This weekend I downloaded the pre-packed DVD setup of Mythdora, as suggested from a website I found, rather than trying to go through the pain of installing Fedora and all the components, drivers, etc of MythTV. And to be honest it's pretty cool. Once the DVD finishes with it's install, you proceed to setting up the MythTV portion itself. Being a person who is tech savvy, I was still at a loss for most of the options which are filled in by default. This ended up leading to some problems as I'll detail below. However, for the amount of time(bout 2 hours with install and fiddling) and effort(not much) I put into it, I felt like it gave me a decent return and a nice base to start from.
Now for the problems.
The first thing I noticed as it was sitting on my desk all hooked up like a normal PC is that none of the menus are mouse sensitive by default. Arrow keys are the method of input. (unless you happen to have an IR receiver and remote and then the directional keys on that are used I believe) The first thing I tried was watching some cartoons, the ideal reason to have a tv tuner in a normal PC. Not sure where the problem lies, it sees the tuner card, but gives an error about attempting to access it. Ok. So I tossed in a DVD. Select "Optical Drives" and the movie starts. Hurray! No problems there. Put some mp3's and divx movies on the machine, unplug it and haul it downstairs to the TV/stereo. To my surprise the card actually activates the TV on boot (you see the Dell BIOS splash screen even) and then watch the boot up process. I was very happy. Then when MythTV itself comes up I noticed the screen is off. Only way to describe is if you moved the image on your monitor way to the right and down(on screen controls) so you could only see about 50-75% of the actual screen. As TV's dont come with these kinds of tweaks, I'm not sure what to do. Tried another video card and it worked better, but had issues itself.
My final judgment on my first test and attempt at a LMC, Mythdora is a nice start.
Machine Specifications:
Dell Dimension 4800
- P3 866 CPU
- 512 megs ram
- NVidia GeForce 3 (128meg) AGP card, also tried NVidia 6200 FX (256 meg)
- ATI TV Wonder PRO card
- Panasonic 37" Standard CRT TV connected via S-Video
Problem synapsis:
- When hooked to s-video(GeForce 3), TV picture is shown off screen (down and to the right) showing only 75% of display.
- When hooked to VGA out(6200 FX), Windows on the machine stop responding after about 30 seconds of interaction. Video never plays.
- TV Tuner card does not work with software as setup by default.