So, I have finally gotten the remote control that came with my TV capture card working in MythTV. It turns out it was pilot error on my part -- I missed a step during the install. This should be pretty nice, because up until this point, I have been using Sara's old USB keyboard from her Blue & White G3 to control the thing. It works, but I have to sit kindof close to the TV, and the keyboard is a wee bit bulkier than a remote control.
So, in general, I've been pretty happy with the MythTV & Linux combo. I can't really compare how this stacks up against Tivo, since I have never owned a Tivo, but having watched Chris drive his Tivo, my guess is that Tivo provides a better user experience than MythTV. But MythTV has the extra features that I want -- a fantastic web UI, and the ability to easily export recorded video in a highly compressed format. Read on for the mind-numbing details of where I plan to go with this project next.
But first, a tangent: I figured out how to do this a week ago, because Sara had a taping snafu, and missed the second episode of "Veronica Mars". I used the "nuvexport" program in order to select a show that was on disk, choose my encoding settings, and after waiting 2 hours, get a nice XviD file as a result. Sara was able to download this from me, and everything was great. I think that it's possible to do this sort of thing with a Tivo, but from what I've read it is not as easy. And don't even get me started on doing this with a Windows Media Center PC.
So anyway, at this point, I'm convinced that MythTV is good enough to satisfy my needs, and so it's time to buy some hardware that I can dedicate to this task. I've been using my windows machine as a prototype for this effort, and so what I have now is bulky, loud, and a little bit under-powered. So, what sort of PC am I going to buy for this task? I have been leaning towards getting one of those sweet Cube PCs, specifically the Shuttle SN95G5. Of course, going with the "latest and greatest" means that you're going to end up paying a little bit more, but I want the PC that I get to look nice in my entertainment center, so I'm willing to pay to get that. Not that this should be a great shock to anyone -- since I am an Apple customer, after all...
So, what's holding me back from buying one of these things is that all of the Cube PCs tend to only have a maximum of one free PCI slot. When I started this project, I didn't think that would be much of an issue, but Sara is really leaning on me to get something that can take more than one tuner. And I see her point -- if I had a 2nd tuner in my current box, I would be using it at least twice a week. I just found out about a dual-tuner PCI card from Hauppauge, WinTV PVR-500, which has dual NTSC tuners on one PCI board. At this point, it doesn't look like it is in the channel yet, so I'm not sure if it works with Linux. But if it does, then I think that the whole cube thing could most-definitely be on.
Given that the flexibility of having many PCI slots could be useful, what other case options do I have? Well, Antec makes one called the Overture which is pretty cheap, and easily obtainable (I've seen it at Fry's). But this case really doesn't look sharp enough for my Apple-loving tastes. So, I've also been checking out Ahanix cases, in particular the D.Vine 5 and the D.Vine 3. The neat thing about these cases is that they look really nice, and also have room for a VFD display, which I have checked out and appears to work with Linux. That definitely stokes my hacker-geek lust. The only problem with these cases is that they are rather expensive, and then only a few retailers sell them. So, there is no way for me to see one in person before buying. But, the advantage is that they'll take a commodity (read: cheap) motherboard, so I can definitely save some cost there.
So, this is my dilemma. I'm going to try and come to some sort of decision over the next couple of weeks, because I'm itchin' to spend some money here! :)
-Andy.