building a HTPC around Ubuntu
Pierfrancesco Caci
pf at caci.it
Sat Sep 17 16:02:05 UTC 2005
Hello,
I'm planning to build a HTPC and since I'd like to use Ubuntu as the
underlying OS, I'm looking for advice and suggestions from someone who
actually did this already.
In my plans (dreams?) I'll have a desktop-sized machine (so as to have
a decent number of PCI slots with no size hassles) with 2 DVB-T cards
and one DVB-S card. Having the possibility to capture from my existing
VCR would be a plus, but not a must. The DVB-S card should be able to
steer the dish using diseqc or usals.
For the software to use, mythtv seems the better choice around. I see
it is in some external archives for hoary and in the IdeaPool too, so
it may get into the main archive for some future releases, hopefully.
Concerning the hardware, here's what I've found so far:
DVB-T cards:
- Hauppage WinTV-HVR-1300MCE seems a popular choice.
- Technisat Airstar2 seems another good choice
- AVerMedia A771 DVB-T, Nebula DigiTV PCI are other alternatives too
- TwinhanDTV Mini Ter or Ter-CI support HDTV too, if we'll
ever get it over terrestrial TV in Italy.
DVB-S cards:
- Technisat SkyStar 1 CI, but it has diseqc 1.0 only, so no dish
steering, I think.
- TwinhanDTV Sat or Sat-CI, with HDTV, diseqc 1.2 and usals.
For these cards, I've seen mention by people using them with Linux,
but no specific reference to a direct support of Linux by the
manufacturer.
Last but not least, I can't decide between Pentium-M or the equivalent
low-power CPU from AMD, which should be called "Venice Core". The AMD
one costs less but I will probably have to use it in 32 bits, as I
understand that there are no 64 bits codecs for mplayer.
There are some nice howtos and blog posts around by people who did
this already, but either they are in North America, hence using cable
cards that have no use here, or they are centered on using Fedora as
base OS, so not really useful to me either.
So, who did this already? Comments? Suggestions?
Pf
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Pierfrancesco Caci | ik5pvx | mailto:pf at tippete.net - http://www.tippete.net/
Firenze - Italia | Office for the Complication of Otherwise Simple Affairs
Linux penny 2.6.12-rc6 #1 Thu Jun 16 23:01:38 CEST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
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