[sf-lug] HTPC How-Tos advice?

[John Lowry]

Blake Haggerty wrote:
> I have built a few HTPCs Some with Ubuntu others with Windows.
>  
> I know what I look for in a HTPC but everyones different:     My advice 
> would be don't use a "old pc"
I second that, if you are planning on doing anything with encoding or 
decoding on the fly you will want as "beefy" as you can get.
>  
> Things I want in a HTPC:
>  
> Whisper Quiet
Do not forget heat either, I had my old MythTV machine that ran way too 
hot for my AV cabinet. It was actually putting out so much heat that my 
PS3, also a hot running device, was having issues. I eventually got a 
better form factor cabinet for getting rid of heat and better heat sinks 
for my CPU. Lots of copper to try to keep the fans from needing to kick in.


>   But if your going to just be using it to record/watch TV - Ubuntu should 
> work just fine with MythTv.

So Hauppauge has a great product that you can use with either Cable or 
satellite TV that I go with now. It is an external USB device that takes 
  component video and converts for you. you still need a receiver from 
the cable or satellite people for it to work, but you can control your 
recording experience with it. MythTV supports it in SVN and as of 2.6.30 
the  mainline kernel has a driver for it as well.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html

> 
> Best Regards,
> Blake Haggerty
> __ 
>  
> 
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:*Taylor gray.race at gmail.com
> *To:* "sf-lug at linuxmafia.com" ;
> *Sent:* Oct 29, 2009 09:30:40 AM
> *Subject:* [sf-lug] HTPC How-Tos advice?
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> First time poster here. Working for the state I now have a few forced 
> vacations. A project that I've been meaning to get started on is setting 
> up an old PC as a HTPC device. I already have an external NAS to hook 
> into it for storage. What I'm looking to do is set it up as a streaming 
> server for UPnP devices in my home and possibly also access it from 
> off-site. 
MediaTomb, http://mediatomb.cc/, for DLNA streaming works pretty good 
for me. It takes a little tweeking to get it to work with certain devices.

For remote playback Ampache has been pretty good to me. I even have an 
app that will play it on my G1. http://ampache.org/


> In the future I might also look into cable capture. I know very little 
> in this area other than theoretically there are cable cards that enable 
> this? I use comcast so anyone who has advice here I'd be curious about 
> as well.
Again, I recommend the Hauppauge device I linked above, just because you 
are then not tied to one type of source for input. Also, more and more 
cable companies are encrypting their content over the wire and if you do 
not have a cable card capable device, non of which currently have linux 
support, you are SOL for that input. That being said if you want to do 
over there air or unencrypted cable you can use a card that supports it. 
  There is a lot of support in the Linux kernel for various cards, but 
you can choose to go with a vendor you KNOW supports linux.

http://www.pchdtv.com/



> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Taylor
> 
> 
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