Engadget builds a practical PVR. Coming in at just over $1000, with tuners, Engadget does a pretty good job of building a PVR for everyday use. The motherboard is a knockout, though I would have added more storage than just one 250 gig hard drive.
And of course, they’re using MythTV!.
As I mentioned in my last post, I needed to use different modeline setting on my Nvidia xorg.conf file than when I had my ATI card installed.
I have no idea why, but it worked. For posterity’s sake, I thought I’d just document ’em here in case I ever needed again.
For my Nvidia card, in the Monitor section of my xorg.conf:
Section "Monitor"<br /> Identifier "DELL 2405FPW"<br /> HorizSync 30-82<br /> VertRefresh 60-60<br /> Option "DPMS"<br /> Modeline "1920x1200" 92.473920 1920 1992 2192 2464 1200 1209 1217 1251 -HSync +VSync interlace<br /> EndSection
And from my ATI x800 xorg.conf:
Section "Monitor"<br /> Identifier "Monitor0"<br /> HorizSync 30-82<br /> VertRefresh 60-60<br /> Option "DPMS"<br /> Modeline "1920x1200" 193.16 1920 2048 2256 2592 1200 1201 1204 1242 -Hsync +Vsync
EndSection
They both worked for 1920×1200, the monitor’s native resolution, flawlessly. There’s a big difference in going from 1920×1200 to any other resolution, especially 1600×1200 or below. This monitor is definitely most crisp and bright when running in 1920×1200 like it should be.
I thought I was done with installing my operating system, but I ran into another glitch today. I installed, or more appropriately, tried to install Quake IV and Doom 3. Quake IV I had working previously before the reformat, and I kept meaning to get around to installing Doom 3 on Linux to try out some of the mods.
Fixing my Doom 3 problem was easy – for whatever reason, my DVD-rom drive wouldn’t read the first disc, so I couldn’t transfer the .pak file over I needed. Put it on the NAS, and fixed it.
Quake IV is driving me nuts. All of the menu’s have the wrong text, such as #str_000000 or different numbers. Searching on Google turned up one hit on the SUSE mailing lists – and the guy reinstalled and it was fine. I’ve re-installed 3 times with no luck, including trying the 1.05 installer instead of 1.06.
I even thought the above problems were a video card driver problem, that my ATI card wasn’t working right. So I swapped it out for a Nvidia 6800 and spent a good hour reconfiguring my X server (that was fun). Turns out I needed different mode lines for my Dell 2405 (more on that later).
The net result is I’m running a Nvidia 6800 instead of my ATI x800, so the net result is about equal. It took a while to get my 1920×1200 resolution back, but it’s working. Doom3 is working, but no Quake IV yet (and I even backed up my save games!).
I’d like a Nokia 770 please.
The era of handheld, internet browsing tablets is finally here. With an impressive 800×440 resolution, running a customized version of GNOME, this would be perfect for me. I currently keep a laptop in the living room, but rarely use it – and when I do, it’s to browse the net while watching TV, and that’s about it. This is truly what I need. Well, not need, but want. A lot.
Here’s a fairly decent review of the 770, by a former editor at OSNews.com.
I had picked out the Silverstone LC16M (in black) case for my upcoming Home Theater PC.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn, via a blog on Planet GNOME yesterday, that the Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) on the Silverstone case is Linux compatible. Linux drivers, linked from Silverstone, take you here: to the Imon page that has integrated Lirc support for the remote, and the VFD.
Bonus!
Playing around with the hacked X-Box, I figured out how to edit the XML configuration file to have My Music & My Movies on the XBMC point directly to my Buffalo Terrastation that houses all my movies and music – no more network browsing to get there, nice and easy.
Then I did something which I haven’t done in forever, which was hop on IRC. Got the link to download some emulators, and threw up MameOX and a Sega Genesis emulator. Threw some roms on the X-Box, and I was playing Elevator Action. I had upped Vanguard as well – I don’t think my wife is happy with me now as that was one of her favorite games growing up and she knows it’s there just to distract her. 🙂
I soft-modded my X-Box tonight and am currently listening to an album in MP3 located on a network share on an external hard drive in my den from the comfort of my living room as I type this.
