Building An Ubuntu MythTV Box
For this article we had decided upon Ubuntu with MythTV for our setup. Prior to using MythTV with Ubuntu we had used Fedora Core 6 with the MythTV 0.20 packages available through the ATRPMs repository, but as of late our interest has turned to Ubuntu with MythTV. MythTV 0.20 is available through official Ubuntu repositories and the Ubuntu Community Wiki has an area that details specifically how to setup the software no matter the backend/front-end combination. For our purposes we had used Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn with all updates as of May 20, 2007.
The Ubuntu 7.04 setup with MythTV had gone smoothly and in no time we were watching and recording TV using the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE. While we have done multiple MythTV setups in the past, it was incredibly easy to setup on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Our system was more than fast enough to handle the dual TV tuners and all asssociated tasks and the system had run great. The Intel GMA 3000 did have a bit of lag to it when watching videos on an LCD display, but that can easily be replaced with a NVIDIA GeForce 6 or 7 graphics card.
When it comes to MythTV plug-ins two of our favorite are MythWeb and MythArchive. MythWeb makes it especially easy to schedule and manage recordings from any computer on your network simply using your web browser. MythArchive handles archiving recordings to a CD/DVD or to another location on your hard drive, which makes it much easier to transfer MythTV recordings from one machine to another. Some other MythTV plug-ins include MythMusic, MythGallery, MythWeather, MythPhone, MythFlix, and MythStreamTV.
In this short article we hope it was helpful if you're new to the MythTV scene and are still in the process of choosing hardware for a MythTV setup or if you're picking a Linux distribution to use. If you have any additional questions, they can be answered in the Phoronix Forums.
If you are brand new to Linux or are just looking to gain the most potential out of your MythTV installation, you may want to check out Practical MythTV by Stewart Smith and Michael Still. This 343 page book looks at taking control of your living room using MythTV and open-source software.
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