Richard Jones' Log: HTPC success, finally

Sun, 16 Oct 2005

I've finally got the MythTV setup on the HTPC to the point where it's usable (ie. we can play DVDs, watch TV, play music and watch video files). The last hurdle yesterday was getting mplayer to play video in the correct aspect ratio. I finally figured out that I had to hard-code the screen aspect ratio (1280x768 is 1.666 which is between 4:3 and 16:9).

There's lots of little tweaks still to make, including getting the remote control to work consistently. For now, we just use the wireless keyboard, which is bearable. MythTV is definitely not for the faint-of-heart in terms of setting up though. All up, it's taken me months (on and off, including a period of complete arms-in-the-air resignation) to get going.

I'm glad I persevered though. There's lots of benefits, including time-shifting the TV (a.k.a. pausing), watching downloaded content (e.g. TV shows that won't get airtime here), being able to skip pointless intro screens on DVDs and being able to play some DVDs that won't play in my older DVD player.

Comment by Jcharlesmith on Fri, 16 Dec 2005

I am just about ready to begin building a MythBox. I have been pouring over the forums at MythWiki and wonder if it is really worth all of the troubles that I expect. Do you have any specific points about getting a mythbox running that may sway me either way?

Jason

Comment by KrizzE on Wed, 04 Jan 2006

You could try KnoppMyth
Google it

Comment by Richard Jones on Thu, 05 Jan 2006

When I last looked, KnoppMyth didn't support SATA drives.

Regardless, I'm now looking to switch to Freevo which seems to be a much better-organised and written bit of software. And I'll feel more comfortable hacking on it since it's in Python.