Building a Linux PVR Part I - MythTV Setup and Install

Getting Started

The first thing that we need to do is get our hardware list ready. Obviously, all of our hardware has to work with Linux and Windows Media Center Edition (WinMCE), and we have to watch out for some "gotchas" with lirc (our remote control program) and MythTV. Although not the best distribution on which to install MythTV, we will use SuSE 9.1 for our base Linux install, since we are familiar with it and we use it for all of our other Linux benchmark testbeds. As a result, we first make sure any hardware that we use works with SuSE; listed in the hardwaredb. If a particular hardware that we pick out requires a bit more extensive installation, we can live with that as well, just so long as we can compile our own drivers.

Determining what hardware is supported on Win MCE is a bit more difficult, although there are some resources to help. Fortunately for us, we do not have to determine specifically which hardware MCE runs, since it only ships pre-installed on devices such as our whitebox Media Center. We will try to keep the components of both machines as similar as possible.

Below, we calculate the cost of the whitebox and Linux device:

Whitebox Windows MCE Device		Price
CPU	Sempron 3100+	-
MOBO	Undisclosed	-
Audio	Integrated (VIA)	-
Ethernet	Integrated (Realtek 10/100)	-
VGA	GeForce 4 MX440 128MB	-
Tuner	Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250MCE	-
HDD	Western Digital 80GB WD800JB	-
RAM	512MB Micron DDR400	-
Optical	Sony DDU-1613	-
Remote	Undisclosed	-
Case	Undisclosed	-
OS	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004	-
Total		$699

AnandTech Linux Device		Price
CPU	Sempron 3100+	$125
MOBO	DFI K8M800-MLVF	$81
Audio	Integrated (VIA)	-
Ethernet	Integrated (Realtek 10/100)	-
VGA	GeForce 4 MX440 64MB	$40
Tuner	Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250	$130
HDD	Western Digital 80GB WD800JB	$60
RAM	512MB Corsair DDR400	$75
Optical	BenQ 16X OPAL-OC1	$24
Remote	Included with PVR-250	-
Case	Opus TT-501	$100
OS	SuSE Linux 9.1	-
Total		$635

As you can see, our Linux device is priced out cheaper and we even went fairly frivolous on a lot of items. Another SFF case favorite of ours, the SuperFlower SF-101, sells for $40 with power supply and looks just as good, if not better. We threw a Sempron 3100+ in our test rig for easier comparison between the MCE device and our own, but as you will see later in the analysis, there are some other benefits to using the additional computing power, such as background encoding to Xvid.

Going with a Tuner card for the Linux machine gives us many options. Originally, we had scheduled to run all of our tests with the Hauppage WinTV Go card, which does not have any hardware encoding at all - this card is actually better supported by SuSE as well. However, since we would later be comparing our test rig to a MCE unit that relies mainly on hardware encoding, we thought it best to keep the playing field level on both machines. The MCE unit uses a slightly better version of the PVR-250 card (it has onboard FM support), but for our purposes, the vanilla PVR-250 works just fine (and it comes with a remote).

If you intend to replicate our hardware setup for your own MythTV machine, choosing a WinTV Go card may save you additional cash, but you will definitely need as much crunching power as possible. Combining a software encoding with a slower processor is a recipe for disaster.

Putting all the hardware together only took about 15 minutes; our total time for installation is right now at 15 minutes.