I love listening to both BBC Radio 4 and BBC 6 Music. Like the rest of the BBC radio stations a significant proportion of the shows are available as a podcast. Unfortunately this is not true of all the shows, and for those that feature music such as Adam & Joe or Steve Lamacq the podcasts are talking only.

I watch almost all of TV through MythTV which records all of my favourite shows automatically while on my way to work I like to listen to podcasts that are downloaded automatically by iTunes. Would it be possible to automatically record shows with MythTV that aren’t available as podcasts and sync them to my iPhone automatically?

Recording a radio show with MythTV is no different to recording a TV show so that’s not a problem. MythTV also provides the ability to run a script after certain shows have been recorded. All that is required is a script that converts the recording into an mp3 file and to build an RSS feed which can be read by iTunes.

First we need to convert the recorded file into an mp3, which is easy to do with the ffmpeg program.

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from datetime import date, datetime
import glob
import MySQLdb
import os
import sys

input = sys.argv[1]
input_filename = input.split("/")[-1]
output_filename = input_filename.split(".")[0] + ".mp3"

os.system("ffmpeg -y -i %s -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k /var/www/localhost/htdocs/podcasts/%s > /dev/null" % (input, output_filename))

Next up we need write out the RSS feed that iTunes will read. We start off by opening the file and writing out some boiler plate code.

fp = open("/var/www/localhost/htdocs/podcasts/feed.rss", "w")
fp.write("""<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0">
  <channel>
       <title>MythTV Recorded Radio</title>
       <description>Radio Recorded By MythTV</description>
       <link>http://192.168.0.8/podcasts/</link>
       <language>en-us</language>
       <lastBuildDate>%(datetime)s</lastBuildDate>
       <pubDate>%(datetime)s</pubDate>
       <webMaster>andrewjwilkinson@gmail.com</webMaster>

       <itunes:image href="http://192.168.0.8/podcasts/stevelamacq.jpg"/>

       <itunes:category text="Technology">
           <itunes:category text="Podcasting"/>
       </itunes:category>
""" % { "datetime": datetime.now().ctime() })

Finally we need to write out a small bit of XML for each file that’s in our directory waiting to be downloaded. We do this by looking at each mp3 file in the podcasts directory and looking for the appropriate entry in MythTV’s recorded table. If an entry doesn’t exist then recording has been deleted and we delete the mp3 file.

db = MySQLdb.connect(user="mythtv", passwd="mythtv", db="mythconverg")

for radio_file in glob.glob("/var/www/localhost/htdocs/podcasts/*.mp3"):
    output = radio_file.split("/")[-1]
    size = len(open(radio_file, "rb").read())

    c = db.cursor()
    c.execute("SELECT title, description, starttime FROM recorded WHERE basename=%s", (output.split(".")[0] + ".mpg", ))
    row = c.fetchone()
    if row is None:
        os.remove(radio_file)
        continue

    title, description, starttime = row

    fp.write("""       <item>
           <title>%(title)s - %(datetime)s</title>
           <link>http://192.168.0.8/podcasts/%(output)s</link>
           <guid>http://192.168.0.8/podcasts/%(output)s</guid>
           <description>%(description)s</description>
           <enclosure url="http://192.168.0.8/podcasts/%(output)s" length="%(output_size)s" type="audio/mpeg"/>
           <category>Podcasts</category>
           <pubDate>%(datetime)s</pubDate>
       </item>""" % { "title": title, "description": description, "datetime": starttime, "output": output, "output_size": size })

fp.write("""
    </channel>
</rss>
""")

To use this put all three bits of code into one file, save it somewhere and mark it as executable. Next set up Apache to serve the directory /var/www/localhost/htdocs/podcasts/ as /podcasts. Finally you need to set up the script to run automatically after a program you want to create a podcast from has been recorded. To do this run mythtv-setup and select the ‘general’ menu option. Move through the screens until you reach ‘Job Queue (Job Commands)’. Add a brief description of the script in the ‘description’ field then enter the <path to script> %s. Then use the normal MythTV frontend and edit the recording schedules to make the correct User Script run.

Point iTunes as http://you.ip.address/podcasts/feed.rss and it’ll automatically download any new recordings.

I was going to release XXCE 2.1.2 until I got wind that an updated Hardy kernel was released. Because of that, I have delayed XXCE 2.1.2.

In other news, I am proud to announce that work is now beginning on XXMCE, a “media center edition” of XXCE. XXMCE 2.1.2 will be based on the regular XXCE 2.1.2, but it will include several multimedia applications including the MythTV PVR.

And finally, I will be toning down the number of web apps in the upcoming XXCE 2.1.2, espeicially in the Multimedia and Network categories. In the Network category, I will include only a few news sites (most likely MSNBC, CNN, BBC, ESPN, and the New York Times), the web email sites (AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Juno, NetZero), Google Maps, eBay, Amazon, Distrowatch, Linux Today, MySpace, and Facebook. In the Multimedia category, I will include only a few video sites (Hulu TV, Hulu Movies, YouTube, and Veoh), Democracy Now!, and some music/radio sites (Shoutcast, AOL Radio, Pandora Radio, Pacifica Radio, Air America, and Yahoo! Music). In addition, the flash-based video game sites will be removed; several of the sites will not work without Adobe Shockwave player which is not available for GNU/Linux, and likewise is the scenario for some games on Addicting Games.

The regular XXCE 2.1.2 will still be small enough to fit on a 700MB CD, but XXMCE 2.1.2 will have to be burned onto a DVD. XXMCE is intended for use only on HTPCs.

Because I have been and will be busy at my regular job, XXCE 2.1.2 and XXMCE 2.1.2 will not be immediately available. However, I will release both before the end of the month, hopefully no later than Christmas.

A thought occurred to me while I was thinking about the new MythTV setup which was that I hadn’t thought about how to control it from the sofa. The old setup I used had a Hauppauge PVR-350 tuner which came with an IR receiver to plug into the PCI card and a remote control. This was straight forward to configure under Linux and MythTV with LIRC.

