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I noodled around with my MVP/MVPMC setup a little bit more, and discovered the following:

1. Live-TV with my MythTV backend actually works pretty well. I just needed to fix my timezone settings.
2. VLC transcoding, which allows me to view Xvid AVI’s using MVP, is a pretty CPU-intensive process. The default video quality level (labled “DVD”) used about 95% of the CPU cycles of my 1.6 Ghz Sempron 3100+. I ended up using the “SVCD” video quality level, which is still pretty good, and only uses about 65% of my CPU cycles.

That’s it for now. Soon, I hope to have everything set up properly so I can share some of the details that might matter to someone considering the MVP, such as the following:

• network topology
• configuration
• total costs

Well, I got the MVP last Thursday night, and it’s pretty freakin’ sweet. Here’s my impressions so far:

1. It was easier to set up than I thought it would be, even though I’m also using MVP Media Center (MVPMC) instead of the stock software provided by Hauppauge.
2. The video quality is very good in my opinion, more than adequate, though I’m not a connoisseur of such things.
3. It’s even smaller than I thought it would be, which is great. Also, even though it’s silent and fanless, it stays pretty cool.

Also, I have a few things that I need to look into before I’m completely comfortable with everything:

1. Non-MPEG playback is a little slow. This is due to the fact that AVI’s have to be transcoded to MPEG on my media server using VLC and then streamed to the MVP as an MPEG. My media server is a little underpowered (512 MB of RAM, single-core 1.6 Ghz Sempron processor), so I need to see about tweaking the amount of resources that VLC requires.
2. Live TV seems to be mostly-broken. I don’t know if I really need this feature, but I may spend a few hours trying to make it usable.

After day 1, I’m very happy. I am now able to watch any type of movie that is stored on my Ubuntu media server, including MPEG’s, Xvid AVI’s, Ogg Theora, and movies stored within my MythTv backend (which is on the same server). The next step is to move the MVP out of my “sandbox” and into the living room where it can be used by someone other than me. I will be sure to post some of the important details, including my eventual network topology and MVPMC configuration files.

Well, I finally purchased a MediaMVP yesterday from Newegg. If you haven’t seen one of these before, it’s basically a little box that streams videos and music from a networked server to your television. I’m hoping to use it to do the following:

• Play back recordings that I have stored within my MythTv system
• Pause and rewind live TV (again, with a little help from MythTv)
• Watch home videos stored as MPEG’s
• Watch “archived” movies that I have converted into non-MPEG 2 codecs, such as Xvid and Ogg Theora
• Access my extensive MP3 collection through my television set

On top of all of these great features, the MediaMVP is relatively inexpensive (< $90), small, silent, and energy-efficient. The only real downside that I see is that it’s a non-trivial project to configure the MediaMVP to do all of the things listed above using a Linux server. Thank goodness that I play with computers for a living

Purchases like this can be a little difficult to rationalize from a frugal perspective, but I thought about it for a while and am pretty happy with the decision. Yes, it’s $90 more that I’ll have to earn before I can retire, but the following points made sense to me:

1. It’s something that I’ve wanted for years.
2. It’s definitely cheaper than the alternatives. Tivo is $100 + $12/month for as long as you want to use it. Cable-based DVR’s are $14 a month and not nearly as flexible.
3. I’m a big fan of the idea that there is such a thing as “good TV”. Whether it’s a PBS documentary or prime-time “Price Is Right”, TV can be a wonderful form of entertainment. The problem that I have with TV is that when I do have time to watch it, I rarely have easy access to anything that I would actually want to watch. Hopefully, this device will change that.

In the end, I hope that it ends up being an inexpensive, flexible, and easy-to-maintain. Please keep watching this space if you would like to follow my progress.

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