MythTV continued

Posted by stephen on Monday, 22nd May, 2006 @ 21:07

Hot on the heels of getting my Mythbox working I decided to get on with my ToDo list of things for it. It's now loaded with 2 DVB-T cards and courtesy of an ?9 dual output booster from Argos is can tune to two channels and record/watch both simultaneously. It's even got picture-in-picture, which is rather cool!

I've abandoned the plans to stick it in the spare room for now. Firstly it'd require lots of drilling and cabling and secondly it'd be rather annoying for any guests I have to stay over. While hunting in the cupboard in the bedroom it occurred to me that perhaps it'd go in there if I leave the aerial on the windowsill. So I've just put it in there and it's nice and quiet, I can only just hear it from outside. I'll certainly be able to sleep without a problem. Just need to make sure it doesn't get too hot!

Just out of curiosity I thought I'd see what kind of signal strength I'd get if I put the portable aerial on top of the PC in the cupboard. Amazingly, it made no difference! So now it's all nicely tucked away so a certain kitty can't knock out the signal with one swipe of her paw!

All that remains is to tidy up the cables going into the cupboard and it'll be complete. At least in this iteration!

I've been playing more with MythTV and I have to say it's absolutely brilliant. It's season passes work better than I'd anticipated. It's able to detect duplicate showings without a problem. My only remaining issue is the quality of the fast forward and rewind, it's not as fluid as with TiVo, it simply jumps forward and back N seconds with every button push.

I'll live with it for a couple of weeks and see how I get on, but things are looking positive for the plan to loose the TiVo and NTL box. All that remains is to decide which of the two competing parties receives the TiVo when I'm done with it.