VIDEO KEYS            

These keys say this is what they do on the screen but don't seem to work:
[   = volume down *
]   = volume up *
|   = mute on/off *
F9  = mute on/off *
F10 = volume down *
F11 = volume up *

These keys do work:
q   = skip commercial back
w   = aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9, 16:9 zoom, zoom)
e   = not exactly sure - pauses video and ff/rr keys work
u   = speed up (see Note below)
i   = info
o   = set commercial skip / set auto expire (?)
p   = pause
j   = slow down (see Note below)      
z   = skip commercials forward
x   = transcoding on/off
m   = not exactly sure, seems to act same as "e"
pg up = jump back "x number of minutes" (set in mythfrontend as "jump" setting)
pg down = jump ahead "                     "                       "
arrow up = jump back
arrow dn = jump ahead
fwd arrow = skip ahead "x number of seconds" (set in mythfrontend as "skip" setting)
bk arrow = skip back  "                   "                      "

Note: in "speed mode" (u and j commands), 0-9 set the speed and 0 (zero) = off. You have to use zero to break out of the speed mode.

MUSIC KEYS   

This is not complete yet, but this is what I have so far:
space = start/restart song
enter = start/restart song
end   = next song
home  = go to the top of the play list
pg up = rewind
pg dn = ff
The Function keys listed above work here too.

OS: GNU/Linux ( Debian )
Hardware:

Motherboard	CPU	CPU Type	Memory	Memory Type	HardDrive	HardDrive Type	Tuner	GFX	Audio
ECS K7VTA3	AMD	Duron 1.6	512	DDR PC2100	Other	Hitachi 200G ATA-100 7200rpm	Hauppage PVR-250	X-Box frontend	onboard Via

Software settings:



Sorry for the brain dump, just trying to help my fellow pvr enthusiast and not leave out any details that might be helpful.

The ivtv driver is a little hard to compile at first, it works best using gcc-3.2 - had tons of problems compiling with gcc-2.95. My original pvr was using ivtv 0.12 and was running on a PIII 500mhz, 256M Dell Optiplex and had problems with audio and video recording about half the time. I had to write several monitoring scripts that detected things like DMA errors or zero length recording files and would reboot the system automatically to clear up the problems. The new system and upgraded MythTV is much more stable but still has the occasional tinny audio and the occasional zero length recording, but then again I do need to upgrade to the latest ivtv driver. I only have one script on the new system to monitor for the zero-length recordings and restart mythtv-backend and rmmod/modprobe the ivtv driver. No reboots neccessary anymore. It's not perfect yet but it's almost there.

The 0.13 release of MythTV has some excellent features incorporated and the "blink" feature for the X-Box frontend is pretty cool too. I'm going to install the linux kit for my PS2 and see if the frontend performance gets better. The X-Box playback is a little jittery for my taste but it works fairly well for the most part. I tried setting up the remote but found that a pain and decided to use a keyboard instead. I'll try to configure the remote again but I'm lazy and the keyboard works.

I use my pvr extensively every day. I record approx 4.5 hours a day, not counting the occasional movie. With the configuration listed above an hour of recording uses 1.5G of space. A note about playing MP3's - if you are using a separate frontend be sure to nfs mount the mp3 directory from the pvr (or whatever system houses your mp3's) on to the frontend, configure the mounted directory in mythfrontend then scan for music. Kind of the same thing for dvd's - the frontend has to have a dvd player and the decoding software (to decode protected dvd's) installed, it won't play dvd's from the backend pvr over the network (or at least I don't know how to make it do that).

All in all it was a little expensive but not much more than a Tivo/ReplayTV. I prefer to have total control over all aspects of the recording process and hardware anyway so the cost is well worth it. All together the whole project cost me around $550 (computer parts + X-Box) but I don't have to subscribe to a service, I can upgrade the hardware any way and any time I want, and I can save all of my favorite shows on dvd.

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01/22/2004

Note: do not select "Agressive audio buffering" if using an xbox frontend. I learned this the hard way. I apparently selected it while adjusting some settings in mythfrontend and when I tried to play something it would grind away like crazy with a black screen and no audio output. I eventually had to kill off mythfrontend. When I de-selected the option I was then able to play recordings without any problems.