Yeraze's Domain 3.0

So I’m still working on this MythTV rig and finally had some good success to report.

Once I found out about the PCI2.2 vs 2.1 Issue (3.3V vs 5V) I was pretty bummed out. The BP6 motherboard I’m using doesn’t supply the 3.3V, and it seemed that Hauppauge didn’t make a PVR card to work on the 5V standard anymore. Well, I dug around the net and found one report of someone adding a “3.3V Regulator” to the system and making the card work. I talked to my dad, an Electrical Engineering guru if ever there was one, and he filled me in. After looking over the card very carefully you could see on the front edge where some components, voltage regulator-type components, used to be but were not installed. Once he tested it with his multimeter a bit, he discovered that that was what used to convert the 5V down to 3.3V, but now they’ve just removed it from the circuit and use the PCI bus’s 3.3V directly. He took it home and put the voltage regulator back in and shorted out the broken connections, and viola it worked.

So with my Mythdora install I was able to get video recording perfectly. The menu’s were a bit sluggish, but the big problem was that the sound didn’t work. I got sound on MP3’s and WAV files, but all the TV audio was missing. I, of course, thought that we got just enough 3.3 to the card to get the tuner & encoder working, but not enough for the audio paths. My dad wasn’t so quick to fault his craftsmanship and suggested I look a bit harder. I must admit that I had done alot of hand tweaking with Miguel’s card that probably hosed something up.

Well, I accidentally deleted my Mythdora ISO’s so I installed an older Knoppmyth (R5C7) iso. I am happy to report that, after a surprisingly long install, it works beautifully. I was able to watch a few minutes of Family Guy on TBS with full audio and no stuttering in the video. My full TV listings were downloaded from Zap2it with no problems, and even the menus and such are faster now. It’s a complete success all around.

So where to go from here?

• Get a PVR-500, with dual tuners & encoder pathways, and perform the same Voltage Regulator mod. Hopefully this time get some pictures of it for better documentation.
• Move the whole rig into a HTPC case.
• Go live!

So maybe I’m a little overly optimistic, but I’m just excited that it finally works! MythTV 0.20 just came out recently, too, which supposedly uses OpenGL for the menus, which should make them even faster! Finally, the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades B)..
[tag:mythtv][tag:htpc][tag:pvr][tag:linux][tag:hauppauge]