For this new installation I didn’t have that luxury as the tuner card didn’t come with any IR attachments. I considered the possibilities, I could use a wireless keyboard (either bluetooth or usb attached) but that would require a keyboard on the coffee table all the time. Browsing the LIRC, there are a few descriptions to build your own USB IR receiver but I didn’t think my soldering skills were up to that. So I started googling around and ended up  finding a Creative RM-1500 remote control with USB IR receiver on ebay for under 10 quid. The guy selling it had several and confirmed on the auction page that someone else had bought one for use with Linux and MythTV and it worked fine. Done deal!

Since receiving it, I can now say it was incredibly straight forward to setup in Mythbuntu.  In the MythTV Control Centre just select enable IR receiver and choose Creative USB and then it works!

The other issue that I had not considered with the new setup was the audio. How would I get the sound into the TV?  The old motherboard used a S-Video cable for the video and an audio cable plugged into the standard ‘green’ audio out, all these cables then connected into the side of the old TV and it worked through the S-Video option on the TV. With the new motherboard and new TV I plan to use a HDMI cable from the PC to the TV and I am not sure what to do with audio ….

I just finished upgrading my MythTv/printing/data/everything server from version 9.04 of Ubuntu to 9.10. For the first time, I tried using the Software Update program to upgrade my entire system, and it went surprisingly well. Here are some of the highlights; hopefully they will help a few other people.

MythTv

The OS upgrade included an upgrade of MythTv from 0.21 to 0.22, so I was a little nervous about how well mythbackend and all of my MythTv-related applications (like mythweb and nuvexport) would work. To my surprise, mythbackend and mythweb both upgraded flawlessly. This is a really impressive feat, and it reflects the hard work that the MythTv package maintainers put into each Ubuntu release.

The nuvexport package is broken for me, but I think that’s because I compiled a customized version of ffmpeg. Oh well, this seems to be a common hurdle when I upgrade Ubuntu.

One little thing that I did have to fix after the upgrade was my MySQL configuration. The upgrade laid down the default version of the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file (after asking, of course). This file was configured to block any computer from using MySQL over the network. This is bad for me, because I like to watch my MythTv movies from other computers using mythfrontend.

To fix this, I simply commented out the following line in my.cnf on my MythTv server by placing a # in front of it:

 bind-address            = 127.0.0.1

After that, I simply restarted MySQL and I was able to use mythfrontend from my other computers.

VirtualBox

I run Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM for work, so it’s very important that both VirtualBox and my XP image work properly at all times. Again, to my surprise, everything worked perfectly after the upgrade. I didn’t even need to re-install VirtualBox. The VirtualBox kernel module was automatically re-compiled during the upgrade process, so I didn’t even have to do that.

Please note that I was using the absolute latest stable version of VirtualBox (3.0.12) before I started the upgrade. Your mileage may vary if you are using an older version.

Overall

Again, I am very impressed by how well everything went. I don’t see why I would ever choose to do a fresh installation of Ubuntu again on this machine.

Caveat Emptor

The automatic upgrade process is far from perfect, and your results may be different. Before you start any major upgrade, make sure that you perform the following steps:

1. Make a backup of all of your important files – I use rsnapshot to back up my important files daily, and it has saved my bacon more than a couple of times. Also, it’s a good idea to store this backup on a separate disk from the boot disk.
2. Download the current and target versions of Ubuntu and burn them to CD’s – If things do go south, then you will want to be able to either reinstall the current working version of Ubuntu or the target version. Having the actual ISO’s available on a CD may save you a ton of time and grief.

Good luck!

The assembly went ok so then I headed on to install Mythbuntu (which I had decided to try first) from an external USB DVD drive. Installation of Mythbuntu was incredibly straight forward and as I had decided this was to be a quick test install I just gave the whole 1TB drive over to it and it created one big root filesystem. My plan is to reinstall later and create at least two filesystems, one root and one for recording data.

When it came to setting up the tuner card I chose the DVB-C option but it didn’t give any feedback as to whether it had discovered it or not. After a little playing around with the DataSource and Input settings it became clear it wasn’t working quite right. I started looking at the dmesg output and found the following:

[    8.849587] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[    8.940190] saa7146: register extension 'budget_av'.
[    8.940268] pci 0000:00:09.0: can't derive routing for PCI INT A
[    8.940274] budget_av 0000:01:0e.0: PCI INT A: no GSI
[    8.940320] IRQ 255/: IRQF_DISABLED is not guaranteed on shared IRQs
[    8.940326] saa7146: saa7146_init_one(): request_irq() failed.
[    8.940342] pci 0000:00:09.0: can't derive routing for PCI INT A
[    8.940358] budget_av: probe of 0000:01:0e.0 failed with error -22

This didn’t look good. After a little more delving I remembered seeing something on the mini-itx.com website about PCI risers:

Mythbuntu then gave some feedback straight away when I choose the DVB-C tuner card and it would search for channels.

The PCI riser did have a very long jumper on it.

I tried all the different jumper settings, one of them gave a slightly different result in dmesg but there were a lot of timeout messages for the saa7146 device.

I gave up trying to get the two slot PCI riser to work as I don’t need the option of two slots and have ordered a PCI riser ribbon cable from ebay which I hope will solve my problems.

Got myself a pair of the netcomm 200Mbps Homeplug AV ethernet over power adapters to reach into a hard to reach (wireless wise) part of my house.

Plugged them in, turned them on, configured linux to bring the interface up – works!

Technology is fantastic when it works – and this works fine. Throughput-wise I got 23 Megabytes / sec which is 184 Megabits / sec which is close to the rated throughput of the device.   Sure , I might have gotten lucky, but I deserve it

I apologize in advance for the corny, rhyming title

I’ve been using an Asus EEE PC 900 netbook for about a year now, and have used it mostly for light word processing and web browsing. I also have a MythTV server running in my basement on an old Duron-based system. I can do almost all of my personal daily work on the EEE PC, but when I need to do anything MythTV-related, I’m forced to switch machines.

This can be a pain, so I decided to try running the “frontend” for MythTV on my EEE PC. To my surprise, everything is working very well. It only took me about 5 minutes to install and configure the frontend software, and after that, I was able to do the following on my netbook:

• Watch live tv
• Watch recorded shows
• Edit shows (i.e. cut out commercials)

And the best part is that it’s all working very well over my wireless G network. Your results may vary, but at least it’s nice to know that this configuration works for some people.

