT6200 or the SA3250
• Other - USB, DBoxII

9
Performance

• A PIII/733MHz system can encode one video stream
  using the MPEG-4 codec using 480x480 capture
  resolution (this does not allow for live TV
  watching, but does allow for encoding video and
  then watching it later)
• An AMD1800 system can almost encode two MPEG-4
  video streams and watch one program
  simultaneously
• A PIII/800MHz system with 512MB RAM can encode
  one video stream using the RTjpeg codec with
  480x480 capture resolution and play it back
  simultaneously, thereby allowing live TV watching
• A dual Celeron/450MHz is able to view a 480x480
  MPEG-4/3300kbps file created on a different
  system with 30 CPU usage
• A P4 2.4GHz machine can encode two 3300Kbps
  480x480 MPEG-4 files and simultaneously serve
  content to a remote frontend
• An Athlon 1800XP can decode a 720x480 8Mbps
  MPEG-2 file using 10 CPU
• An Athlon 1GHz can decode a 720x480 16Mbps MPEG-2
  file using 30-50 CPU, can decode a 480x480
  16Mbps MPEG-2 using 30 CPU and approximately 30
  for Live TV at 416x480
• A P3-550 can decode a 480x480 16Mbps MPEG-2 file
  with 55 CPU
• A Celeron 450 (no SSE) can decode a 480x480
  16Mbps MPEG-2 file with 80 CPU.

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Software Requirements

• Linux
• mySQL (3.23 min)
• gcc, freetype2-devel, xorg-xserver-devel,
• The QT libraries (qt-devel 3.2 gt 4.0)
• LAME libraries (lame)
• Optionally cdialog, lircd (remote), perl (XMLTV)

11
Some HowTo(s)

• Easiest way LiveCD or Diskless PXE Image
  (FrontEnd/Backend Combo)
• KnoppMyth ( http//mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
  )
• Diskless Ubuntu, MiniMyth ( http//linpvr.org/ )
  - only for Via Epia systems
• Next best Pre-compiled Binaries (to name a few)
• Fedora / RedHat Jarod Wilson's
  (jcw_at_wilsonet.com) HOWTO at http//wilsonet.com/my
  thtv/ - packaged by Axel.Thimm_at_ATrpms.net at
  http//ATrpms.net/topic/multimedia/. yum install
  mythtv-suite
• Debian maintained by Christian Marillat
  marillat_at_free.fr and are available at
  http//debian.video.free.fr/. apt-get
  mythtv-suite
• Gentoo (emerge mythtv)
• Mac OS X (Frontend only)
• Compile from Source
• See the mythTV docs http//www.mythtv.org/docs/myt
  htv-HOWTO-4.html

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Tricking it out

• LVM Partitioning
• Using XFS or JFS (not ReiserFS)
• Multiple slave backends and frontends
• Epia Via M1000, Xbox, that old machine in your
  closet, your Mac (OS X)
• Dynamic DNS - mythweb
• telnet control, VNC, IR programming, RF input
• Jobs, transcoding, commercial detection
• X-Video Motion Compensation ( XvMC )

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More Tricks (Addons)

• MythMail 1 - A POP3 Client for the
  Mythfrontend. 2
• MythRecipe 3 - Recipes for your TV computer in
  the kitchen
• MythKaraoke 5 - Listen to Music and sing it
• MythFM 6 - Listen to Radio
• MythStream 7 - Playing of Audio and Videos
  Streams in MythTV
• MythBurnUI 8 - A Plugin to use the MythBurn
  scripts with the frontend. (Can only be
  downloaded via CVS!)MythCalendar 9 - A
  calendaring system for MythTV
• MythTiVo 10 - A GUI Front End to allow
  selection of Now Showing Items from any IP
  connected TiVo. (For MythTV 0.11.)
• Torrentocracy 11 - A Bittorrent client that has
  RSS support (For MythTV 0.11.)
• MythChannels 12 - A Plugin to configure the
  Channels. (For MythTV 0.15.)edit
• MythBurn 13 14 - An extension to MythWeb, so
  that you can burn your Recordings to CD/DVD.
• MythStreamTV 15 - Live transcoding and
  streaming of MythTV recordings over the network
• TVWish 16 - Generate/grab a list of the
  hundreds of top movies you wish to see someday,
  and arrange for them to be recorded if they are
  ever on TV
• MythHelper 17 - MythHelper is a Windows
  application which has been created to aid in the
  process of transcoding recordings from a MythTV
  machine
• DsMyth 18 - A collection of DirectShow filters
  and applications that enables playback of MythTV
  .nuv files on windows. The idea is to allow
  almost any mediaplayer to handle mythtv nuv files
  including streaming files from the backend and
  wathching livetv
• WinMyth 19 - A Windows Frontend for MythTV

14
The Coolness

• myth2ipod http//www.myth2ipod.com/myth2ipod.html
  -script that generates a transcoded .mov file as
  well as an XML file description and PHP file
  (feed.php) that reads all of the xml files in
  that directory and generates an RSS feed (ATOM,
  RSS-enclosure)
• MythTV Bittorrent podcasting - script that
  transcodes then builds torrent files RSS'ed and
  sent to a torrent tracker - http//bt.rezsoft.org/
  - by Rez Mang and Omar Zaki
• 3GP encoding (Nokia phones format)
  http//www.rezsoft.org/3gp/

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Resources

• http//www.mythtv.org/
• http//mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
• http//wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php
• http//mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
• http//linpvr.org/
• http//wendy.seltzer.org/mythtv/
• http//www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/