Free TiVo anyone?

So last night I set up MythTV. If you have never heard of it, it is basically a premade package for linux based computers so you can use them as a DVR. There is a lot of really good documentation out for it, so any problems you have can usually be solved pretty quick. I bought an Pinnacle 150e video capture card that I used with my XP box for a while. Once I got to college, I took it with me. It turns out that Ubuntu recognizes it right out of the box, which is awesome. And, to simplify things even further, you can download a version of Ubuntu that has everything preconfigured with simple wizards to change settings and stuff called MythBuntu. In a matter of a couple of hours, I burned the ISO, installed it to my closet server, and plugged in my tuner. After choosing some basic settings, I did a channel scan and was watching TV on my new 22" monitor. Now, there are still some things I need to tweak. For instance, there is no audio right now and some of the upper channels are not coming in very clear. Both of these problems should be pretty easy to fix.

As for things to add, I have some ideas. First, I need to be able to connect to it remotely. I have been using a free online service called LogMeIn for my laptop, but it only works for Windows and Mac. So I installed VNC and SSH, and I plan to just tunnel VNC securely through SSH. I may need to install DynDNS because the network is DHCP of course. I only have one wired connection that I can use, so I have to use a switch. However, the wired network requires that when you plug in, you have to sign on, do a security scan, and then restart the network. But, the only way it can tell if a new computer has been plugged in is a new MAC address. So any other computer I plug in, I just spoof the MAC address to match my laptop. That way, I can hot swap which computer the LAN is on and not have to sign in and wait and then wait some more and then restart the NIC.

The other thing I need to add is more space. Right now, it has a whopping 28 gigs free, which is not a lot to record on. I have another drive, but I'm not sure that it works. I also have my external 500 gig drive. I plan on plugging in that drive to the MythTV box and setting it up as a NAS. Then I can record to it and read and write to it from anywhere. The only down side is that it is not nearly as fast to add movies and stuff to it from over a network rather than USB. What I may end up doing is buying a smaller 500 gig drive, the ones that don't need external power and can fit in your pocket. I would use that to take with me for movies and stuff, and then leave the big one plugged in to a NAS.

The last thing that would be cool is another tuner card. If I can get another one like the one I have for cheap on Amazon, then I can actually record 2 things at once, or record and watch at the same time. If I can get a video out on one of the cards, then we can use the TV. Of course with all of that, I will need several coaxial y splitters.

And this is all just for the MythTV box. If I had another couple boxes, I could have a separate frontend and backend, a smoothwall box to use as a router with a bunch of NICs, and a box with Server 2008 running several virtual servers like a Samba and Web server. At this point, I would have a giant network closet. And if I had room, I would also add the cluster as part of the subnet. Then I would really be cooking. Connect remotely to the MythTV box, watch a little TV, start recording a show or 2, then administrate my website, and check the status of the Folding@Home session running on the cluster (or if I need something cracked, send the hash to the cluster). But, unfortunately, none of this will happen until I either get a house, apartment, or random free space with air conditioning, free power, and a free really fast connection. Oh well, its still fun to plan.

Hopefully I will be improving the MythTV box though, because I can actually do that.