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James Fidell wrote: > Simon Avery wrote: > >> I use a DVR on my windows pc which has two freeview tuners and that >> works very well and has an impressively wide range of channels with no >> encryption or card/cam required - worth doing if you want to record a >> series of a program in one click, and watch back on a laptop or tv out >> at your leisure. Sadly when I researched DVR's, I had a lot of problems >> finding reliable and well featured software that supported my cards for >> linux. Windows at the time had several good free options so I had to go >> that route. Shame and I hope it's changed now. > > MythTV is pretty good in that respect now, to the point where we rarely > watch television any other way (I don't even have a freeview-capable > aerial or STB connected to the main television). I have a CentOS5 > backend with two twin-tuner DVB-T cards in, with a diskless front-end > for the kids running minimyth and a soon-to-be-diskless front-end for > "the grown-ups" based on my own CentOS5 install/build. I also run a > windowed front-end on my desktop PC so I can listen to radio programmes > whilst working. Generally I schedule recordings using the web > interface because it's faster than using a remote control. > > There are still a few niggles -- the music plugin is a bit ropey, > exporting to stand-alone video formats doesn't always work sanely where > the recorded channel has aspect ratio changes, and some of the USB-based > tuners have occasional problems (mostly that's a v4l problem rather > than mythtv), but generally "it just works". > > Slated for the next major release is a "virtual tuner" system that > allows recordings of different channels on the same DVB-T mux to be > made at the same time using only one tuner. I look forward to all > my potential recording clashes disappearing when that happens. > > All that said, it's still a relatively complex bit of software to get > installed and working, so probably not for the faint of heart. The > users mailing list is also fairly heavy traffic -- up to several hundred > posts a day. > > James > There's always KnoppMyth for the faint hearted or LinuxMCE (which IIRC is based on Kubuntu/MythTV and a couple of other addons). I had a play with MythTV and found it to be really good. Unfortunately my DVB-T card would only pickup the BBC Freeview channels whereas I get a perfect signal on the Freeview box. I think it might be the card being too sensitive. I'll eventually have another go next year when I get a HD TV with PC input. By the way, what sort of radio stations do you get? Is it the Shoutcast stations or BBC and UK local/national commercial radio too? Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html