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Video Server



On Dec 5, 2005, at 11:19 PM, Robert La Ferla wrote:

> Rich Braun wrote:
>> At some point in the future I want to build a terabyte server to  
>> house my home
>> videos to play back on the main TV set or the household PCs-- 
>> either recorded
>> off the air or with my HD 720x1280 camcorder; someday I'd love to  
>> rip my DVDs
>> the way I did my CDs.  So far I haven't seen a suitable Linux  
>> software for
>> building this:  sort of a high-def Tivo with a back-end database  
>> that I can
>> tinker with.
>>
>> Has anyone else here embarked on a project like this?  Any success?
>>
> I have some of the components for this but I have had little  
> success with the cornerstone of the project: MythTV.  I now realize  
> that it was my choice of TV tuner card (pcHDTV HD-3000) that caused  
> me no end of grief.  I had wanted a card that could do it all  
> (analog CATV and DVB/ATSC/HDTV) but the drivers are not quite  
> there.  I have to run an audio cable from the card to the "mic in"  
> just get sound out of it because their driver doesn't extract the  
> audio signal digitally.  This is mostly Connextant's fault (the  
> chip maker) because they don't reveal certain details of their chip  
> design to open source developers.  I am hoping to try again with a  
> Hauppauge PVR-500 tuner card.  The PVR-500 does hardware encoding  
> so it will work better but this means no advanced software  
> deinterlacing like TomsMoComp or Greedy2Frame.  I'm also searching  
> for a Linux-based DVB-s solution for DishNetwork satellite but I  
> haven't found anything yet.  I am hoping that once my DVR is  
> working, I can expand my HTPC to include a DVD library on a RAID  
> disc.  I own a few hundred dvds so this would help me manage the  
> collection.
>
> BTW - It would be nice if someone could give a talk on DVB and V4L  
> at a future meeting.  The technology is changing and improving  
> rapidly so it's hard to follow.

I'm curious what problems you're having with the HD-3000? I've got  
one running with MythTV, and other than bad wiring in my house that  
makes for spotty signal, it's working great for SD digital content on  
the 10 or so channels I've found in the clear on RCN's cable feed.  
I'm using kernel 2.6.14, and the DVB drivers that are built in. I've  
also got a PVR-350 for non-digital content, and it works fine. But  
once I get my wiring problems worked out, the HD-3000 is definitely  
going to be my preferred card, as the picture quality is  
substantially better on my TV. Admittedly, I haven't tried the analog  
receiver on the HD-3000, but everything I've seen says it's not worth  
the effort, and my backend is already pretty taxed as it is. Either a  
digital card or a hardware encoder are the way to go unless you've  
got a lot of horsepower sitting idle.

P

PS: Yes, the HD-3000 has worked fine for the HD QAM channels I've  
found, but I have no choice but to go wireless from the backend to  
frontend, so I'm limited to SD content. And even that went flaky one  
time when my wife was browsing the net while I was trying to watch.  
Here's to hoping there's an 802.11n standard soon, and OpenWRT  
supports it.




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