MythTV Distro Roundup - Part 1: KnoppMyth (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Sep 03, 2008 at 03:10pm
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Reviews
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One of the favorite, stand alone systems on Linux for producing your own Digital Video Recorder, or DVR, is MythTV. But for some, MythTV is a little too geek to be bothered with due its sometimes complex and cumbersome installation process, or issues with the distribution it's being installed on. But not to be thwarted, a few slick and creatively minded developers have taken some of the top Linux distributions out there and created complete, ready to install MythTV distros that are designed to simplify the install to the point of being essentially "plug and play", rather than "plug and pray".
While there are nearly eight of these distributions out there, only three are solid and mainstream enough to be recognized by Distrowatch, and ready for the average, non-Linux geek to use. The first of those we will look at is KnoppMyth, a MythTV Linux distribution built on the ever venerable Knoppix livecd distro, and designed to make setting up your own DVR easy.
Installation
Initial bootup is fairly straight forward with the distro loading up to a text based semi-graphical menu. There are seven basic options in this menu:
1. Test Media (test cdrom media for good burn)
2. Frontend (configure and run as frontend)
3. Auto Install (automatic installation to disk)
4. Auto Update (attempt to upgrade prev version)
5. Manual Install (config and install to hard disk)
6. Reboot (just reboot the system)
7. Quit (exit program to console prompt)
Option 2 allows you to run the machine you're on as a frontend to a separate MythTV machine. The rest are pretty self explanatory. Since I don't have a working backend to test with, I had no way to test option two, and no previous version to test option four. I also skipped option five, as that really defeats the purpose of having an automated install. That leaves us with just option three: the auto install. The first thing it asks you is to verify that the time on your machine is correct. The next step is actually a warning that this distribution is still under heavy development and something could go wrong to damage your PC. (the "lost in space" reference is a nice touch.)
Now the chances of that may be low, but they're still there, so be aware of that. The next two steps ask you to put in your full name, and choose a username. Typically it will choose an appropriate username for you after you put your name in. Next, you input your password and verify it, then repeat this step for the administrator (root) password. Lastly you enter a hostname for the machine. You're then given three more chances to abort if you're not sure about continuing or if the data is right.
Once you're through that it immediately dives into the install. After about five or six minutes the install completes and then asks you to reboot. So overall the automatic install is dead on simple. But things don't stay quite so simple after this. Just because the initial install was easy doesn't mean what's coming up is equally as easy.
Post Install Configuration
After rebooting your brand new KnoppMyth box, you're greeted with the typical first run messages you'd expect from Linux. Next, it starts all the daemons and servers it needs to, both frontend and backend, and then loads you to the desktop. The first thing you're asked to do is input the root password. After this you're passed through a couple of prompts and then asked to verify your time settings again and begin the configuration of MythTV. By the way, the warning about the development state of the distro is presented to you again, just in case you forgot.
A few more prompts come up along the way which can essentially be just passed through with a simple stroke of the return key. After a period of time you're asked your choice of language. Finally, after all that, you're up to the general configuration menu. After this you'll need to go through each of six different menus and install your video capture card, storage directories and more. Most of the stuff can be passed through with a simple stroke of the return key, so there's really not a lot you need to do, but there are a few things you will still need to know, so you may end up doing some google diving to find the right answers.
After you've completed that, just escape out and it will continue the install. If you're in the US or Canada, you'll need to enter your zip code for MythWeather. Next, you pick your remote, configure it if needed, and finally hit enter several times to quick answer some questions that will be asked next. There are a couple you may want to answer no to along the way, but for the most part just hitting return gets you through most of it. Again, be sure you know what you're hitting return on so you don't accidentally agree to something you shouldn't. But since each person's needs are different, it wouldn't be right to tell you how to answer those questions as this will need to be personalized to your tastes.
Using Your DVR
When you're done configuring your KnoppMyth installation, or each time you boot up your DVR, you'll eventually find yourself staring at a list of seven options you can choose from. The first, titled "Watch TV" is pretty straight forward and allows you to go in and watch TV via your TV capture card. There's not a lot that's special about this, but it certainly does the job it's designed to with few problems.
The "Media Library" option allows you to go through all your recorded TV, videos, music, a series of online streams, an image gallery, or you can choose to play games if you want. The online streams option is the most interesting of these. It gives you the ability to chose between Apple Trailers, MythStream (streaming mytv videos), the Miro podcast archives, and Sirius or XM Satellite Radio internet streams. Apple Trailers takes a bit to buffer the stream, but once it's done, you can watch some great trailers from Apple.com on your new KnoppMyth DVR.
MythStream draws it's collection of video and audio streams from either the Shoutcast directory, ShoutcastTV, World Wide Media Project, selected RSS based feeds, online TV, podcast feeds, online radio and more. There's quite a few things to choose from. The Miro Player option interestingly enough starts the Miro player itself to handle accessing the Miro directory and all associated playback. Lastly, with the Sirius or XM radio streams, you need an account with the respective companies to get either of these streams.
Management of recordings is fairly easy, although they didn't always work as planned. This is likely due to the fact that the distro is still in development. The information center is quite interesting. In it you can get access to information about your cell phone, news feeds, movie times and more. The only problem with them is that for some reason most of the options in this section don't work right now.
The Optical Disks section allows you to play DVD's and VCD's, import DVD's, and more. You can even import files from DVD. Operation in this area was spotty, but then again, this is a system that is still in development, so a few failures is to be expected. But once it's finished it should provide quite a fully rounded experience. Under the Utilities/Setup option, there's a lot you can do in this section, except for the fact that most of it doesn't work, or is incomplete. But there is a number of things you can do. Just be careful where you step as some things might end up being landmines for you.
Lastly is the KnoppMyth section. It gives you control to be able to either backup or restore the system, power off, reboot, get version information and control something called "motion". I have no idea what that feature is, but it might be worth exploring if you're brave enough. Video recording and playback quality is pretty good, but there's still a few bugs in how that's handled, so random hiccups are not to be unexpected.
Conclusion
Overall this is a fairly decent MythTV distribution, but it's also one that needs a lot of growing before it will be ready for just anybody to use it. Would I recommend it? Not right now. In the future maybe, but certainly not right now.
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