MythTV is a free software package to provide PVR functionality and much more – in essence it provide a full home media server. My Myth box is running Fedora 13 and is built around the following hardware:
- Claritas 260M AV-PC enclosure from Stands Unique
- GIGABYTE GA-7VM400AM uATX motherboard
- AMD Sempron 2500+
- Thermalright SLK-700 heat sink
- 512Mb PC3200 DDR DIMM from Crucial Technology
- 1024Mb PC3200 DDR DIMM
- Western Digital WD5000AACS SATA hard drive
- NEC ND-3500A Dual Layer DVD Writer
- Two Twinhan Visionplus DVB-T tuner cards
- Radeon 9200 Pro AGP card
- Home Electronics Ira 3 OEM IR receiver
The two digital terrestrial tuner cards receive the Freeview digital television service and display is via a 28″ Panasonic LCD television. Audio output is via a Sony DAV S-300 home cinema system.
In a previous incarnation the box was connected to a Hitachi widescreen CRT television using the VGA output from a Leadtek Winfast A180BT GeForce MX4000 AGP card via a home brew VGA-SCART convertor with the following mode definitions:
ModeLine "704x576pali" 13.6 704 728 792 872 576 581 586 625 -hsync -vsync interlace
ModeLine "720x576pali" 13.9 720 744 808 888 576 581 586 625 -hsync -vsync interlace
The reason for having two mode definitions is that most UK DVB broadcasts are 720×576 but some channels use 704×576 instead and having two modes allows Myth to be configured so that images never have to be scaled.
Some photos of the MythTV box and VGA-SCART convertor are available.
