{"id":923,"date":"2009-06-15T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/?p=923"},"modified":"2010-12-30T11:37:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T11:37:11","slug":"building-a-mythtv-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/06\/building-a-mythtv-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a MythTV Box"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/mythtv.png?resize=180%2C64&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"mythtv\" title=\"mythtv\" width=\"180\" height=\"64\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-952\" \/> We have quite a good <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2006\/01\/humax-pvr9200t-digital-hard-disk-recorder-1st-jan-2006-200-from-john-lewis\/\">Freeview box<\/a> which does scheduled recordings including series-record but it could be better because it is missing a HD output, DVD playback and Video streaming.<\/p>\n<p>We decided to build our own <acronym title=\"Home Theatre Personal Computer\">HTPC<\/acronym> in order to take control of our viewing options once and for all.<\/p>\n<h4>Hardware List:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Case:<\/strong> Lian Li PC-C37B Muse HTPC Chassis &#8211; Black. This case didn&#8217;t come with a PSU so we bought a Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK).\n<li><strong>Motherboard:<\/strong> ASUS P5N7A-VM &#8211; micro ATX &#8211; GF 9300 \/ nForce 730i &#8211; LGA775 Socket &#8211; UDMA133, Serial ATA-300 (RAID), eSATA &#8211; Gigabit Ethernet &#8211; video &#8211; High Definition Audio (8-channel)\n<li><strong>CPU:<\/strong> Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo Processor &#8211; 3.00 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Socket LGA775, 45 nm\n<li><strong>RAM:<\/strong> 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 SDRAM, PC2-6400\n<li><strong>Hard Disk:<\/strong> Samsung SpinPoint HD103UJ F1 Series &#8211; 1 TB &#8211; 32 MB &#8211; 3.5&#8243; SATA\n<li><strong>DVD burner:<\/strong> Samsung SH-S223QBEBN 22x DVD?RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black)\n<li><strong>TV-Tuner card:<\/strong> Hauppauge Nova-T 500 twin TV-tuner card.\n<\/ul>\n<p>This list was based on the suggestions from page 56 of issue 117 of Linux Format Magazine. One thing to note is that the Nova-T 500 comes with a full-height backing plate so it wouldn&#8217;t fit into the case until Hauppauge, apon request, mailed us a half-height backing plate. The case fits in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/Images\/House\/SittingRoom_afterSmall.jpg\">Ikea Besta Burs TV Bench<\/a> (albeit with a little jigsaw butchery to the thin plywood back panel). The case is missing a IR port but the TV-Card comes with a external IR receiver which is perhaps more useful because it means the PC can be out of sight with only the little IR receiver poking out.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_front.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_front.jpg?resize=150%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"mythbox_front\" title=\"mythbox_front\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-1086\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_front.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_front.jpg?zoom=2&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_front.jpg?zoom=3&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_back.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_back.jpg?resize=150%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"mythbox_back\" title=\"mythbox_back\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-1084\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_back.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_back.jpg?zoom=2&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mythbox_back.jpg?zoom=3&amp;resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<h4>Software<\/h4>\n<p>Install and configure Arch using &#8220;The Beginners Guide&#8221;: <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.archlinux.org\/index.php\/Beginners_Guide\">http:\/\/wiki.archlinux.org\/index.php\/Beginners_Guide<\/a>. Then install MythTV using the great Arch wiki: <a href=\"http:\/\/wiki.archlinux.org\/index.php\/MythTV_HOWTO\">http:\/\/wiki.archlinux.org\/index.php\/MythTV_HOWTO<\/a><\/p>\n<h4>Issues<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Sound over HDMI<\/strong> &#8211; HDMI video worked out of the box but sound didn&#8217;t &#8211; To get sound through HDMI to the TV: Upgrade your version of ALSA, then in alsamixer, unmute all IEC958 channels (i.e. IEC958, IEC958-D, IEC958-1). Then:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>For Xine<\/strong> &#8211; Go to the audio tab and change the &#8220;audio-driver to use&#8221; to &#8220;alsa&#8221; and the &#8220;device used for stereo-output&#8221; to &#8220;pcm.hw:0,3&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li><strong>For Mplayer<\/strong> &#8211; Right click->Preferences->Audio. Select alsa from the Available drivers. Then click &#8220;Configure driver&#8221; and enter &#8220;hw=0,3&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>For MythTV<\/strong> &#8211; Go to Utilities\/Setup->Setup->General->&#8221;Next&#8221; until you get to the Audio section. In &#8220;Audio output device:&#8221; enter &#8220;ALSA:hw:0,3&#8221;. For MythTV DVD playback &#8211; Go to &#8220;Utilites\/Setup&#8221;->Setup->&#8221;Media Settings&#8221;->&#8221;Video Settings&#8221;->&#8221;Player Settings&#8221;-> and add &#8220;-ao alsa:device=hw=0.3&#8221; to the mplayer options in the the &#8220;Default Video Player&#8221; field.<\/li>\n<li><strong>For Flash<\/strong> &#8211; Create (or edit) a file called <em>~\/.asoundrc<\/em> and add the following: <em>\n<pre>defaults.pcm.device.3<\/pre>\n<p><\/em> so that flash uses the correct Audio output device.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>mythtv-setup<\/em> keeps crashing when tuning the channels<\/strong> &#8211; The solution is to run mythtv-setup using only one CPU core: <em>taskset -c 0 \/usr\/bin\/mythtv-setup<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tuning issues<\/strong> &#8211; The Nova-T 500 does not pick up a signal as well as normal stand-alone Freeview boxes or TVs. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/nova-td-500-tuning-issues\/\">I had quite a few problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have quite a good Freeview box which does scheduled recordings including series-record but it could be better because it is missing a HD output, DVD playback and Video streaming. We decided to build our own HTPC in order to take control of our viewing options once and for all. Hardware List: Case: Lian Li [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37,52],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-techjournal","tag-hardware","tag-mythtv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}