I used the Mech Assault hack to get the Evolution X dashboard installed, and then just FTP’d over the software for X-Box Media Center.
Reading the instructions X-Box Scene seemed daunting. 30 steps, downloading this file and that file, modifying files, etc. In reality, it was just a few steps:
Voila – you’re running XBMC. I went in to Music, chose look over the network, chose my Buffalo Terrastation’s workgroup, and 30 seconds later was listening to Liz Phair – and it automatically uploads the songs you’re listening to Last.fm, which I mentioned in the blog a week or two ago.
It’s pretty slick – the UI is fantastic, the applications and formats XBMC supports is impressive, and the performance is blowing away the experience I had using Microsoft’s Media Center Extender for X-Box.
I have some research to do to see if I can automount samba shares (which could be really slick when I have MythTV working later) but for now automounting music and photo’s would make me very happy.
I recently received a Buffalo 600gig Terrastation to test from work.
I’ve been looking for a NAS / SAN storage solution for a while, but most USB NAS solutions I’ve looked at don’t support Linux. The Terrastation is a work of art. Full support for every OS, including Windows, Mac & Linux, easy setup, multiple RAID options, and a very easy setup.
It has default Samba settings, and in Windows shows up as a network share, unlike SAN’s which will show up as a drive letter. (Mirra only supports backing up from a drive letter, but oh well, wasn’t happy with Mirra as it was a Windows only solution).
It’s pretty slick – a very basic setup from Windows, but like routers on the market today, a full-fledged web page for setting it up on the box itself. It’s basically a Linux box, running off a PPC processor. Full support for users and groups, Raid 0, 1 and 5 (5 default out of the box!), FTP access, drive spanning and user secured shares.
I’ve had it about two weeks, and lo and behold, I see on Planet Gnome this morning, a Gnome developer blogged his experiences with it, including hacking at it. He has the upgrade from mine, the 1 Terrabyte (I have the 600 gig), and points to a nice hacker’s Wiki at terastation.org all about adding customized firmware to the Terrastation, including SSH and NFS support. I’m looking forward to getting SSH up so I can use SCP as well.
Overall, the machine is pretty cool. Pretty quiet, but 4 drives and their vibrations make some noise, and the lights on the front, including 4 seperate places for each drive to show status is very cool.
I’ve been researching this for years, and waiting for the right moment, and that moment is quickly coming in to focus. That moment will entail buying all of the parts for a Home Theater PC and installing MythTV said HTPC.
What is MythTV, you ask? It’s a software program for Linux distributions, that manages all the media – TV recording, DVD playback, DVD ripping, burn TV to DVD, music, weather and more.
Here is one man’s way to build a $500 MythTV PC. I’m thinking mine will be a bit beefier, with a better processor, home theater looking case, more memory and much more storage.
More to come in the coming months.
On the advice of two cow-orkers, who coincidentally had the same printer, I purchased a Canon PIXMA iP6000D today. (Canon has a crappy website, btw).
I, however, forgot to see if it has Linux drivers available. (It doesn’t).
It’s for the wife more than me, as she needed a color printer, and the sample 4×6 photo I saw at the office was good. I’ve printed out 8-10 4×6 photo’s after hooking it up, and it’s phenomenal. It’s amazing how far the technology has come. I printed off a bunch to hang in my cube at work. I’m quite interested in seeing how an 8×10 looks.
I’ve hooked it up to Kelly’s computer, and shared it over the network so I could print from my MCPC. I have a wireless Netgear print server around here somewhere, I’ll have to give that a go.
I’m annoyed about the Linux thing though. Now I have to transfer my pictures from my main box to my MCPC to print. But the printer does have a 7-in-1 card reader, so I can always just stick the memory card in if I want, though it looks like I’d have to press a bunch of buttons on the printer which doesn’t look the most user friendly way to do it. Ah well.