Kodi Community Forum

Im all new to XBMC, and the other day I got my HTPC. I had seen something called MythTV so I ordered a TV card aswell, a Terratec C PCI HD. But silly me didn't look if it worked on windows with MythTV Now to the question, I've used ubuntu, or any other linuxdist for that matter, like 1 time before, so Im not at all familiar with it. How does it work with drivers and stuff? I assume windowsdrivers doesn't work in ubuntu. This is whats in the thing:

i3 530
Gigabyte ga-h55-usb3
4 gb ddr3 1333 mhz
terratec cinergy c pci hd
2x1500 gb seagate's
bluray reader
antec fusion remote black

How will it work with the remote and stuff? And to make matters easy, is there a way to get mythtv working on windows, and would it then support my tvcard and work in XBMC? Or is there another application that does the same thing which also works with XMBC? I seriously need all the help i can get, otherwise i spent $1200 on junk i cant use..

Thanks in advance!

mythtv on windows?

I would go with vdr and xbmc live on your htpc

mYrN Wrote:I seriously need all the help i can get, otherwise i spent $1200 on junk i cant use..

MythTV is not the only way to record Live TV.

Mediaportal is Windows software which gives you this ability. There is active work on integrating Mediaportal with XBMC:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=65488

You can go this route and avoid any Linux learning pain....

How would things work if I installed ubuntu, with drivers and stuff? Is it like windows, that i finds most of them itself?

The short answer to your driver question is: "Yes, mostly" but the long answer is:

- Video cards are a little bit of a pain. Stick with ATI/nvidia and you should be OK for linux. If you want hardware acceleration in XBMC you'll need an nvidia card to use VDPAU

- most "normal" hardware like DVD drives, mice, keyboards, USB drives, flash drives, monitors, etc should be fine.

- Specialized hardware is a little more of a crapshoot and you should check to see what's supported. For example I just installed a PCI SATA card in my old P4 box and only about 6 of the PCI SATA cards on newegg (of maybe 40) specifically listed Linux support. But the one I installed worked perfectly instantly.

Looking at what you have, that video capture board (according to MFGR website) requires a Direct X card, and direct X is windows only, linux substitutes OpenGL which works just as well but is open source. The key will really be figuring out if that video capture board will work with linux and it's possible that the answer is "no." For the record you shouldn't think of this as a shortcoming with linux, but rather as a shortcoming with the manufacturer of the board for not providing drivers.

You may want to look into some of these:
http://www.pchdtv.com/

Or check out the very helpful compatibility information here:
http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards

I also see you didn't list a video card there!

My guess is that your remote will work just fine, but you may need to customize the button mapping to your liking.

There is now a MythBox plugin for XBMC so you probably COULD run windows (on one machine) and xbmc (on another) and connect to your DVR content through the plugin. You can purchase an ION-based machine for $200-$400 that will run XBMC flawlessly and will be able to decode, demux and play 1080p content without a hitch.

Or you could just ditch cable and download all the stuff you want.

Oh, okay.. Im using the integrated graphics supplied by the cpu, does that make things easier or harder? I might just have to try if it works with mythtv then If it doesn't work and im stuck on windows, is there another way to get tv integrated in xbmc?

edit:
http://xbmc.org/theuni/2010/02/06/coming-soon/

In there it said the frontend works for all of those PVR's, will this include mediaportals tv-server? Is the plugin mythbox or how do i get this to work?

The bottom line is that what you're attempting to set up here really isn't a beginner's Linux project. If you're willing to spend a few weeks scouring message boards and engaging in some trial and error, you can probably get everything working, but you have to consider it more of a learning experience than a consumer appliance experience. It will be frustrating, things will break and you might even have to swap out some hardware.

MythTV in particular is notorious for being EXTREMELY difficult for novice users to set up. But the problem is compounded in this case, because XBMC currently has limited MythTV support (and only then in experimental testing branches), which still have some bugs and issues that can be difficult for a novice user to work around. In other words, even after you have a fully functioning MythTV setup, you would have probably significant issues getting it to work properly within XBMC. There are automation tools that can automatically transcode your MythTV recordings and move them to your XBMC library folders, but again you would have to set that up and configure it.

So, if you're not up for that (and your posts indicate that you want it to "just work"), you have a number of alternative options. My recommendation is to just stick with the Windows version of XBMC, and set up your capture card in Windows Media Center, which will take you about 10 minutes. You can use your smartphone or tablet to switch between XBMC and Windows Media Center, and you can find GUI-driven tools to move your DVR recordings to your media library.