Building my own PVR

In the column at left I have added a new entry for retired parts.  Perhaps "retired" isn't the best word for this....The Dell Optiplex GX110 (933 MHz Pentium III, 384 MB) has failed to boot for the last time.   A stripped-down configuration of no expansion cards, no hard drives, no floppy, no CD-ROM, no memory, just a CPU and motherboard correctly deciphered it could not boot without a stick of memory.

With the 128 MB stick in, it booted once out of approximately 20 attempts.   With the 256 MB in, it booted in approximately 1 in 20 attempts and stated that the memory was corrupted.  Thus, facing the possibility of running on only 128 MB and only if the wind blew in the right directio ther moment I went to boot, I declared the computer unsalvageable on Saturday.

Note, the last time I restarted the computer it was a little "hit-and-miss" on the boot, so I kept it running for > 160 days.  Not a bad way for a computer to go out.

This led to a trip to The Computer Place and a brand new, running configuration.  More on this later. 

Follow this logic if you will:

1) We have many many digital photos saved on a 300GB hard drive.
2) We had no backup plan.
3) I got two 250 GB Western Digital hard drives and an ATA-133 RAID card to solve the immediate problem of photo loss due to drive failure (purchased from the outlet at CDW.com).
4) This maneuver freed up a 300 GB hard drive for the PVR, but I had never considered installing Logical Volume Manager [links to definition, Wikipedia] for the /var/video partition. So, the 300 GB now sits installed in the machine unused while the number of programs we have on tap at any given time fails to satisfy every possible whim.

I had thought that tghe next version of Mythtv (0.21) would correlate Recording Groups with individual file folders, meaning I would never have to learn how to implement LVM to have 460 GB of filesystem. However, whatever source I read that left me with that impression cannot be found tonight.

I will use the new drive to make a very important change, one that may interest those attempting a similar transition in the future. I am switching from Mandriva to Kubuntu. It will be a whole new world to learn, and I can go incrementally while keeping the 160 GB drive running with my custom kernel of 2+ years ago. The recorder should not miss a show, if I remember to restart when i am done tinkering.

OK, so my plan of last Monday was completely wrong. I'm not messing up my kernel right now. Not to say I didn't try. I had my Mandriva 2006 Free install disks all ready to go, but I think I have scratched up the first of the three disks. Not having an .iso file handy, I was out of luck.

Therefore, I decided to play around a bit - I changed installation sources and compiled a kernel based on the one supplied w/Mandriva 2006. But once compiled, I tried installing the proprietary NVIDIA driver with the new kernel, as at the time I could see nothing. It didn't work so well, and so I reverted back to my original kernel, reinstalled the NVIDIA driver I was using, and all was well.

Now, I realize that all I want to do is upgrade MythTV. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, and there seems to be no reason at all to upgrade my base system. So, let's see what I need to do to upgrade MythTV. I realize I need to read some instructions.

Here on Labor Day in the United States, I am contemplating doing something rather dumb. Instead of running around in the sunshine, I want to update my MythTV box. Thankfully, I just had a long nine-day vacation which provided nine carefree days for running around in the sunshine, so I am ready to go.

During a period between jobs, I compiled the kernel currently running on the MythTV box, denoted "2.6.10-2mdk20050212-bmb" as a variant of the provided Mandrake kernel. I plan to start off by compiling a new kernel again - this action will allow me to maintain my present state while moving towards an upgrade.

However, I also want to be working within the framework of the "Mandriva 2006 Free" release of my favorite distribution. Therefore, it would seem that I simply start by putting the install disks into the machine and get the new release onto the computer.

Before all this, however, I will go through my checklist to make sure the present MythTV database is protected.

I'm enjoying my MythTV box too much. Also, note the following:

1. Before the one-year hiatus ever came about, I didn't write-up any details about upgrading from 0.15.1 to 0.16.
   
2. I found that upgrading from 0.16 to 0.17 many months ago wasn't that big of a deal. It didn't bother a mention. Soon after, 0.18 was released; with the consolidation of so many MythTV packages into just three main components, if I even remember correctly, the upgrade was super-easy. Therefore, if I didn't mention 0.15.1->0.16->0.17, I certainly wasn't going to mention the easy 0.18 install.
   
3. Note, since April 15, 2005 there has not been a major release of MythTV to speak of - I opted away from the 0.18.1 release because it didn't seem to be advantageous to my particular system.
   