Here’s some more information about my setup in case you want to try this yourself:

• My netbook has a 900 Mhz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a solid-state hard drive
• I am using the integrated graphics card made by Intel. Apparently, it uses the i810 chipset.
• I am serving up standard-definition television

And finally, a few caveats:

• I don’t know the limits of the video card that comes with my netbook. The highest resolution that I’ve tried is 1280×1024 on a 17″ monitor, and it looked pretty good. I have no idea how it would look at a higher resolution on a more regular-sized TV.
• I have heard that his netbook simply can’t display HD recordings. I’m not an expert on this type of thing (since I don’t have an HD TV or monitor), however.
• As with any hardware purchase, don’t buy anything based solely on a blog post or product review. This system worked well for me, but it could work terribly for you for a variety of reasons. Do a decent amount of research before you spend any money. For example, the MythTV wiki and mailing list are great places to do exactly this type of research.

I just updated my main box to Karmic this past week.  This is a 32 bit box that was first installed with Hardy.

Overall it looks like they improved a bunch of stuff.  I noticed a lot of stupid annoyances with Gnome/Nautilus are gone now, and the new Pulseaudio stuff looks good.

I use this box as my main PC as well as MythTV frontend/backend with one other PC on the network as a frontend only.  My capture card is the Hauppauge PVR-250.  I run a heavily patched version of 0.21-fixes from SVN built to my needs.  For Karmic I had to update it to r20877 due to some weirdness with glibc 2.10+, anyway that was the easy part…

After compiling and attempting to run it, I wasn’t getting any audio, and the video was choppy.  My first thought was to blame pulseaudio due to the debug messages I was getting and also the fact that if I changed my “profile” in the new gnome-volume-control panel it would make audio come and go, but this fact actually turned out to be a semi red herring.

After a little investigating I discovered to my surprise that grabbing video directly from the PVR-250 via “cat /dev/video0 > output.mpg” was also producing the same screwed up video/audio as Myth live TV.  Then I checked the behavior of my frontend only machine, same problem there…  Strange, what could be causing this?  IVTV it must be.  Jaunty had IVTV module v1.4.0, Karmic has v1.4.1 which appears to be non-stable at the present time.

So I wanted to try and compile a 1.4.0 module for Karmic but couldn’t find the source on the IVTV page, so I gave up on that.  Anyway long story short, I ended up solving these very strange problems by doing the following:

1)  I found out that for some very strange reason, the ivtv module needs to be re-loaded AFTER the mythbackend is started!  WTF!  and why does this fix the problem?  Any feedback on this would be appreciated.  Does it have something to do with this weird new Karmic thing where they start all the init programs in strange order to improve the boot speed?

2)  Declare EXPERIMENTALLY_ALLOW_PULSE_AUDIO=1 in my .profile.

All is well again.  Now to go enjoy Karmic.

UPDATE: I finally figured out what was giving me the problem with ivtv, it’s PEBKAC. Back in Feisty (I think) I added the command “v4l2-ctl -b off” to my mythbackend init script. I did this as a workaround to an Xv rendering playback bug with VLC and recordings made from PVR cards with the VBI closed-captioning enabled. Anyway, I guess with the newer ivtv module it screws things up, because now I removed that command and all is back to normal.

All of the parts arrived and I have assembled them. The first problem I encountered I was half expecting, although the case I ordered was a 2 slot PCI case the lower of the two slots could only take a half size card as the 3.5″ harddrive shared part of the space. Luckily this wasn’t too much of an issue as the case had space for a slimline optical drive and I was able to use this space for the CA/CI card module.

Fully assembled without top

The only issue is that there is a bit of a gap around the card module which sticks out the front of the case, this is fine as far as I can easily access the smart card but obviously is a bit ugly. There was a front plate that came with the CI card but it was for the space of a floppy drive, we’ll have to work something out to cover the gap.

Rear view showing PCI card and HDD conflict

Another pic below showing the PCI slot area with the HDD using up some of the space for the lower slot.

Want more pics? Let me know.

It’s unlike me to upgrade my systems very often since it can take so much time, but I was moved recently to upgrade both my “server” (to Ubuntu 9.04) and my EEE PC 900 (to Easy Peasy 1.5). In general, I’m very impressed with how much better Linux-on-the-desktop gets every 6 months, and I look forward to at least another 8 years as a happy desktop Linux user.

One of the great things about Ubuntu is that it really is just painless to set up some pretty sophisticated servers. For example, I use my Ubuntu server to record television shows using MythTv, which can be very difficult to install. However, using the Ubuntu packages, I was able to get my system up-and-running in less than 10 minutes.

I do have one very small criticism of Ubuntu, and it’s that they keep making it harder and harder to install ffmpeg from source. The “stock” version of ffmpeg that comes with Ubuntu can’t do a lot of cool things like convert videos to the H264 format, so one of the first things that I usually do after installing Ubuntu is compile a more robust version of that application. Well, the process I used to compile it in 8.04 definitely did not work with 9.04 for some strange reason. Thank goodness that I found this tutorial, which made things very simple.

One really great thing about the 1.5 version of Easy Peasy is that I can now use some Compiz effects with my EEE PC 900. Previous versions of Easy Peasy didn’t even allow me to turn Compiz on. Hooray for tons tap-dancing sprites on my screen!

Here are some of the resources that I used to set up my Ubuntu 9.04 and Easy Peasy 1.5 systems. Maybe someone else will find them to be useful:

• Installing ffmpeg from source
• NFS Server & Client HOWTO

Here is what I wanted to do …

Some shows that I have recorded with Mythtv I would like to keep – either move to the Videos area or burn to a DVD. In addition I would like to reduce the size of the file by cutting out commercials and cutting the start and end and also compressing using mpeg4 and with a lower quality setting.

I want to do this from the job menu on a recording.

It would also be nice to create a text file so the Video Manager can display something usefull and a thumbnail would be nice too.

First question was to determine the quality that would be good enough while keeping the size small. Others seemed happy with a 1G file for 1 hour.

My system uses a USB digital tuner ie. DVB-T and therefore recordings are mpeg2 with either mp2 or ac3 audio. Sizes are SD (720×576) or HD (1440×1080).

Doing some basic testing on a recorded file. Original recorded file = 3,874,992k – 1h 23m

Testing on the first 1min of this file with ffmpeg – note all videos have no audio.

