This week was my last week with cable television.  I’ve had it since I was around 12 years old or so.  Now I’ve been on my own for a few years now and I noticed two things.  One, I don’t watch much cable television.  Just a few programs here and there.  Two, it’s pretty expensive!  It was $50 per month for just a few programs here and there.  And now, it’s no longer necessary.

The following was live-blogged on 25 Jul 2008:

Got my Neuros OSD today via UPS!  w00t w00t!  I’ve been lusting after this since it was featured in Linux Format Magazine last month.  (or was it two months ago?)  I unpacked the contents and skimmed through the quick start guide.  Then I hooked it up in my bedroom and connected it to the ethernet network. They have a neat little opening animation about how Neuros is about open technology.  Unlike other companies that build on open source technologies (I’m looking at you TiVo), the guys at Neuros Technology are proud of this and are using it to their advantage.  In fact, they have a few Google Summer of Code projects working on improving the firmware - free engineering hours.  That’s one of the benefits of open source.  Another benefit is that someone like me (or, more likely, someone with lots of programming chops) can take the hardware they’ve developed and then tweak the code to make it do whatever they want.

Today I consider whether or not TV Stations as a distinct programming lineup have become obsolete.  More or less since the beginning of commercial television there have been TV Stations to tune in to.  (eg ABC, HBO, TNT)  These stations create and broadcast original programming or buy the rights to broadcast programming created by others so that I can pick it up on my television.  Every year they decide which television shows will play throughout the day for the next year.  This show should play on Thursday at 2000 because that’s when such and such an age group will be watching.  That show should be on at Monday at 2100 because otherwise it might have to compete with a show from another network.  Some shows have nearly literally lived and died based on the timeslot they were shown in.  Sometimes shows are moved around to follow other shows to benefit from the inertia of the viewers of the previous show to carry this one until it either proves itself or fails.

A diagram of how the Neuros OSD connects to your VCR, DVD player, or camcorder, and allows you to record video and play back onto your TV or portable devices A diagram of how the Neuros OSD connects to your VCR, DVD player, or camcorder, and allows you to record video and play back onto your TV or portable devices

Written Friday, 2 May 2008

Today I decided to upgrade my Mythdora to the latest verison, 5.0. I downloaded the CD media and booted into the install. I had to do a text install to be able to watch it on my TV. Then I just needed to yum install the kmod-nvidia drivers. (Although, first I had to uninstall the previous nvidia drivers - they were neither automatically upgraded nor uninstalled) I started at about 1930 and was able to be completely up and running by 2055, just in time so that I didn’t have to missmy 2100 recording of “Best Week Ever”.

One of the new features of Gnome 2.22 is the fact that Totem now has a plugin to access your MythTV programs. I installed the plugin and found myself wondering what to do next. I checked on Google for totem mythtv and didn’t find anything until today when Google finally got around to indexing a forum post about it on the Ubuntu Forums. I followed the directions about editing Gconf and had success!

As you’ve no doubt heard, the US will be discontinuing Analog TV transmission in February 2009. They’ve actually already auctioned off the analog spectrum (and I’m not too happy about who ended up buying it, but that’s for another post). So, if you have cable TV you don’t need to worry about this and if you have satellite TV and you get local channels via satellite, you also don’t need to worry. If you currently get the nice, free, over the air (OTA) channels, then you need to worry - unless you have a new HDTV. But, for some reason, I don’t see the HDTV crowd overlapping with the OTA crowd. If you bought an HDTV, I assume it was to watch your cable or satellite provider’s HD sports package or HD HBO or HD Discovery Channel (which is beautiful, by the way). So you probably need a converter box.

Recently I wanted to install VMWare on Danielle’s computer.  I’ve installed Kubuntu on her Linux machine (Toad) and I wanted to get a clone over her Windows computer onto there in VMWare player.  I used VMWare Converter to create the VMWare clone of her Windows  computer and then put it into the Kubuntu box.  But then there was a bit of a problem:  the Ubuntu repositories did not have VMWare Player.  I went to VMWare’s site and they only had rpms and the source code.  I was hesitant to compile VMWare Player from source.  I was sure it would be a monstrous mess.  After all, I’d had problems with much less complicated programs.

Well, almost.  I got everything installed and configured for the remote to work.  However, there are currently some buttons that don’t do anything - so I need to go into the config and get those buttons to do something.  There are definitely some things that I need to program into the remove to get full functionality out of it.  However, it’s pretty much done.  If Danielle were to pick up the remote tomorrow, I think it would be self-explanatory how she would begin to watch live tv.

Well, I’ve have my MythTv box for about 24 hours now.  I have figured out everything that was bugging me about the system except for the remote control.  I hear this may require some compiling on my end.  Not something I’m fond of, but I’ve done it before, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

So I went from not knowing what to record last night to now having 16 programs to record over the next two weeks.  I’m not too worried about filling the drive because I can hold approximately 250 hours of programming before the hard drive gets full.  Most of these episodes are things I would probably only watch once anyway, so I’ll probably be deleting them once I watch them.

I’ve wanted one for quite a few years now.  I’ve really wanted one since I got my Jetway MiniQ case about 2 years ago - almost to the day.  Now I finally got all the necessary parts today and put it together.  If Jetway was still selling the MiniQ (it’s discontinued) I would DEFINITELY recommend AGAINST using them for a MythTV setup.  The Hauppauge PVR-500 just barely fit in there.  In fact, I had to move a badly placed capacitor slightly out of the way to fit the card in.  I also had to remove the DVD burner (temp for the installation) and unplug the hard drive.  But I finally got it up and running.

We’re on the edge of the largest disruption in Tv technology since color Tv became mainstream. In 2009 all analog television transmission will cease. Although the two terms tend to go hand-in-hand that doesn’t mean that all channels will become HD. There just isn’t the bandwidth for that in the cable pipes right now. But it does mean that soon nearly everyone’s Tv will be obsolete. Sure, the government plans to subsidize at least one converter box per household, but by-and-large everyone is going to need a new Tv; and a new Tivo….