mythbuntu works fine with NZ freeview HD and freeview satellite straight out of the box much better than windows imo you'll need an invida card for GPU HD decoding large Hard drive, HD video can take up a fair bit of space.
to give you an idea of how important it is to get VDAPU working I have a 2.4 ghz intel box watching HD TV3 it would be up round 100% cpu barely keeping up. omce VPADU was working CPU is barely over 20% while recording at watching HD
as far as I'm aware all terrestrial HD and satellite cards do not have any hardware encoding they just dump the raw stream as mpg which the CPU processes. mythtv coupled with the correct type of nivida card using vdapu is able to off load this CPU intensive work to the GPU which is better designed to handle this type of work.
Shagy: mythbuntu works fine with NZ freeview HD and freeview satellite straight out of the box much better than windows imo you'll need an invida card for GPU HD decoding large Hard drive, HD video can take up a fair bit of space.
What Nvidia card do you have and what Tuner card do you use for the Freeview HD?
After researching more, and the replies from this forum, I think I will build my HTPC in 3 steps:
1- The main system CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition 3.2GHz Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H RAM: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x2GB PSU: Corsair CMPSU-550VX 550W (enough to have a good future Nvidia video card) Case: Silverstone Grandia GD04B (Black) Hard Disc: Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 32MB 1TB DVD: Samsung SH-S223C DVD burner
2- Video card plus Freeview HD TV Tuner
Once the main system is built and working with my DVB-S NOVA-S, I will look into buying a Nvidia video card and HD Tv tuner:
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GT 240 HDMI 512MB GDDR5 Tv Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV HVR-4000 (DVB-S and DVB-T)
3- Blu-Ray
Once Blu-Ray is mainstream and working in Linux, I will then buy one.
I will now make sure all my components in step 1 are compatible with each other before buying sometime next week, just in time to beat the GST increase!
Once Blu-Ray is mainstream and working in Linux, I will then buy one.
IMHO don't hold your breath. Because of the conditions placed on blue ray and the conditions of open source software my understanding is that Linux will never be able to legally play blue ray movies.
Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64
Shagy: mythbuntu works fine with NZ freeview HD and freeview satellite straight out of the box much better than windows imo you'll need an invida card for GPU HD decoding large Hard drive, HD video can take up a fair bit of space.
What Nvidia card do you have and what Tuner card do you use for the Freeview HD?
freeview HD nova T 500 which has duel tuners grphix nivida 8600 GT
I finally purchased and built the HTPC with the following components:
* CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition 3.2GHz * Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H (rev. 1.3) * RAM: Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 PC10600/1333MHz CL9 2x2GB * PSU: Corsair CMPSU-550VX 550W (enough to have a good future Nvidia video card) * Case: Silverstone Grandia GD04B (Black) * Hard Disc: Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 32MB 1TB * DVD: Samsung SH-S223C DVD burner
Purchased most from AlphaCity and motherboard from Ascent both delivered the next day.
Put it together in an afternoon, plug it in and everything just worked on the first try.
Installed the 32-bit Ubuntu 10.10 RC and no issues, the only part that did not get fully detected is the full RAM as I have 4 GB and on the 32-bit only less that 4 GB can be used or detected (was only seing 2.7GB). So I enabled PAE using this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnablingPAE
and now I can see 3.5 GB, so not fully detected yet (perhaps some is shared with the integrated graphics?). I will consider installing the 64-bit version once it comes out on October 10.
Next step is to try MythTV with the NOVA-S Plus card.
and now I can see 3.5 GB, so not fully detected yet (perhaps some is shared with the integrated graphics?). I will consider installing the 64-bit version once it comes out on October 10.
Next step is to try MythTV with the NOVA-S Plus card.
Umm your never going to see the whole 4gb on a 32bit OS, but your also correct that some of the memory should be shared with the integrated graphics (you can specify how much in the BIOS) unless that motherboard has sideport?
Have a look at XBMCFreak's modded version of XBMCLive, its a very polished version of XBMC integrated into Ubuntu minimal. He's even goes as far as replacing the splash screens with the XBMC logo and adding extra drivers not normally included. Also because he's used Ubuntu minimal it boots very quickly.
It also gives a more appliance feel and feels less like a PC running an application.
Thanks, I will have a look at XBMCFreak, I am using XBMC and Boxee on my other computer but without unlimited Download from my ISP for viewing online stream or downloading video and full access to Hulu, I prefer MythTv and stick to rental DVD.
I managed to get Video Acceleration working with the Radeon HD 4250 Integrated Graphic (RS880) on my motherboard.
Without these, I was getting CPU usage of 25-45% when viewing a H264 encoded movie trailer. With VA API, I am now getting 9 to 15% CPU usage for the same clip using the vaapi version of mplayer:
The latest kernels and ALSA have no problems with the VIA VT1828S chipset on my ASUS P55-E-Pro motherboard... and with some careful tweaking it will output to analog and digital output simultaneously - which Win 7 is famously and annoyingly unable to do.
Before this motherboard, I accomplished the same task with a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS - although that had SPDIF out via a 3.5mm phono jack (converted to RCA coaxial with a simple mono 3.5mm-to-RCA adapter).
THe ASUS M/B above has optical and coaxial digital outputs, which is nice.
If its a more modern motherboard and it doesn't have optical out on the I/O shield it may have an internal header, I would read the motherboard manual to confirm. If it does it will need a header like this:
If you want a really good system divide up a separate backend and frontend using mythtv. Make the frontend a quiet ion based system (acer revo or similar) and the backend a biger system full of hard disks and TV cards.
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