Original mpeg2 – 1 min – 39,562k

mpeg4 @ 1000kbps 7,633k
mpeg4 @ 2000kbps 14,941k
xvid @ 1000kbps 7,772k
xvid @ 2000kbps 15,210k
xvid @ vbr q=5 16,731

The quality at 1000kbps is quite poor so it is either 2000kbps or vbr -  I think it will be vbr q=5

Estimates for sizes for a video of 60min – no audio

mpeg2 2,801,199k
xvid  1,003,860k

Also wanted to ensure that converted file would play on my DVD player so I burnt the file to a DVD and ensured that it played ok.

How to set up a Mythtv job for this

The options are

 Use built in Transcode

Cons

• Leaves the file in the recordings directory, I want it in videos. Could create a new job running mythtranscoder and use the -o option to put it in the right place.
• Audio processed to mp3. In theory is does not need to be. The stream in the original file could just be copied.

Pros

• Built into Mythtv
• Uses the cutlist

nuvexport ( and Mencoder)

nuvexport for xvid resizes and puts audio into mp3

does lossless work for streaming?
- could modify nuvexport
- What is the time impact of mythtranscode

Custom script with mencoder

Using mencoders edl option I could get the cutlist from the database and convert this to a edl file

Pros

• mythtranscode is not needed

Cons

• It is custom, and I have to write it
• the edl option does not seem to work well. I have had mixed results is testing. This may be because the recording is a ts

TBC

In my previous MythTV box I had installed a minimal Debian system installed and added the debian-multimedia.org repository for MythTV, this worked very well and the install was quite straightforward. I also added hellion.org.uk repositories for ivtv modules (this provided the drivers for the Hauppauge PVR card).

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it but my MythTV box will be backend and frontend in one server. Ideally I would like to have the backend else where and the frontend as a quiet small PC behind the TV but the location of the cable TV port in the wall and not wanting to run cables around the house means that the backend needs to be behind the TV as well.

While I like the idea of installing or building the software yourself, it sometimes becomes awkward if the system gets broken and someone else in the household wants to use it. Also this system will be the only way of viewing digital cable TV as we only get the one chip card from Ziggo (our cable TV company) which will be in the MythTV system so it needs to be a reliable system.

Mythbuntu seems to be a very up to date and reliable system. A friend has stated that is seems to work ‘out of the box’ with the DVB-C and CA/CI module when used with Ziggo and posts like this show that the VDPAU support of the nvidia ION chipset working great as well. Plus it is built on the latest 9.10 Ubuntu.

I think I will go with Mythbuntu to start with and do a complete install of frontend and backed on my new hardware when it arrives. My first delivery is here, just waiting for the second which will hopefully be the next day or two.

Reasoning

This blog is my attempt to keep an open journal on my adventure in revamping my ageing MythTV-based Home Theatre PC.  I plan to explain and track how I setup my new system here and perhaps turn it into a howto when complete.  Plus, this will keep me honest and perhaps I’ll bring this project to completion instead of leave it in a “good enough” state.

Background

I first setup a MythTV system based on the Gentoo Linux distribution about six years ago.  I named it Telly; so imaginative. That was when I had a cable TV feed in an attempt to only watch what I wanted to, rather than drown in the endless supply of craptacular shows that were shown when I decided to unwind after a long day’s work. It was great while it lasted, but I found myself using MythVideo more than any of the other features since I would rip and transcode a DVD that I’d rent to keep a copy for myself to watch later.  My system then began to morph into my personal webserver/svn server/file server and now forms the backbone of my home network.  It was natural since it was always running, and I had spent the time to make it very quiet and unobtrusive, sitting in my component stereo system stack.  Unfortunately, the machine is showing its age by not being able to nicely display hidef video and I have let its maintenance go, so at this point it isn’t easy to add or change software packages on it.  Besides, the motherboard’s CMOS battery seems to have died and it loses all the BIOS settings after a power outage (the only time the system is rebooted rather forcefully).  I’ve had average uptimes of 6 months.

After looking at a Sabayon LiveCD which had an XBMC standalone boot option I was inspired. I’ve always been a little annoyed with Myth’s UI and its foibles and I was aware that XBMC was great, but it only ran on an XBox game console back then. In the meantime, they’ve ported it to Linux and other OSes and I finally took it for a little spin. It has an awesome interface, and I can setup a MythTV backend to handle recording TV shows and stream them from the XBMC frontend – it is pretty extensible. I need new hardware to drive this system!

Previously I was using a VGA to component adapter (Audio Authority 9A60) which worked well, but was a royal pain to setup since I needed to figure out the video timings of my TV to get this to work.  Now that video cards support HDMI in Linux, I can plug that directly into the TV and it should Just Work, with a better picture.  If not, then perhaps I can justify buying a nice, shiny new LCD display.  I love new tech projects!  (when I have the cash, that is)

I’ll also use a more powerful  CPU.  I was using a lowly AMD AthlonXP 2800 which was fine for my needs six years ago.  I intend to use hardware accelerated video decoding, but that can’t handle any HD Flash video (yet) and I want to quickly transcode files while watching something as well. The newer CPUs have better power management features which I’ll take advantage of too.

Planned Hardware

The new system that I’m going to configure is going to be a mix of the old and the new.  I will reuse the old case, a big IDE harddrive, and one of my TV encoders.  Everything else will be new components.

Case
CoolerMaster ATC-600: My old case, which I think looks great and has 4 3.5″ drive bays and fits a microATX motherboard.  Aluminium faceplate with a retro swing-down access door and USB and firewire ports on the front.  I have an aluminium drive faceplate system which completes the look to cover up the cheap plastic DVD drive.  I had previously lined the top cover and sides with car speaker sound-proofing material to minimize any fan noise.  Fits nicely into a full-size component stereo stack.

TV Capture Card
Hauppage WinTV PVR-500: PCI card provides two TV tuners and encodes video and audio in hardware to MPEG2. Great quality and very tweakable in Linux. FM tuner included, if you want to go nuts.

Hard Drives
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10: 500 GB IDE drive from the old system. Very quiet and is very dependable.
Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS: New 1.5 TB SATA drive. Quiet, power efficient drive. Not the fastest, but we don’t need that performance.

