Doo dah doo dah

So at this point Im pretty much in a holding pattern awaiting the arrival of my IR Receiver. I tried to be slick and pick one up and Radio Slack, but as always, they never seem to disappoint. I never expect to find what I want, and I was right. So for the time being, Im trying to see if I can do anything to make the firewire more reliable, yeah right;-)

While I here, I think I should rant about package tracking from the USPS. WHY EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE FOR TRACKING IF THE MAIL SHOWS UP BEFORE ANYTHING ON THE TRACKING WEBSITE. That is not only a useless waste of bandwidth, but its maddening as well. For crikes sakes folks, just dont give us tracking, tell us it will arrive sometime. Dont tease us....that sucks.

Anyhow, once the receiver is in, I look forward to working a bit more with the Harmony.

Wish me luck folks! I need it.

A little harmony goes a long way.

I LOVE this remote!

That being said, I do have some issues. The IR Receiver I currently use is part of my keyboard setup(Microspeed KB200, which I love as well), but it has an interesting effect. When I learn a key from the remote to the Harmony it appears the the key simply repeats forever...which sux! I've found that if I immediately cover the IR transmitter after pushing a button, it doesnt happen, and it doesnt happen from the keyboard. So it appears that somehow, when the key is learned, it does not retain whatever end of signal code the keyboard also sends. I cannot really blame this on the Harmony, its just the difference for the proprietary keyboard thats getting me.

So, what now...

Well, I just ordered an IR receiver and Ill likely try to pick one up at Radio Slack later today as well(just do I dont have to wait, Ill grab a cheapie piece of chit). Once I have the receiver in place, I will have to setup LIRC to use the Harmony. It appears that this is not too hard.

I think this device is absolutely the key to the WAF. This will allow me to remove the complexities of working with mutliple devices and make it all one easy push button, with additional configurability beyond what I could have imagined.

Now, if I can just get the damn thing working ;-)

Im impressed

So, playing around with encoding dvds and the best way to do it, quality, ease of use, and all that wrapped into one. What I wanted what this:

1) Easy interface(cli if possible)
2) Complete process from ripping the dvd on through transcoding
with no A/V sync issues

So my thoughts were to create a script. Well in the process of doing so, I figured out that I am not an AV guy and when the crap hits the fan, things get messy.

Then, it came to me like a dream: dvd::rip

This thing is amazing! Not only is it written in Perl(a fav of mine), but it is very easy to use and for my money, has done a wonderful job! Then as Im using it, I see this "Add to Cluster" button and another that reads "Cluster Control". Hmm, clustering. Well this sufficiently peaked my curiosity and with at least one other debian machine in the house that does nothing but act as a print server, I thought I would try to make good use of the clustering. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of setup(given, I am a geek), basically, it entailed enabling passwordless ssh on the cluster machines, sharing a mount point, and starting the dvdrip-master daemon. Once I did this, I was able to use all the active debian machines on my network to help transcode the vob's from the DVD rip. The cluster doesn't help rip the DVD, of course, there is only one reader on the DVD;-)

Net results, not sure yet, but will update as soon as I do!

Moving to the more esoteric stuff now

For the time being the Firewire appears stable. Basically my understanding, is that it will work until it doesn't, then you must pray to the HD gods, sacrifice a small electronic appliance, do the river dance and pray again, to get it working. Then rinse and repeat as necessary. Im willing to live with that for now so I can tape from those channels. I already have it setup to mail me if any recordings fail from those channels;-)

Next, I was a little disappointed with the default ripper in Myth. The ripper itself is fine, but if I have something I have already ripped from DVD, but not transcoded, I cannot use the GUI to do this. So over the last few days I've been learning about VOBs, ripping and transcoding. I've created a script that does a vobcopy to copy over the english audio and video from the DVD, then does a dual-pass transcode(better compression and quality over a single pass transcode). Then automagically moves the final file into the correct directory. I have not figured out yet how to make MythVideo reread the directory from the command line. Right now I can only do that via the MythTV GUI, but that is OK for now.

The Streaming seems to be working great inside the house via wireless, though it does get jerky at times. So I will be working on that some as well. I also want to get MythGame up and running today so I can play some games on the console. It should be pretty close, but I havent had a chance to really sit down and hack at that yet. Hopefully sometime today I can get that going before my sister comes in this evening. I'll bet she'd love a good game of Ms PacMan! And it will be fun to help show off my 1ee7 h4ck3r skI11z.

So where are we now?

Well, the box has been moved downstairs, however, that doesnt mean much. Trying to get my wife to try new technology is like trying to get me to enjoy shopping, it just aint gonna happen,(with shopping, ever, with techology and my wife, its just REAL slow). She finally using gmail and loving it, so progress can be made, just not quickly. So, right now the WAF is about a 0, 5 at best;-) *on a 100 point scale* But I can work on this, the commercial skipping is already a hit, so we just have to keep finding the positive;-) However, a bet I made at the inception of this project, is likely to cost me a beer(or 6 or 8), as my enthusiasm was quickly squashed by one quick, "But where the hell is the stuff I already have taped"!

