Xbox as a MD

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I believe the UK and the USA are the 2 countries that both have good program data from Data Direct without screen scraping like xmltv does.  But the mythtvtalk.com forum may be the best source.

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actually yes..... My system consists of this setup


Backend...

Amd athlon xp 1800+
1 gig pc 133 sdram
400 gb HD space (2 200 gbs in raid)
cheapo dvdrom
nvidia gforce mx 4000 video card (with video out)
2 - PVR 250's (one controlling analog cable, one controlling a Digital Cable Box)

Frontend...

AMD Athlong 64 2800
1 gig PC3300 DDR Ram
160 GB HD (single Drive)
Geforce mx 4000 Video Card with TV Out
2 PVR- 150's (1 digital cable, 1 analog)
Liteon DVDRW
Small Form Factor Case


Frontends 2 3 4

Xbox's
with DVD Remotes (official ones, as i couldnt get the cheapo clone ones to work)


This enables me to watch on the 4 frontends, 1 channel each (everyone in my family has a frontend in their room)

if im the only one, i can switch which one im watching (Inputs), or enable Picture in Picture.

and yes, i can actually record 4 programs at 1 time... it was a bit to setup, and get working properly (lots of NFS shares, and beer is needed) - But im very happy with it now... and soon, ill have to get rid of it in order to try out my PlutoSetup - i know i can get the pluto on the xbox to work as a frontend (media thingy) just need some time... im building a new home, so all my extra time is getting devoted to wireing the hell out of it (cat5e in everyroom, rg6, and now im thinking fiber)... so as i get some time ill look in to it, but dont forget you can always install myth standalone, on the xbox's and just enter your server information in the setup, and as always my mythtv xbox walkthrough is at

http://www.controlaltdeleted.com/xbox/content/view/53/27/

- J0ly

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J0ly, thanks great info.
At present we have 3 xboxes which we run [cough] a certain media player
on.
All the movies and my mp3's are located on my windows server, 4 x 250gb disks.
Now I'd prefer not to move them to the linux box I build for the pluto/myth
backend, I assume I can smbmount them from the linux box?

I'll probably put another disk in one of the xboxes to try xebain/myth out on
so I dont trash what I have on there for the time being.

Cheers
M

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mike,


You shouldnt trash it, it takes barly any space what-so-ever on the edrive, mabey 2 -3 gig
are your running evox as a dashboard?

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as well, i should note, if you follow my guide, it wont remove anything from your existing install, i run XBMC and mythtv on the same install, just had to add a menu item to them... and yes you can use SMB share, you just need to install samba on your installation, but i would probably do that on my backend not the front end, and then NFS share it out from the backend!  (much easier, and more realiable).  i have my backend pulling my download dir on my windows box to a video dir on my mythtv, they all share the same database, so when i do an update videos, it pulls all the new "stuff" from my windows box into the db, then i can watch my divx, xvid's ect....

one of the challenges you'll have with mythtv is making sure all of them pull from the same directorys (on every machine) so basically you want to make sure all your video directory are setup like

video dir:
/mnt/video

tv dir:
/mnt/tv


and have sythlinks to these directorys (sythetic links)

so on the backend you would have a sythlink from /myth/video to /mnt/video  
and
/myth/tv to /mnt/tv

what i actually did was a little different... here is a great guide from the guys over at knoppmyth for a system he called LinHES: Linux Home Entertainment System.

http://mysettopbox.tv/linhes.html

i followed this pretty much to the "T" and it gave me a ton of ideas, i only had a few problems getting my frontend to burn dvd's from encoded shows, but that was more of a database issue since i use it as a backend as well.

if you have any questions, post away man, anything i can do to help this community out is great.. Now i just need to find a sweet deal on some X10  components and ill be a happy geek (i have none right now, and really dont know what im looking for, but ebay is being a bust, and being up in Canada, means i have to pay so much in shipping and duty - It Sucks!)

- J0ly

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mike,


You shouldnt trash it, it takes barly any space what-so-ever on the edrive, mabey 2 -3 gig
are your running evox as a dashboard?

I'm running Avalaunch.
So are you saying I can install Xebian and mythtv on the existing disk and leave my other dashboard and few apps on etc?

I should read your instructions fully, got the xebian files tarball coming down now.

thanks
Mike

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yes, xebian will be your mythtv....  so you can have all your exsisting stuff on your xbox, and have a xebian (linux) / mythtv on their as well.. did you upgrade your harddrive on your xbox?

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Great stuff. I've put a 40gb in one of them, although all the space is on F I think.
I've managed to clear 4.4gb on E, so I should be good to go.

ta
Mike

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when launching linux, (if you followed my guide) it will launch mythtv for you automatically. Do you have a usb adapter for your xbox at all? if not, you will probably have to install VNC on your xbox once it is up, so that you can enter the server settings and such from your computer on to it. a good guide for that is here.

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=x11vncHowTo

but dont forget to do an apt-get update first

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thanks. I dont have a USB adaptor, sounds like I will have some vnc fun then.

Drat, I downloaded a later version of Xebian!

qqqqqqqMythTV-XBox **Warning**qqqqqqqqqqk
                  x You must use a Xebian 1.1.0-xbox CD,   x  
                  x found  Version : 1.1.4-xbox  .         x  
                  x Exiting ..


that will teach me! Any way round that or must I download again.

thanks
Mike

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yes actually.... one sec, ill find it

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if you downloaded the mythtv install package from
http://bit.blkbk.com/mythtv-xbox.0.4.5-beta.tar.gz

uncompress it, according to my walkthrough, then edit the file

install.pl  

ie:

nano install.pl

find the line

$version = "0.4.5-beta";
$distro = "mythtv-xbox.$version.tar.gz";
$TITLE = "MythTV-XBox (MXB-$version) Installer (c) 2004 Dennis Cartier <pvr\@trigger.net>";
$compatible = "1.1.0-xbox";
$feedback = "";

and change to

$version = "0.4.5-beta";
$distro = "mythtv-xbox.$version.tar.gz";
$TITLE = "MythTV-XBox (MXB-$version) Installer (c) 2004 Dennis Cartier <pvr\@trigger.net>";
$compatible = "1.1.4-xbox";
$feedback = "";

ive heard this works!

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sorry, then continue with the walkthrough, forgot to add that

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yes actually.... one sec, ill find it

Thanks j0ly!
I found the check in the perl file before I ready your post, so it seems fine past there, then it gets to the NFS section, I fill those bits in and then, when it starts copying:-

Code: [Select]

/dev/cloop/0: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/mnt/livefs/*': No such file or directory
cp: cannot create regular file `/tmp/target/etc/fstab': No such file or directory

It then prompts me for IP, subnet, gw etc. and then bombs out.

any pointers as to why it should do that?

Mike

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Hmm, there are some nasty looking errors from dmesg :-

sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 7, driver = 00
sda : sense not available.
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.  
 /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
 unable to read partition table
 I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0

M