Motherboard
Intel BOXDG43GT: I can’t find much information about this mainboard on the web so this is a bit of a gamble, but it is an Intel product which usually work very well under Linux. It has a quality Intel gigabit NIC, onboard video which I won’t use, and a new audio chipset by RealTek (ALC888S) which seems to be supported by ALSA with optical digital out that I’ll use.  I chose this mainboard because it was the only one that I could find on NewEgg at the time that supported all of the peripherals that I wanted to use while providing a bit of an upgrade path, if need be.  Now I can ditch using my Audigy PCI card for digital sound.

CPU and Cooler
Intel Pentium E6300 DualCore: Intel is getting very confusing with their naming schemes of late.  This CPU has plenty of power while still being relatively light on the electricity.  Although I am going for a system that has as much of the video processing offloaded onto hardware, there is still Hulu and Flash video to decode.  I also use this system as my core computer of my home network so it is important that it can handle anything that I throw at it. I was tempted to go for a Core2 Duo, but that isn’t worth the extra dollars for an extra MB of cache. Otherwise this CPU is pretty similar to that. I don’t intend to overclock the CPU, which would push up the heat levels.

Noctua NH-U9B 92mm SSO CPU Cooler: I need silence since this machine sits in my livingroom all day so the stock heatsink and fan won’t do. I needed to be choosy with a replacement since there isn’t much headroom in my case and the mainboard’s northbridge (onboard video) heatsink is quite big and close to the CPU socket. I chose this badboy because of its dimensions, effectiveness, silent operation, and its configuration will direct the airflow towards my case’s rear fans. Hopefully it will fit.

Video
MSI N210-MD512H GeForce 210: A PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP with 512 MB fast video ram should do the trick. This card was just released and doesn’t have a fan, so hopefully it won’t heat up the case too badly and throw errors. Choosing this card is a gamble since it is so new, but it has all the features I was looking for, namely quiet operation and the widest range of video decoding done in hardware (H.264, VC-1, WMV, DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 HD). It can nicely upscale DVD playback as well and is actively supported in Linux. Linux zealots get weird about NVIDIA video cards since there are no open source drivers for these and some see it as “polluting” their machine by using a closed source driver. I’m more practical and always want to use the best approach for the job. While AMD have recently opened up the driver development for their ATI video cards, NVIDIA make the best accelerated video solutions for Linux and their life depends on maintaining that edge. As of this writing, I know that their Linux driver doesn’t support pushing sound through the HDMI cable, but that is ok since my stereo receiver doesn’t have any HDMI inputs (I’ll be using the mainboard’s digital optical output). I’m really looking forwards to putting this little beast to work.

Power Supply
SeaSonic S12II 330 Bronze 330W: I swear by these power supplies and have never been disappointed by SeaSonic’s quality and quiet operation. This power supply is highly efficient and sustains its power curve over a wide range of operating loads which reduces energy waste and power costs. This unit will make up for its higher cost in the power it will save over its (5 year warranty) lifetime. It has all the connectors that I need as well as being incredibly quiet.

RAM
G.SKILL 2 x 1GB (Dual Channel) DDR2 800: Cheapest RAM out there with the best quality for the price. Lifetime warranty if it goes bad – hopefully it will work with my mainboard.

Optical Media
LITE-ON 24x DVD Writer: I couldn’t find a plain DVD drive on NewEgg, where I was making my mass purchase. Crazy! Apparently, this SATA drive is quiet but I’m not expecting much. The brand has a good reputation.

Remote Control
Homebrew Serial IR Receiver: I never did get this to work on Telly and we became comfortable talking through the network or using a keyboard. Perhaps the the MB will make a difference, and I found better documentation since I last attempted to get it to work. I’ll use my Harmon Kardon Audio/Video Receiver’s remote.

With everything decided on I have finally ordered all my parts. Here is the final parts list arranged by where I have ordered it from:

From Mini-ITX.com:

Case – Morex Cubid 2755

Motherboard – Point of View ION-MB330-1 Dual Core 1.6GHz Atom

2GB RAM  – 2GB DDR2

From Alternate.nl:

1TB Harddrive – Western Digital Caviar Green

Tuner – KNC One TV-Station DVB-C

CI Module – KNC One Cineview CI Module

CA Module – Alphacrypt

I am assuming the assembly of parts won’t be too difficult so the next thing to concentrate on is the software. It’s going to be MythTV but whether to install it myself on Debian like I did before or to use something like Mythbuntu will be the decision.

One thing that I hadn’t put much thought into was the harddrive for my MythTV box but a friend mentioned that these ‘green’ Caviar driver from Western Digital. They seem ideal in that they are quiet and also pull less power but of course, what size to get? It seems the 1TB uses slightly less power than the 1.5TB and I think that will be enough storage for now.

The other thing to consider when building a HTPC is the case. Since I first started using mini-itx boards the choice has grown considerably and a lot depends of course on your needs and desires.

There are some very nice cases which try and blend in with normal hi-fi equipment like this one that is reviewed at Tweaktown.

Of course I have certain requirements, one is for the whole system to be as  quiet as possible as it will be in the lounge behind the TV.  For this I prefer cases that use an external power brick similar to laptops. This saves on one more fan inside the case. The power needs of the Intel Atom ION motherboards are quite undemanding so the low-wattage of the power brick style PSUs are very suitable.

The other thing that I am looking for in a case is space for 2 internal PCI cards or one PCI card and an extra 3.5″ bay. This is for the tuner card and it’s CI module buddy which can either sit in a spare PCI slot or an external facing 3.5″ bay.

The cases I am looking at are the Cubid 2755 and 2799 at mini-itx.com, they look very similar so it might just come down to availability.

They seem very compact but tick all the right boxes, they measure less than 30cm square and less than 7cm high. They also have the ability to install a slimline CD player but I don’t plan to bother with that.

Nearly there…..

As a quick follow-up to the post yesterday I’ve been looking into possible mini-itx motherboards that include the nvidia ION chipset and a full PCI slot (needed for the tuner). I’ve been emailing the guys at Mini-ITX.com who are extremely knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to all things mini-itx. They have some very nice Zotac motherboards (of which they produced a great review) with the chipset but none of them have a PCI slot. It seems the POV (Point-of-View) motherboard is the best choice at the moment.

I went looking for some more reviews of the ION chipset on the mini-itx form factor and  found another comprehensive review and the video playback capabilities of this chipset, this review and the mini-itx.com review make it seem the obvious choice for any compact low-power HTPC system.

