cogman
5th March 2008, 05:56
For a quick background, I am fairly familiar with linux and messing with configuration values in vi really doesn't scare me (emacs.. now thats a different story :P). I have this dream for a DVR system and I need advice on if my plan is doable and if some of the choices I'm considering are wise.
So first, the hardware. as a note I plan on using MythTV (from Ubuntu repositories) as the front end software, so linux compatibility is a must. As far as the hardware goes, I was thinking of a fairly cheap system that can handle playing back SD h264 files and do some fast encoding, probably to Mpeg2 or some lossless codec.
The system I was thinking about was an AMD X2 4000+ (Brisbane based) on an AMD 740 motherboard (I believe, newegg is not being served for me for some reason). That combination includes an ATI 3200 HD built in graphics card and is fairly cheap. Pop in 2 gb of ram and 250 GB of storage and I think that will suit me fine.
For the TV-Tuner, I was thinking of using the Encore FM*whatever* card (again, newegg is down so I don't have my model numbers in front of me). It is only a $20 card but most newegg reviews seem to agree that it has a pretty good picture quality. The scary thing about the card is that it doesn't have audio in, you have to provide that through your sound cards line in. This is probably the area that I am most iffy on, while I have read people stories of people getting the card to work I wonder if it is worth the hassle (though, I'm always up for a good challenge :).)
Next on the list of challenges is that I need to find out if you can configure a irda USB stick to become an IR blaster for changing channels on a DirectTV satellite receiver box. If so, great. I think that Lirc is able to do that but I am not entirely sure.
The next thing is possibly a driver challenge. Now, I don't think that I will need the H264 decoding abilities of the ATI graphics chip just yet, as pretty much every thing I will be recording will be SD. But if I do, what is the state of the ATI driver in linux and its ability to decode H264? Non-existant is where I believe but I don't know. If that is the case, do you guys think that it will be implemented any time soon? If not, the motherboard chosen should support a quad core if the need eventually arises (as it is not here now).
Finally to move on to the software related issues. The first big problem that maybe someone else has already tackled is that I don't want to store my recordings in some low quality codec, so what I was thinking is maybe using a quick codec (perhaps even lossless) to store the initial recordings and then either serving out the encoding process to my more powerful computer to crunch the numbers at some fairly high settings. IE, record in huffyuv, put the file into a folder "to be encoded" perhaps even placing said file on the network, then having my main computer grab any file in the "to be encoded" folder, encode it, then store it into the "encoded" folder. Perhaps even having the DVR help with the pileup if there is a lot of files in the "to be encoded" folder. Really, I don't think that would be too hard to script (I could probably do it) but what is MythTv''s flexibility in codec usage? Can it encode to whatever codec is available, or does it use some front end like mencoder ect?
Alright, thanks for the read and the suggestions. I believe this belongs in this forum but am not absolutely certain.
So first, the hardware. as a note I plan on using MythTV (from Ubuntu repositories) as the front end software, so linux compatibility is a must. As far as the hardware goes, I was thinking of a fairly cheap system that can handle playing back SD h264 files and do some fast encoding, probably to Mpeg2 or some lossless codec.
The system I was thinking about was an AMD X2 4000+ (Brisbane based) on an AMD 740 motherboard (I believe, newegg is not being served for me for some reason). That combination includes an ATI 3200 HD built in graphics card and is fairly cheap. Pop in 2 gb of ram and 250 GB of storage and I think that will suit me fine.
For the TV-Tuner, I was thinking of using the Encore FM*whatever* card (again, newegg is down so I don't have my model numbers in front of me). It is only a $20 card but most newegg reviews seem to agree that it has a pretty good picture quality. The scary thing about the card is that it doesn't have audio in, you have to provide that through your sound cards line in. This is probably the area that I am most iffy on, while I have read people stories of people getting the card to work I wonder if it is worth the hassle (though, I'm always up for a good challenge :).)
Next on the list of challenges is that I need to find out if you can configure a irda USB stick to become an IR blaster for changing channels on a DirectTV satellite receiver box. If so, great. I think that Lirc is able to do that but I am not entirely sure.
The next thing is possibly a driver challenge. Now, I don't think that I will need the H264 decoding abilities of the ATI graphics chip just yet, as pretty much every thing I will be recording will be SD. But if I do, what is the state of the ATI driver in linux and its ability to decode H264? Non-existant is where I believe but I don't know. If that is the case, do you guys think that it will be implemented any time soon? If not, the motherboard chosen should support a quad core if the need eventually arises (as it is not here now).
Finally to move on to the software related issues. The first big problem that maybe someone else has already tackled is that I don't want to store my recordings in some low quality codec, so what I was thinking is maybe using a quick codec (perhaps even lossless) to store the initial recordings and then either serving out the encoding process to my more powerful computer to crunch the numbers at some fairly high settings. IE, record in huffyuv, put the file into a folder "to be encoded" perhaps even placing said file on the network, then having my main computer grab any file in the "to be encoded" folder, encode it, then store it into the "encoded" folder. Perhaps even having the DVR help with the pileup if there is a lot of files in the "to be encoded" folder. Really, I don't think that would be too hard to script (I could probably do it) but what is MythTv''s flexibility in codec usage? Can it encode to whatever codec is available, or does it use some front end like mencoder ect?
Alright, thanks for the read and the suggestions. I believe this belongs in this forum but am not absolutely certain.