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Messages - Pnuts

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31
Users / Re: Between a rock and a hard place
« on: May 29, 2009, 02:15:01 am »
Hmmm...again dont be so blinded by the need to have this or that on the Core's motherboard. We are still building systems with i945 motherbaords...they work fine with a reasonable nVidia card installed. I am writing this on this on a ASUS Eee Box...you can even build a Core around that (we have done so). It works and is cheap.

Less talk...more do! ;-)

Andrew

Its more so, everything has a cost. I can spend money and do as you suggest, or do what im doing, using what I have at no cost to me. Whats cheap to one person could be a months savings to another.

Basically I have a Dell Optiplex 760 and a MSI Wind Nettop at my disposal aside from a 2xlaptops and a Windows XP Media center I dare not touch in fear of the wife.

Thanks, Pnuts :)
I've seen various postings from you and see your status as "veteran" so don't do yourself down ;)
Have you got 810 Alpha working yet? Is it painless or a nightmare?

Well so far I had one attempt a few weeks back at the install on the Optiplex 760 mentioned above. I got past the AV wizard, but I guess it didnt like the Intel GMA 4500 video card as the photo's froze it. After disabling the photos, it seemed to just work. unfortunately, I got the update that broke it here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=8081.0

Just finished the installation again last Tuesday night but did it as a core only instead of hybrid. Next chance I get, ill setup the nettop as the first MD and then get my HDHomerun going. Maybe this weekend? Also, I'm not sure if ill run into any issues doing this but ill find out, I used the Alternate installation disk and have 2x320gb drives in a software RAID 0 as the root partition.

Im also debating trying to set it up on a server in my garage. It was a Windows 2k3 box (Core Duo 3ghz with 8gb RAM and Raid 5), but I have since replaced it with Ubuntu 9.04 and have several KVM images running on it. After reading the post on doing this, im considering it as my current images are doing almost nothing to the system so I do not think IO would be an issue.

-Pnuts

32
Users / Re: Between a rock and a hard place
« on: May 29, 2009, 01:29:49 am »
Well, im kind of in our boat. My system for 710 failed and its not worththe effort to get it functional again.

I figure, I have 3 choices, buy 710 stuff (hard to find, not really worth it with 810 in the future), wait for 810, or try 810 alpha.

I have a fairly new machine that will not work with 710 at all and figured why not roll with the 810 alpha. I was planning to use it as a 810 core anyways come release so...

I've also been learning Linux for the last few months and even have work offering to pay for some upcoming classes im taking. Im about ready to completely drop Windows at home too. I honestly have no idea why I never looked at Linux sooner. I figure doing this well present issues that could further my knowledge while im at it too.

33
Users / Re: Access file server on external network
« on: May 29, 2009, 01:17:06 am »
Your best option would be to move it over... Move everything over.

However, as long as your only going from internal to external, you should still be able to access everything on the external NIC directly by IP, possibly by name depending on how your router is setup.

You shouldnt even need to port forward or do some type of configuration if your trying to go from external to internal networks.

34
I'm a Linux Newbie, but would something like this work:

Boot a ubuntu live cd

edit the /etc/fstab file and remove the line for the 2nd HD mounting to /home

then mkdir /home

then cp that drive to /home on the main drive

then reboot?

looks like you have the space on the root drive to do this, I'm not 100% sure if it would work though, but worth a try if you backup the fstab file?

 ???

35
Users / Re: I'm Overwhelmed, please help!
« on: May 22, 2009, 12:22:06 am »

My Chi is being re-centered.  Thanks for that little nugget of goodness Pnut.

EDIT ADD:  Another thing that has bothered/concerned me.  What about the EPG that comcast gives out.  Does that carry over to the HDHomerun?  do i have to pay for a service like that ServiceDirect or whatever it is?

Ok so added my new revised list:

1 - GBE NIC
2-3 HDHomeruns (to power 5 "TV's" and 1 record)
DO NOT NEED added TV Tuner or PVR Cards (Right??)

ps.  thanks for the website Pnuts.  But i have no idea wtf that is.  :-[

PPS.  Thanks again to everyone that is posting.  You are a salvation in my world and using your info has helped me greatly.  (didn't even know about that HDHomerun thingy.  PROPS)

The website is basically a listing of channels that are detected when performing a channel scan with a digital tuner, like the HDHomerun. Using someones entry for my area (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area%2C_CA#San_Francisco.2C_CA_94118_-_Comcast) and based off of the updated date of April 2009, I could expect to pick up the channels listed there at the minimum.

slight off topic blurb:
Quote
I say minimum because by default mythtv channel scans will ignore encrypted frequencies when scanning. Mythtv only checks the initial channel in the frequency and moves on to the next frequency if encrypted. If you have it scan everything, it will find additional channels on frequencies that start with an encrypted channel. an example would be like this:

say frequency 112 has 5 channels and the the first 2 are encrypted but the last 3 are not.

112.1 - Encrypted
112.2 - Encrypted
112.3 - Unknown channel
112.4 - Unknown channel
112.5 - Unknown channel

Myth will ignore the last 3 as if they do not exist even though they do and are available.

Also, i believe (someone please correct me if im wrong here. My LMCE system bit the dust and my new hardware is not 710 complient, so i cant confirm this) if you are watching or recording 2+ channels on the same frequency, you are only using 1 tuner. So you may not need to buy as many HDHomeruns as you think depending on channel grouping in your area.

an example is FOX and CBS are on the same frequancy in my area, so i can record a show on both channels at the same time and only use 1 tuner. Additionally, multiple rooms could be viewing this channel and still only use that 1 tuner. Someone else is free to watch something else and use the other tuner of my HDHomerun. So you might not need 3 of them, but i guess it couldnt hurt.