I think I’m almost ready to order my parts,  I’ll post a full list when I do.

The next important part I believe is the ‘Video Card’, or more importantly a video card that works well with video playback and linux. It also needs to somehow to display on a TV screen, my old current setup had a EPIA M10000 motherboard from VIA which had an S-Video out connection which made it easy to connect to the TV.

What I am looking at now is a video card that supports VDPAU which looks like a very promising technology to aid with playback of various formats of video on linux. There is also more information on VDPAU and MythTV on the MythTV wiki. On this page at the bottom there are some interesting user testing which include motherboards with the NVidia ION chipset which includes this VDPAU. This would make it much easier to build a PVR if the video was integrated on the motherboard, this motherboard would also need at least one PCI slot for the tuner card. This lead me to looking at this ‘Point of View’ motherboard which includes the chipset and a PCI slot and is in the compact mini-itx form factor.

The only problem I now have is that my TV is quite old (crt!) and as such does not have HDMI or DVI connections. This could possibly be an excuse to finally buy a new telly.

When I switched my video card after the capacitors burnt out on the old one, I found I could no longer do 1366×768 video on a Samsung LN32A450C. Most frustrating was the fact that I’d see the video for about four seconds, before the TV decided it didn’t want to display it and showed “Mode not supported”.

Apparently, this is a common problem with Samsung TVs – and cvt was no help.

Luckily, I found this post – so here is the modeline for the Samsung LN32A450C

Modeline "1360x768" 85.500 1360 1440 1552 1792 768 771 777 795 +hsync +vsync

I just had to add that to my Monitor section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf and the autodetection on Ubuntu 9.04 did the rest. This is actually 1360×768, not the specified 1366×768 that Samsung is supposed to support – but I don’t miss the few pixels on either side.

My current MythTV setup is receiving an analog signal from my cable TV provider, Ziggo. We have digital TV coming down the same cable but my existing MythTV system is not setup to receive this and the way we watch digital TV is with the usual small set-top box with the provided card inserted in the front. So what I want to achieve is to build a new system that will be able to play and record digital TV. This system will need to take the security card which is normally in the set-top box so it can decode the digital channels. There are the a couple of pieces of hardware to start planning with:

• Tuner card – like the KNC-One DVB-C , available here
• CI card module – for example KNC-One CI-Module,  here
• CI card reader – like the Alphacrypt CI

The CI card module connects to the tuner card with the card reader plugging into the CI module. The tuner card will obviously require a PCI slot and the CI module needs a PCI slot but purely as a place holder, there are no ‘connectors’ on the card.

From what I hear this should all work and other people have used similar setups.

Ubuntu is a computer operating system that is based on the Debian Linux distribution.

Linus Toralds , while attending University in Helsinki, Finland in the early 1990s, wanted to create a UNIX-like operating system for his 386 computer. He created the Linux operating system, but instead of charging for his product, he made Linux “open access” to allow others to see and modify his Linux kernel to meet their own needs. By making this operating system “open source”, people worked together (collaborated) to make a better, more adaptable operating system. As a result of this collaboration (and thanks to Richard Stallman and the GNU Project), different versions of Linux have been created such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva, Debian, and Ubuntu.

The term Ubuntu is an ancient African philosophy that helps to define people’s allegiances and relations with each other (i.e. community). This name suits the free Linux distribution very well since “open source” is all about sharing and working together as a community. Over the years, Ubuntu has gained a reputation as an easy-to-use Linux operating system.In my opinion, this is the version of Linux that first-time Linux users (newbies) should use…

There have been many versions of Ubuntu for specialized reasons including:

• Edubuntu (Education version – including LTSP for Computer Lab setup)
• Kubuntu (KDE desktop environment default instead of Gnome
                very “Windows-like”)
• Xubuntu (Xfce4 desktop environment default instead of Gnome
                simple & clean interface)
• Mythbuntu (Runs complete TV / DVR / Multimedia Center – Mythtv)
• Ubuntu – MID (Internet Devices Edition)
• Ubuntu – Netbook Remix (Used for netbook computers)
• Ubuntu – JeOS (Just Enough Operating System to run virtual appliances)

This was an article that I wrote for my Ubuntu WIKI:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_Guide

Hope this helps,
Murray Saul

As you might notice I didn’t really follow up with the whole blogging thing my first couple of posts about building of a MythTV server. Well the MythTV box has been running fine now for a couple of years but now it’s finally died (random reboots, probably something on the motherboard) so I plan to start again with building a new PVR system.  I’ll try and make the posts a bit shorter in the hope that I will keep up to date.

Mythtv is a cool PVR system for linux. it supports remote controls through LIRC, TV guide through subscription or free grabbers, scheduled recording, commercial flagging, transcoding recorded shows, playing back your entire media library, heaps of setup options plus heaps of plugins. its basically THE BOMB for anything to do with your TV.

I had been fiddling with mythtv for a while, had a separate backend and an old pentium M laptop as a frontend with an xbox1 IR receiver for remote control, this worked quite well but I wanted to upgrade the OS and preferably make the entire thing self enclosed in the laptop so i don’t have to keep my other computer running.

My new setup is based on Mythbuntu 9.10 (Beta at the moment, but i will reinstall when 9.10 is released) input are two Asus U3100 usb tuners and a home made sound card based IR receiver. Output is via the VGA port to my 720P TV and a hacked together coaxial digital audio line.
the laptop has a pentium M 1.4GHz and ATI Radeon (Mobility FireGL 9000) graphics

So on to the install:
Firstly I downloaded the mythbuntu ISO and burned it to a USB mem stick (could have used a CD but there where none within arms reach at the time) and installed from that using the backend+frontend setup.
This should be reasonable pain free, ubuntu has become exceedingly efficient at installations.

