I’ll be writing up my tips, tricks and configs for my MythTV installation on a Mythbuntu server during the next few days. The first section is dedicated to the requirements of my particular installation while the following ones will focus on particular issues of the installation.
My MythTV box used to be based on a Gentoo system. Beautiful as it was, Gentoo forced me to upgrade this and that here and there, sometimes breaking packages on the way or having unresolved dependencies. This generally is the result of the packages or the ebuilds not being tested well enough. Originally I opted for Gentoo for its superior hardware support. Because Gentoo uses very recent packages, everything is pretty bleeding edge. At the time this was essential getting my hardware to run smoothly. By now though this has changed and Ubuntu supports everything I need minus the headaches when upgrading.
Prerequisite
The hardware section will list specifics about my hardware used and plans for the future.
- backend server with a dual TV tuner card
- mythfrontend on server box
- mythfrontends from collectivity.goof.com on MacBook Pro and MacBook
The frontend that runs directly on the server outputs its signal via an NVidia Geforce 7300 card on the DVI port. I use a DVI-HDMI cable to connect it to my Pioneer PDP-436-XDE HD plasma display.
The card does feature a HDMI output which would of course be nice if I could use it. I could even send audio across that same cable as the XFX Card does also feature an S/PDIF input connector. However I’d never had the nerve to mess with digital audio on my Linux box. Also I guess my xorg.conf would need to be different to address the HDMI out.
I usually use the MacBooks internal display and don’t connect it to a TV and the like.