{"id":102,"date":"2007-01-20T16:07:59","date_gmt":"2007-01-21T00:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/?p=102"},"modified":"2007-01-20T16:57:54","modified_gmt":"2007-01-21T00:57:54","slug":"mythtv-front-row-mac-mini-hd-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/archives\/102","title":{"rendered":"MythTV + Front Row + Mac Mini = HD happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mythtv.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">MythTV<\/a> which is the open source <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_video_recorder\" target=\"_blank\">DVR<\/a> and home theater system for Linux for years. I originally set it up because I wanted a TiVo but disliked the concept of a monthly fee to use something that I paid for. Of course, I\u2019m a geek, so it\u2019s reasonable for me to put together a new box, install Linux, and install and configure a fairly complex product that was, at the time, early in development.<br \/>\n<!--more--><!--more--><br \/>\n<!--more-->The box has been tweaked and modified over the years, but the setup up until recently has been the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ASUS Pundit-R<\/li>\n<li>Celeron 2.4 GHz CPu<\/li>\n<li>512M RAM<\/li>\n<li>Western Digital 250G IDE<\/li>\n<li>DVD-R<\/li>\n<li>Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150 tuner<\/li>\n<li>Fedora Core (FC6, currently)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Pundit is a nice small box that has both S-VIDEO and DVI output. I originally had it connected to our old TV via S-VIDEO which was quite reasonable. Our current display is a Sony KDF-50WE655 which I used the DVI output to the TV\u2019s HDMI input (using a DVI to HDMI adapter). I\u2019ve been generally pleased and it was certainly better than using a VCR. One problem was that the on-board video of the Pundit (a SIS chipset) under Linux was O.K. (I had it outputting 720p which is 1280\u00d7720) but the color settings weren\u2019t optimal and as the chipset isn\u2019t well supported under X11\/Xorg I had to go through various amounts of effort to get things running every time I upgraded Linux (RH9-&gt;FC3-&gt;FC5-&gt;FC6).<\/p>\n<p>In the hopes of being able to record and watch HD content, I purchased a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.9thtee.com\/hdhomerun.htm\" target=\"_blank\">HDHomeRun<\/a> which is a very interesting little box that simply has two ATSC (digital) tuners and an ethernet jack. The device is being developed as an open project so the support for the software is good and is also improving. The device is controlled over the network via a simple command-line or GUI program and the video output is then streamed to whatever network address you specify. MythTV supports it directly with it appearing to the system as just another tuner (well, two actually).<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.9thtee.com\/images\/hdhomerun_front.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"201\" height=\"66\" src=\"http:\/\/www.9thtee.com\/images\/hdhomerun_front.jpg\" alt=\"HDHomeRun Front\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHDHomeRun Front<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.9thtee.com\/images\/hdhomerun_back.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"201\" height=\"75\" src=\"http:\/\/www.9thtee.com\/images\/hdhomerun_back.jpg\" alt=\"HDHomeRun back\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHDHomeRun Back\n<\/div>\n<p>I originally got the device a few months ago but was delayed not only by time (e.g., family, work, and the holidays), but also by the fact that the digital\/HD channels it finds are different than the logical channel numbers assigned by my cable company. This is the same problem I have with the ATSC tuner in the TV itself. It finds all sorts of channels (digital versions of the analog stations, HD channels, and even dozens of the MusicChoice music stations) but they\u2019re at the actual channels of 93.501 (CBS HD), 105.911 (Music Choice Rock), or 94.506 (KCET PBS HD), but my cable company, Time Warner, lists those same three channels as 402, 911, and 412, respectively. If you use a CableCARD on your TV or their set-top box, it translates them for you. Since I\u2019m not using those, I have to figure it all out.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" vspace=\"5\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"125\" align=\"right\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/mike.peay.us\/images\/FrontRow.png\" \/>I had some inspiration a few weeks ago. If I got a Mac Mini, I could use it to act as the front end to MythTV which would play back HD video properly (the Pundit couldn\u2019t do 1080i sufficiently) and also provide a media hub for all of our music (iTunes) and photos (iPhoto) and wrap it all up in a nice presentation via Apple\u2019s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macmini\/frontrow.html\">Front Row<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I talked it over with my love and decided to go ahead with it. I dropped a note to my old friend who works at Apple to, yet again, take advantage of his employee discount (man, that is fortunate). About a week later, a little box shows up and I get it set up in no time flat.<\/p>\n<p>After an evening of tweaking, we now have things set up as good as I hoped. The video quality is very good, it plays back Myth content perfectly, and it has also replaced our DVD player since the Mac Mini can output digital optical audio to our tuner which the DVD player supports (thanks to my friend who is responsible for OS X DVD playback).<\/p>\n<p>It all is controlled by the nice Apple remote, but I did pick up a Keyspan Express Remote which has several more buttons than Apple\u2019s remote to enable some better functionality so I don\u2019t have to use a keyboard or mouse.<\/p>\n<p>The first real test was last weekend for the 24 premiere. We watched it in all its 1080i goodness and was able to pause whenever we wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if I can only find Animal Planet (now digital only and I can\u2019t find it) and Food Network (my analog tuner isn\u2019t working for it and 4 other channels 52-56) I\u2019ll be quite pleased.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions about the setup or suggestions on the channel numbering problem, please let me know. I\u2019m thinking about trying to find tech in Time Warner to provide a channel listing but that may be quite challenging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been using MythTV which is the open source DVR and home theater system for Linux for years. I originally set it up because I wanted a TiVo but disliked the concept of a monthly fee to use something that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/archives\/102\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-friends","category-geek","category-macintosh"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vft-1E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mike.peay.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}