After a reboot if all goes to plan we end up with a nice half setup mythtv system. first problem I had was the tv tuners where not initializing. I had to click the install additional hardware drivers to get the proprietary drivers for the card.
now I wanted a TV guide for this setup and being in Australia, I chose to use the Shepherd grabber system. Its basically a set and forget guide grabber, install guide is here: http://svn.whuffy.com/wiki/Installation
To install the perl dependencies i needed to enable extra repositories.
adding:
deb http://mirror.optus.net/ubuntu/ karmic universe
to my /etc/apt/sources.list then running ’sudo apt-get update’ did the trick.
After following that installation guide I had the channels and guide data set up.
Next thing I did was to try watching TV. Alas its not that easy, I had no video, just a blue screen and the sound was coming out of the laptop speakers, not the sound system plugged in via digital coaxial.
Of course I already had some idea of why because of my previous experience setting up Mythtv on this laptop.
The audio was not set up to output over SPDIF, simply going in to the frontend settings for playback and setting the output device to spdif and enabling AC3 and DTS passthrough fixed this.
the video required some extra fiddling. I basically just needed to disable the laptop screen so that the VGA scree would be the primary display and set up the correct resolution for the VGA output. I ended up creating a /etc/X11/xorg.conf (this file didn’t already exist for some reason, I think ubuntu is trying to rid us of this confusing config file)

Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Option “monitor-LVDS” “LVDS”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
Modeline “1280×768_60.00″ 80.14 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “LVDS”
Option “Disable” “true”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
EndSection

This config is for 720p output.
Playback for my laptop seemed to work best with the ’slim’ video playback profile. this profile unloads a lot of the video decoding to the GPU which is needed on such a low power system.

So after a reboot I had sound and video and a tv guide. almost there, now i just need a remote control.
this is actually quite easy once you have the correct information. I wanted to make my own receiver so I could use any remote protocol and have as many functions on my remote as I want. I ended up making a simple ALSA (sound card input) based receiver from here: http://people.inf.ethz.ch/mringwal/lirc/ or here http://www.lirc.org/ir-audio.html
I used a USB cable to get 5v power supply. although I later found out that whenever the hard drive seeks, there is a lot of electrical noise which renders the signal unreadable by lirc. hopefully this can be fixed by filter capacitors.
to get the software side of LIRC going, I had to ’sudo apt-get install alsa-utils’ to get ALSA running, then I could un-mute the mic input using alsamixer, now you can hear the remote control to make sure the sound is getting through. By the way, the audio should be going to the right channel for it to work with lirc.
I ended up just running LIRC manually by overwriting /etc/init.d/lirc with this:
#/bin/bash
sudo lircd –driver=audio_alsa -d plughw:0,0,0

You may need to replace plughw:0,0,0 with something like hw:0.0 depending on your hardware and audio input.

The remote control I used was a logitech harmony programmable remote. I used a guide on how to set this up here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Logitech_Harmony_Generic_Setup
basically you need to program the remote for Knoppmyth pvr, copy the /etc/lircd.conf (after this, irw should output stuff when you press buttons on your remote) and the ~/.mythtv/lircrc for integration with mythtv.
The only annoying thing about this setup is that the remote seems to output the code for a button push three times which makes navigating menus and changing channels/volume very slow and sometimes LIRC interprets it as two keypresses. I will look into fixing this soon.

lastly, I removed the LCD screen from the laptop, this allowed better cooling and easier access to the keyboard which is needed occasionally. I placed the laptop on top of the amplifier with the dvd drive towards the front for dvd playback.

I still have a few things to fix up.. the remote sending multiple codes, adding another tuner, more disk storage probably by external usb drive, setting up fstab to mount my network share on the other computer for my video collection,.

And thats it! more or less. I will add some pictures of my hardware and stuff later.

One reason that I chose MythTV early on was for its ability to interface with other “satellite” frontend machines that I could place around the house in various locations where I have already installed hardwired Ethernet jacks.  Unless I wish to stream demanding high definition content, the frontend machines do not need to be equipped with expensive or modern hardware.

Here’s a case in point example.  I’ve had an old Dell Inspiron 8200 kicking around for a while that has a bad IDE controller.  It refuses to boot from the hard disk or the optical drive.  By most consequences, this machine is pretty much useless as is.  Enter PXE booting.  A BIOS setting in the 8200 allows for network booting.

I have experimented with linux and network booting in the past and have had joy using Diskless Remote Boot in Linux (DRBL) to network boot a DSL iso file from my Linux server to other computers around the house.  NFSRoot is a popular alternative and requires a dedicated box running a DHCP & TFTP servers and PXELINUX to boot a root filesystem over NFS.  My experience with this method has been frustrating and I never did get it working correctly using Debian.

I thought I would give it another shot and attempt to create a diskless frontend using the Inspiron.  I skipped all the manual configuration and opted to use a script available with the Knoppmyth distro to create a diskless frontend.  Basically the script sets up and configures the DHCP and TFTP servers on the myth backend and does all the hard work.  The Knoppmyth wiki has a good entry on how to get this going:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=DisklessFrontend

One thing that must be considered is that your frontend hardware will most likely be different from the backend hardware where the script was executed.  In my situation, from the backend, I had to reconfigure /nfsroot/dell8200/etc/X11/xorg.conf to get it play nicely with the Inspiron.  After a lot of googling and trial and error, I came up with a working xorg.conf that was compatible with the Inspiron’s 1600×1200 display.  Once changed, I had a diskless frontend working on the Inspiron with recorded programs available and live TV from the Motorola 6200 cable box.

Below is my xorg.conf for the Dell Inspiron 8200.  Note that I haven’t been successful getting an updated Nvidia driver installed for the older Nvidia graphics in the 8200.  One other issue involves navigating menus on the frontend.  When cycling through the menu using the arrow keys on the keyboard, it seems that two button clicks are being registered causing the menu to skip ahead one extra level – an annoying issue.  More time needed but it’s a good start…

# File generated by xorgconfig.

#

# Copyright 2004 The X.Org Foundation

#

# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a

# copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”),

# to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation

# the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,

# and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the

# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

#

# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in

# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

#

# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR

# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,

# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL

# The X.Org Foundation BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,

# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF

# OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE

# SOFTWARE.

#

# Except as contained in this notice, the name of The X.Org Foundation shall

# not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other

# dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from

# The X.Org Foundation.

#

# **********************************************************************

# Refer to the xorg.conf(5x) man page for details about the format of

# this file.

# **********************************************************************

# **********************************************************************

# Module section — this  section  is used to specify

# which dynamically loadable modules to load.

# **********************************************************************

#

Section “Module”

# Alps Touchpad

#    Load   “synaptics”

# This loads the DBE extension module.

Load        “dbe”  # Double buffer extension

# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables

# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.