Enough about my wifely dramas and on to the good stuff. Whats working, whats not, what needs tweaking and what doesn't.

The Good:
1) Recording, watching, liveTV, Music, Games, all working flawlessly. I could do some more configuration to make things nicer, which will be happening over time, but all the basic functions are there and working.

2) Hardware, all the hardware has been rock solid. Once I got past the initial build problems, all has been free
from issues.

3) Noise. While it is a bit louder than I would like at this point, it is a very dull white noise(fans) and the HD is actually more quiet than the TW DVR.

4) Commecial skipping, I thought I was spoiled by my DVR and only having to FF through 3 minutes of commercials. I can assure you, that completely skipping commercials is an experience you will not want to give up. I cannot imagine sitting through all the commercial crap that I used to have to do. WHOO HOO.

The Bad and the Ugly:

1) The remote
While it looks cool, has a very nice feel, and seems to work well for the most part. It has a few annoying qualities I simply cannot live with. One being that the buttons sticks, so 1 "Ok" or "Exit" can turn into an almost endless loop. I have to stick the remote somewhere so it loses IR contact, then it will stop. This will not be good for the WAF so MUST be replaced(and quickly). I'd love to get a Harmony or something like that, but that will have to wait a bit. For the meantime I thin I will probably pick up this Sony.

2) Firewire
Firewire is still flaky as hell and thats putting it nicely. I have seen a few reports of flaky behavior of certain Asus onboard firewire setups, but I havent seen that reported on the P5B yet, so Im hopeful it either a BIOS setting or something I can configure via Linux to make it more robust and reliable. I guess we will see.

3) Streaming
I have streaming working from the server, but not necessarily incorporated into MythTV yet. It does already have the hooks for it, I just havent had a chance to get it all setup.

I was told at the beginning of this project that there was no end and that its a journey not a destination. That is truely coming into focus at this point. Even after I have the stuff done above, there are a million other things I can do for both usability and fucntionality. So many I can only dare to dream! However, I am also terribly excited at the possibilities of being able to control my own media. Watching things, how and when I want to watch them.

Encrypted QAM taping via SA3250HD

NICE!

So I got the new cable box today and I am able to tape from channel say 184, which is not HD, but is part of the digital cable lineup that TW sends encrypted. So after following TWs instructions, I got myself a SA3250HD v2.1 box with firewire enabled and it works like a champ(at least from the command line, I may have some work to do in Myth yet)..

Anyhow, just thought you'd like to know!

Paul

So finally a minute to post

I need a break from my vacation!

Anyhow, things are going along swimmingly. Here is what I have:

1) Channels 2-76 on 3 tuners(2xHauppage 500, 1xpcHDTV Analog feed)
2) All local HD feeds via TW
3) I can tape two analog feeds from the 500, and watch either analog or HD
on the pcHDTV card
4) Automatic commercial flagging/skipping
5) MythGame(Now I have 5000+ games on my TV nice)
6) Automated switching/recording of tuners. (if I switch to a channel that is
HD, it automagically switches the to the correct tuner and feed(unless the
tuner is busy))
7) Full access via the Web
8) Ability to transcode shows w/out commercials
9) Download/Watch avi,mpg,mov,wmv files
10) MythWeather(hotkeyd)
11) LiveTV(Hotkeyd)
12) MythMusic(mp3,flac,aac,ogg player)

other stuff Im sure;-)

Stuff Im still working on:

1) Properly ripping/transcoding DVD/CDs(just started work here)
2) getting the remote right, this could take a while
3) tweaking TONS of settings
4) Cleaning up and adding function to the web interface(streaming/autorecord(no-menus))
5) Anything else that comes to mind

At this point I think its ready for consumption, so Im considering moving it downstairs right no while mommy is off to playgroup with the boy!

I've got some pics Ill put up later, but heres the guts:

A name change in order?

So after mutzing with this for a couple of weeks and a generous offer from a friend, I have begun a re-evaluation. What I really want this machine for is care free entertainment. At this point Im not sure MythTV is going to be able provide it. I have concerns about software stability, driver stability and wondering whether or not Im being hampered by the drivers on Linux. After sinking this much money into, I hope I didnt make the wrong decision.

I have another friend who is building an MCE solution as we speak and I will be watching his progress very closely. He has generously offered an MCE license and after a bit of reading. I might just have to take him up on it. I have a deep seated hatred for MS and their products, so this is not a decision I would make lightly. I have decided that I will be working on this for today, but if I cannot get a few of the basics that I want running today, you may be reading a new blog tomorrow.