4. Whenever a little problem came up, I would just refer back to prior posts.
5. No one has submitted viewer mail, as viewership has declined rapidly in the past year.
6. The HDTV Broadcast Flag suffered a setback in the US courts, and so the planned purchase of an HD-3000 never materialized. However, the contingency fund is there should the Broadcast Flag ever be made manifest.
7. In July, two things happened: I got a job and I moved to new apartment with less cable channels. Therefore, I have no time to write about shows I cannot watch. Or something.
8. There was no great recording of the Aussie Rules Grand Final with St. Kilda, because they choked.
   
9. Even I stopped making this page my home page, though the slight uptick in hits in August could be me not yet masking my own visits as hits (from my new apartment/IP).

Well, there you have it. Save November 19, 2005, when Vanderbilt finally beat Tennessee in college football, there has been little to speak of here. Especially since JP Sports doesn't show the SEC in my area. March on, MythTV box, march on.

The New York Times' Technology section has a great article (Registration Required) today about independent efforts to allow greater control of how the end user watches television programming. I was drawn to the article from a post at Slashdot, and this article touches on one of my initial reasons for starting this sparse blog.

Beyond discussing simply how to get the box built in the first place, I wanted to address right and wrong, the legal and illegal. I don't touch on it much because I am a physicist and not a lawyer. This article however gives an interesting roster of players moving forward:

MythTV: "perfectly legal"
TiVo and ReplayTV: corporate makers of PVR's
BitTorrent: the relevant technology for distributing TV programs after digital encoding
Videora: "a better way to find BitTorrent files on the Web" for $23
Federal Communications Commission: closer of barn doors, implementers of digital broadcast flags 1 Jul 2005 through 47 CFR 73.9002(b)
Television Digital Liberation Front of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: pre 1 Jul 2005 builders of HDTV recorders

I have been aware of the FCC's action for quite a while. The fund is empty right now, but I plan to to squirrel away $190 to buy at least one pcHDTV HD-3000 before the 1 Jul 2005 deadline. As a user of MythTV, I appreciate being able to watch TV throughout my home network. I don't distribute programs over the Internet or over DVD's or any such thing, and I resent limits being placed on my freedom to squeeze a program into a tiny format for my Palm Pilot. Or to watch a show on the plane, on the laptop. I have BitTorrent - for trying out new distributions of Linux, to see which is best for my laptop and desktop. Mandrake 10.1 Download (torrent, iso for 1 DVD) is my best choice. But I don't cheat. I don't rip DVDs and put them on my hard drive. I'm grateful that MythTV is "perfectly legal" and am glad to have it in my home.

Next weekend, Myth 0.17 is promised. Hope to update soon!

Lee M., from Canada, wrote me the other day (say two months ago) and asked the following question:

I'm currently in the contemplation stage of building my own PVR, and as
coincidence would have it, I have my eye on an Optiplex GX110 P3 866 MHz and
already own an Hauppague PVR250.... My question is this: What type of case is your GX110? I assume you bought the beige model, is it a Small Desktop Chassis (Hawkeye) i.e. one CD-ROM bay, or the Medium Desktop Chassis (Hunnicutt) i.e. dual CD-ROM bay?
The reason I ask is because the power supply differs between the two cases, which may affect compatibility with PCI cards. I'm concerned the Hawkeye won't power two PCI cards. In case you're wondering, the power supply for all post 1998 dell cases can be upgraded, but requires an adaptor to use ATX supplies.

Lee M., I researched your answer right away, then promptly forgot about replying - mainly because I had no idea and I was still frazzled from completing my Ph.D. I found out however that my chassis' name is... Trapper, following the M*A*S*H theme. I have the huge mid-tower version. Three possible CD-ROM bays, the high life for me. Below, I post pictures to the site to let others know just how big it is (but how small it really is vs. the speakers and the TV itself.) The PVR-250 looks lonely inside the cavernous beast. But, it is quiet.

Lee responded to an e-mail, requesting a follow-up to his story:

A funny thing happened on the way to the auction.... My other computer is an Athlon XP2500 tower with TV out, so I decided to set it up in the living
room to show my girlfriend the possibilities of HTPC. I had several movies
ready to go, but one look at the tower (she rarely ventures near my home
computer) and one listen to the stock fan was enough for this project to be
scrapped. She couldn't stand the thought of seeing my desktop on the TV screen
either, it reminded her of work :) There would be no inexpensive PVR in a
beige case. My PVR would have to be small and fan-less. It's the only
diplomatic solution.