Category Archives: Entertainment / Arts

Sweet Digital Goodness

MythTV, TV

Now that we have a HDTV unit and MythTV, it occured to me that there had to be a better way to get video to the HDTV than the standard S-Video cable I’d been using. And sure enough, there is.

Our TV has a HDMI input, which is pin-compatible with a digital DVI output on standard PC video cards. Slick. So, with the aid of a Gefen DVI to HDMI cable and a Radeon 9600 card stolen from my main PC, I got a pure digital picture on the TV. Wow. It’s nice. Beats S-Video cables handily.

Moreover, the TV supports EDID, the technology that lets PC monitors tell the PC what video modes they support. My TV reported 1920×540, 720×480, and 640×480 modes. Again, nice. And the ATI fglrx driver reports all the information you need to generate the appropriate ModeLine for it. Even slicker.

I’m going to buy a Radeon 9200 card for the MythTV unit so I can get the 9600 back for my desktop.

The only problem: the display is now so sharp that MPEG compression artifacts are more noticable and annoying than before. Guess I’ll have to bump up my bitrates in MythTV. Sigh.

Here are some links I found useful:

People Hate Netflix?

Movies

A few days ago, I wrote about my thoughts on online DVD rental, and my eventual decision to go with GreenCine.

Browsing around today, I stumbled upon a NetFlix experiences site. Apparently there are a lot of problems with NetFlix, including horrible customer service, tendencies to damage DVDs beyond repair in their warehouse, and generally very bad service. I’m always a little uncertain about stuff like this written more than 6 months ago, because changes can happen in that amount of time, but this site has reports up through last week. The person running the site also keeps a journal that makes interesting reading.

There is also a link to an analysis of the NetFlix DVD selection system, which appears to confirm experiences that many people continue to report to this day.

I somehow doubt I’ll be switching from GreenCine to Netflix anytime soon. And I say that having not yet received my first DVD from them, too! :-)

We\’ve gone HDTV

Hardware, MythTV, TV

I’ve been talking a lot about MythTV lately, and here’s a tangential topic: we bought our first HDTV unit last weekend. It’s a widescreen 30″ CRT Philips 30PW8402 unit. We don’t yet have hi-def video sources (save for DVD), but I’ve still gotta say: wow. The picture is so much better than our Sony TV (and not just because that Sony’s picture tube was dying, either!). There’s some stuff in 16:9 even in standard def, and that can be zoomed in upon. Very slick.

And DVDs are stunning on this thing. We’re very happy with it all and are glad we opted for a HDTV instead of a standard def one.

One of my concerns was about traditional stuff — would it all be “squashed” by the wide screen? Turns out no — the remote has a picture size button, that alternates between 4:3, zoomed 14:9, zoomed 16:9, widescreen, and superwidescreen modes. The zoomed modes are used when the black letterboxing at the top and bottom of a standard screen are part of the signal (such as widescreen movies broadcast in standard definition). The widescreen modes are used with true widescreen signals, such as from a DVD player.

Our DVD player already had component video out, so a few cables, and a quick check of the setup menu to tell it we had a 16:9 unit, and wow — stunning results. We’re really enjoying it.

My next project is to get a DVI to HDMI cable so I can hook it up to the MythTV unit digitally. This will get us the best possible quality, and I can use a Linux-based DVD player to send a pure digital signal to the TV.

Quick MythTV update

MythTV

My MythTV system is now mostly complete. My Biostar motherboard had a defective TV out, so it was sent in and now the TV out is working. I’ll post a more complete update in the next few days. In short, Biostar = bad, Albatron = good.

Also, had a fun adventure stringing some cat5 cable to the part of our house where our TV is. After sawing through the floor to get to the previously-inaccessible crawlspace, we found, among other things, a working wire stripper, pipes connected to nothing, and lots and lots of spider webs.

And my latest book project is just about complete. I’ll have some news there too in a day or two.

MythTV Hints I

MythTV

Here are some hints that I have gleaned so far:

DVD stuff:

And some MythTV-related sites:

MythTV Hardware Review

Hardware, MythTV, Reviews

Last week, I posted a list of hardware that I’m buying for my MythTV. Most if it has arrived and I can make some comments about it now.

First, the Chenbro case is really bad. One of the hard drive bays is inaccessible due to being placed over the motherboard (!) and the other one requires the drive to be mounted upside-down. The 5.25″ bays are also poor, not letting one drive in all four screws (one of them only permits two, and right above each other at that, anchoring only 1 of 4 possible anchor points.)

The Biostar board is nice, but here’s the rub: while it features TV out and S/PDIF out pins on the motherboard, the board doesn’t ship with the connectors necessary to make it work! They charge $12 and $15, respecitvely, for the requires connectors, so this thing is not yet working with a TV.

The Samsung hard drive is great and it is indeed quiet as claimed. I’d heartily reccommend it.

And the Athlon XP 2200+ CPU is, of course, also a very nice one.

The Hauppauge card hasn’t arrive yet; I’m using a very old WinTV card until it does. More on that when it gets here.

MythTV remote suggestion

MythTV

A lot of MythTV users are using lirc for their remote receivers. There are a lot of problems with lirc. For one, it doesn’t come with 2.6 drivers, and it also is limited to working with a single device on the system (or a very nasty hackish solution for multiple devices).

Here’s another option: get an infrared keyboard and a learning remote. I picked up a wireless infrared keyboard for $17 at newegg.com. This keyboard has a receiver module that plugs into PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and the transmitter is infrared.

Next step: get a learning remote. I picked up a One For All URC-8810 at Walmart for $20. Contrary to the documentation, almost all keys can be learned, not just L1-L4. It does have a limited memory, but it is enough to program all the keys I need.

All in all, a slick solution. Total cost: $37, and you get a useful remote and keyboard (with mouse stick) that you’d probably have wanted anyway.

MythTV Hardware

MythTV

Here’s what I’ve ordered to build my MythTV unit. I’ll let you know how I like it all once the stuff arrives <grin>

  • Chenbro PC40522-BK Micro-ATX case, $46. It looks nice, sorta like a VCR, I guess.
  • Biostar M7NCG 400 AMD Socket A Micro-ATX motherboard, $61. Has built-in TV out and S/PDIF digital audio out. Perfect for this project.
  • AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU, $67. Wow, these things are cheap.
  • Samsung 160GB ATA133 hard drive, $91. Got this particular one because it’s suposed to be really quiet.
  • Kingston 256MB RAM, $46.
  • Hauppauge PVR-350 TV capture card with hardware MPEG-2 encode and decode support, $165.
  • IR blaster, homebrew: $8 of RadioShack parts.

Total cost: $484.