I have an excel sheet of my local channels and such, ill post it as an example to reference once I get home.

36
Users / Re: I'm Overwhelmed, please help!
« on: May 21, 2009, 10:02:49 pm »
Here is a good website to scan through to get an idea of what you get in your area with what providers:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Working_QAM_cable_layout

37
Users / Re: I'm Overwhelmed, please help!
« on: May 21, 2009, 10:00:58 pm »
Ahh ok. I dont have comcast myself but a friend was just complaining to me that he had to get a comcast specific settop box because his generic one suddenly stopped working. It sounded to me like they had switched from clear QAM to something else. Just as a warning, it seems like your milage may vary here. And comcast is constantly screwing with this stuff anyway so something that works today might not work tomorrow, with no warning.

I agree, who knows if\when comcast will change this. Before I bought my HDHomerun, i did a bunch of google searches where people praised comcast for sending most of teh channels without encryption. This was one of the deciding factors before I bought it. Something to note though, I did find several reports of Comcast switching channels around every now and then. While its easy to fix, I imagine its annoying. Has not happened to me yet... <knocks on wood>

38
Users / Re: I'm Overwhelmed, please help!
« on: May 21, 2009, 09:40:29 pm »
Be carefull on the HD stuff, every cable service i know of encrypts these channels and requires you to use their box to view them. And since there currently is no HD capture solution that works in linux, youre sol there. The HDHomeRun will *NOT* help in this case, it is for unecrypted channels only. And last I knew comcast is now encrypting every single channel. Hauppauge has a component input capture device that will be suitable for this eventually, but as of right now there are no drivers for linux. Your only choice if you must have PVR functionality is to use an SD capture device like the hauppague PVR-x50 cards with svideo from the cable box. Which of course means your HD programs will be turned into SD recordings.
Other than that it looks like youve got a pretty good start on a full house solution and have a good plan for the future.

Not True.

I have the Comcast Digital starterpack in the San Francisco, California, Bay Area and only the premium channels are encrypted. Infact, I get several channels that are not broadcast through the cable box even, including a few HD ones like KOFY.

The down side is that only 6 channels come with call signs already, the others are all identified as unknown. Because of this I have to manually set what each channel is before I can get the guide data to download properly.

I use the HDHomerun

Edit: Comcast uses QAM

39
Users / Re: Tip: Redundant Wifi = WAF
« on: May 21, 2009, 12:14:13 am »
1 problem I have run into trying this is that say you restart your Core. If the wife is already connected to the LMCE wireless network, it will not try to connect to the secondary network as its connected to teh wireless router, not the core itself. They would have to manually select the second network.

They also will not be able to access all of the network devices such as printers or file servers if they switch to the secondary network.

40
Feature requests & roadmap / Re: DisplayLink opens up Source Code
« on: May 17, 2009, 01:27:06 am »
I have to support a USB video devices at work, various types of them, for laptops that do not have a docking station. Im not sure how well they would function on Linux, but I wouldnt suggest them to anyone. Because they are USB, the more data they pull over the connection, the more work the CPU is burdened with.

They are also rather laggy. it isnt very apperant if the only display is on it, but when side by side with a standard display (like the laptop monitor) it is extremely noticable. For UI1, I think it might be doable but I wouldnt expect UI2. Video playback might also take a bad hit the higher the quality you go.

-Pnuts

41
Users / Re: New in the Wiki: Alx9r's Sample Setup
« on: May 13, 2009, 12:08:48 am »
after reading through it, you might want to consider "how to select hardware for a LMCE system" instead of mainboards. You are touching on a lot more then simply mainboards. This will be especially true if you include some of dave89's suggestions. This is a great guide!

42
very nicely laid out and informative. Ill give you the nic\audio info in the other thread when i can get a chance.

43
Installation issues / Re: 8.10 Hybrid Core
« on: May 06, 2009, 07:18:48 am »
I gave it a whirl on a PC with an on-board Intel 4500 video card which didn't seem to get along to well. I'll give it a try again in Beta, but until then I'm going to finish working out my kinks in 710 and learn the system as much as I can.

44
Users / Re: Mythtv channels
« on: May 04, 2009, 11:00:35 pm »
While I'm on this thought path, I think it might be easier for me to simply make an image of the drive once I finish and I can use that if I ever need to reinstall as it would be faster and have the channels populated correctly already in the image.

The only issue with that is when LMCE 810 is released officially, im going to do a clean install on newer hardware that currently issnt supported in 710. I'll have to figure out a way then to export or move the data over then.

I'll do some testing with the above script tonight and see if it gets teh job done. I was surprised to find so little info about exporting a channel.conf from mythtv, just a lot of exporting it from other programs for mythtv.

45
Users / Re: New 810 Install Hardware Advice please :)
« on: May 04, 2009, 10:26:04 pm »
I do not think there is a list because of the vast amounts of hardware out there. I know all users are encouraged to create personal pages in the Wiki with their hardware listed so if a search is done by someone else, they can atleast know someone else is using it or if someone has it working.

What I have done before I buy anything is if it doesnt come up in the wiki or the forums, i google ubuntu 7.10 and what ever hardware it is. I assume 8.10 could be used for the new version. For the most part that should let you know if you can use it or not and at the very least possibly let you know what you will have to do in order to get it working.

If all else fails, you can start a thread, but unless you already own the hardware, you cant really troubleshoot and issues and everything is simply speculation if not references from the above forum search.

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