MultiChoice may have to share decoder with rivals

[andres101]

I quite enjoy my SABC3 and the odd eTV offering
... when I'm not doing something on my pc that is

Yes, I'm quite happy with SABC1-3 + E-TV. I have a dual PVR (PVR500) and can record two channels at any one time, so there is always something to watch. Especially now with the Cricket and Rugby on! I won't miss a single game (unless they give me the wrong EPG data).

 

[andres101]

Multichoice can cry foul until they're purple. Let it not be forgotten that until now, they effectively operated without an official license

Please explain. Or wikipedia style: Citation Needed

 

[StrontiumDog]

Yes, I'm quite happy with SABC1-3 + E-TV. I have a dual PVR (PVR500) and can record two channels at any one time, so there is always something to watch. Especially now with the Cricket and Rugby on! I won't miss a single game (unless they give me the wrong EPG data).

Where does one get EPG data from? You have the Hauppauge PVR500 Dual Tuner TV Card?

What kind of a rig is needed, or more specifically, what are the specs of your rig? PM me plz, if u don't wanna post

 

[andres101]

Where does one get EPG data from? You have the Hauppauge PVR500 Dual Tuner TV Card?

What kind of a rig is needed, or more specifically, what are the specs of your rig? PM me plz, if u don't wanna post

Yes, that is the card. Not sure if it is wise buying one of those now since SA will be switching to digital broadcasting soon.

The PVR500 has two tuners and two MPEG2 hardware encoders, so very little CPU time is required for encoding. I have a AMD 2.4GHz CPU which runs at 20% when recording 2 channels while watching a recording. A P3 500MHz+ should actually be sufficient.

The ad-detection and transcoding (encoding to save disk space) easily consumes the rest of my CPU time though. Transcoding is not required if you have enough disk space. MPEG2 streams consume 1-2GB per hour. Transcoded streams consume 500MB per hour (depending on quality).

I only have 1x 320GB SATAII disk, which is too small. I better set-up would be 4 disks running RAID0 (striping), which I will be doing soon. I sometimes get hickups in playback because the disk is too slow (when I try to compile while watching and recording).

I only have 1GB of memory of which 300MB is generally used. I will upgrade to 2GB soon.

I have the MCE2005 (Microsoft) remote control and use LIRC to interface with it. Only problem is that I cannot switch the PVR on using the remote; I have to press the Power button on the PC. I have a solution for that though, but it requires some soldering

I chose a Thermaltake VB8000 (Silver) case with a Thermaltake Silent PurePower PSU.

I have an old nVidia MX4000 GFX PCI card which will be replaced by 2xPCI express cards sometime in the furute. Once again, not required, but great for gaming.

Software wise, I run MythTV on Gentoo Linux. It took about 6 months to get the machine to the state that I wanted it (where everything just worked). I recently re-installed with a 64bit OS and it took a day to get it up and running, so they have made everything easier since I started.

To just get MythTV up and running as quickly as possible, have a look an knoppmyth.