SubSection  “extmod”

Option    “omit xfree86-dga”   # don’t initialise the DGA extension

EndSubSection

# This loads the font modules

#    Load        “type1″

Load        “speedo”

Load        “freetype”

#    Load        “xtt”

# This loads the GLX module

Load       “glx”

# This loads the DRI module

#    Load       “dri”

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Files section.  This allows default font and rgb paths to be set

# **********************************************************************

Section “Files”

# The location of the RGB database.  Note, this is the name of the

# file minus the extension (like “.txt” or “.db”).  There is normally

# no need to change the default.

RgbPath “/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb”

# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (which are concatenated together),

# as well as specifying multiple comma-separated entries in one FontPath

# command (or a combination of both methods)

#

#

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/misc/”

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/TTF/”

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/Type1/”

#    FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/CID/”

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/”

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/”

FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/local/”

#    FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/Speedo/”

#    FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/TrueType/”

#    FontPath   “/usr/share/fonts/freefont/”

# The module search path.  The default path is shown here.

#    ModulePath “/usr/X11R6/lib/modules”

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Input devices

# **********************************************************************

# **********************************************************************

# Core keyboard’s InputDevice section

# **********************************************************************

Section “InputDevice”

Identifier    “Keyboard1″

Driver  “kbd”

Option “AutoRepeat” “500 30″

Option “XkbRules”   “xorg”

Option “XkbModel”   “pc101″

Option “XkbLayout”  “us”

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Core Pointer’s InputDevice section

# **********************************************************************

Section “InputDevice”

Driver            “mouse”

Identifier  “USB-Mouse”

Option            “Device”    “/dev/input/mice”

Option            “Emulate3Buttons” “true”

Option            “ZAxisMapping”    “4 5″

EndSection

#Section “InputDevice”

#  Driver  “synaptics”

#  Identifier     “Alps”

#  Option   “Device”          “/dev/psaux”

#  Option   “Protocol”        “auto-dev”

#  Option   “LeftEdge”        “120″

#  Option   “RightEdge”       “830″

#  Option   “TopEdge”         “120″

#  Option   “BottomEdge”            “650″

#  Option   “FingerLow”       “14″

#  Option   “FingerHigh”            “15″

#  Option   “MaxTapTime”            “180″

#  Option   “MaxTapMove”            “110″

#  Option   “EmulateMidButtonTime”  “75″

#  Option   “VertScrollDelta” “20″

#  Option   “HorizScrollDelta”      “20″

#  Option   “MinSpeed”        “0.4″

#  Option   “MaxSpeed”        “0.8″

#  Option   “AccelFactor”           “0.02″

#  Option   “EdgeMotionMinSpeed”    “15″

#  Option   “EdgeMotionMaxSpeed”    “15″

#  Option   “UpDownScrolling” “1″

#  Option   “CircularScrolling”     “1″

#  Option   “CircScrollDelta” “0.1″

#  Option   “CircScrollTrigger”     “2″

#EndSection

#######################This is old touchpad

#Section “InputDevice”

#    Identifier   “Mouse1″

#    Driver “mouse”

#    Option “Protocol”    “GlidePointPS/2″

#    Option “Device”      “/dev/input/mouse0″

#    Option “Emulate3Buttons”

#EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Monitor section

# **********************************************************************

# Any number of monitor sections may be present

Section “Monitor”

Identifier  “Monitor0″

# HorizSync is in kHz unless units are specified.

# HorizSync may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a

# comma separated list of ranges of values.

# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY.  REFER TO YOUR MONITOR’S

# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

HorizSync   31.5 – 90.0

#    HorizSync    30-64         # multisync

#    HorizSync    31.5, 35.2    # multiple fixed sync frequencies

#    HorizSync    15-25, 30-50  # multiple ranges of sync frequencies

# VertRefresh is in Hz unless units are specified.

# VertRefresh may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a

# comma separated list of ranges of values.

# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY.  REFER TO YOUR MONITOR’S

# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

VertRefresh 59.0 – 85.0

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Graphics device section

# **********************************************************************

# Device configured by xorgconfig:

Section “Device”

Identifier  “Card0″

Driver      “nv”

# unsupported card

#VideoRam    65536

# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# Screen sections

# **********************************************************************

# Any number of screen sections may be present.  Each describes

# the configuration of a single screen.  A single specific screen section

# may be specified from the X server command line with the “-screen”

# option.

Section “Screen”

Identifier  “Screen 1″

Device      “Card0″

Monitor     “Monitor0″

DefaultDepth 24

Subsection “Display”

Depth       8

Modes       “1600×1200″ “1280×1024″ “1024×768″ “800×600″

“640×480″

ViewPort    0 0

EndSubsection

Subsection “Display”

Depth       16

Modes       “1600×1200″ “1280×1024″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″

ViewPort    0 0

EndSubsection

Subsection “Display”

Depth       24

Modes       “1280×1024″ “1024×768″ “800×600″ “640×480″

ViewPort    0 0

EndSubsection

EndSection

# **********************************************************************

# ServerLayout sections.

# **********************************************************************

# Any number of ServerLayout sections may be present.  Each describes

# the way multiple screens are organised.  A specific ServerLayout

# section may be specified from the X server command line with the

# “-layout” option.  In the absence of this, the first section is used.

# When now ServerLayout section is present, the first Screen section

# is used alone.

Section “ServerLayout”

# The Identifier line must be present

Identifier  “Simple Layout”

# Each Screen line specifies a Screen section name, and optionally

# the relative position of other screens.  The four names after

# primary screen name are the screens to the top, bottom, left and right

# of the primary screen.  In this example, screen 2 is located to the

# right of screen 1.

Screen “Screen 1″

# Each InputDevice line specifies an InputDevice section name and

# optionally some options to specify the way the device is to be

# used.  Those options include “CorePointer”, “CoreKeyboard” and

# “SendCoreEvents”.

#InputDevice “Mouse1″ “CorePointer”

#InputDevice “Alps” “CorePointer”

InputDevice “USB-Mouse” “AlwaysCore”

InputDevice “Keyboard1″ “CoreKeyboard”

EndSection

# Section “DRI”

#    Mode 0666

# EndSection

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