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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!

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.

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

As I’ve mentioned in some of my earlier articles, you really don’t need a very powerful media server if you using the MediaMVP media extender with MVPMC firmware. For example, I’m able to use my MediaMVP to watch MythTv movies, Xvid AVI’s, and home movie’s stored as MPEG’s without putting much of a load on my media server, even though it has slow disks, a 1.6 Ghz processor, and 512 MB of RAM. Once I had everything working in my “sandbox environment” (that is, every component was two feet away from every other component), I really thought that the “hard part” was over. All I had to was (queue ominous music) set up the network.

The short version of this story is that I haven’t been able to set up a network that is fast enough for my needs yet. Continue reading for the gory details

A Little Overview

You might be wondering why networking is such a big deal with the MediaMVP. You probably have a “Wireless G” network running in your home, and you probably never have any speed or bandwidth issues.

The problem is that, while a Wireless G network is great for surfing the web, it’s typically not good enough to stream MPEG movies. I’ll explain why later in this article. The total amount that you do need is debatable (and somewhat configurable in MVPMC), but according to the Network page on the MythTv wiki, you should shoot for a 16 Mb/s connection for viewing standard definition (SD) videos. I’ve learned so far that, depending on what you’re viewing, you can get by on less bandwidth, but this appears to be a good number if you want to watch a variety of different SD video formats.

Basically, I need a way to “wire” the televisions in my living room and kitchen into my media server in my basement. The goal is to implement “networked television” so I can watch recorded television shows and home movies in a quick-and-easy fashion.

Why Isn’t Wireless Networking An Option?

Everyone with whom I’ve spoken on this topic has told me to avoid streaming MPEG’s over a wireless network. I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but my friends who have tried this know a lot more about networking and hardware than I do. I’m happy to benefit for their wasted time and effort

Also, the network in my home simply isn’t fast enough. I ran a few tests of my network using Iperf, and found that I was only getting about 15Mb/s of bandwidth on my wireless network. This is actually pretty good, but probably less than what I need.

Another problem with wireless networks is that they simply aren’t reliable. One minute, you’re copying a large file at blinding speeds and, poof, your laptop loses it’s connection to the router. Why this happens is a mystery since I can’t look “under the hood” of my router, so I just live with the occasional flakiness. I could buy a better router, but my friends who have tried the same told me that it only improves the situation slightly. No consumer-grade, wireless router seems to be immune from this problem.

Finally, another big reason why I don’t want to stream big, honkin’ MPEG’s over my wireless network is that almost every other computer in my network also uses it. I really don’t want my wife’s laptop and my MediaMVP to be fighting for bandwidth. I want them both to work quickly and easily.

Wired Networking – The Ideal Solution?

The obvious choice for me at first was wired networking. It’s relatively cheap (this blog is about technology and frugality), it’s very fast, and it seemed like it would be pretty easy to install. I needed to wire two rooms on my main floor into my router in the basement. All I had to do (my favorite example of “famous last words”) was drop some CAT-5e (plain-old networking) cable from my main floor into the basement from two separate rooms. A real no-brainer, right?

Well, I guess it depends. I thought that installation would be easy, but three and a half hours later, after making no progress whatsoever, I took a step back to re-evaluate my options. Here’s what I came up with:

1. I really hate it when I spend a lot of time on a project and get nothing back in return. I’m not the busiest guy in the world, but I’m far too busy to be playing with a hobby for that long for no good reason. I really felt like I wasn’t valuing my free time, which is my most valuable asset.
2. One of the rooms simply couldn’t be wired for ethernet. There was no non-evasive way for me to wire the room for ethernet.
3. The other room could be wired for ethernet, but it would involve more time and effort than I had in the short term, and it would require me to drill another hole in the wall. I prefer using existing holes for this sort of thing, not drilling new ones.

Since frugality is about your use of time and money, I decided to exchange more of the latter for the former. It was time to go back to the drawing board.

Powerline Networking – The Best Of Both Worlds?

One of my friends who also happened to own a MediaMVP, also had trouble running ethernet cable in his house. He therefore decided to try out a powerline networking kit. The kit includes two devices: one that plugs into your MediaMVP using CAT-5e, and one that plugs into your router or switch. The two devices “talk” to each other (i.e. exchange networking packets) over the power network in your house.

This method of networking seemed really strange to me at first, but my friend said that it worked really well for him. I therefore hopped on over to Newegg to get a second opinion, and, lo and behold, there seemed to be universal praise for these devices. I found multiple people on Newegg who used the devices to stream movies, and they all said that this form of networking was more than fast enough for their needs. I thought I had found the perfect solution.

I therefore ordered a ZyXEL PL-100KIT powerline networking kit from Newegg. It’s maximum stated bandwidth is 85 Mb/s, which is over 5 times more than what I required. Unfortunately, once I set up the networking kit and plugged everything in, I was only able to get between 4 and 6 Mb/s of bandwidth according to Iperf and MVPMC. Not only was this around 20% of my bandwidth goal, it was around 7% of the stated maximum.

Now, believe it or not, I was actually able to view some content through my MediaMVP, even with the lackluster bandwidth. I had the best results with MythTv videos that had been recorded with my Hauppauge PVR-150. Those rarely fell out of sync, and when they did, you just needed to fast-forward a couple of seconds. Medium-quality Xvid AVI’s were watchable, but only after setting VLC’s video transcoding setting to “VCD”, which is barely watchable in my opinion. My home videos that I converted to MPEG’s are simply unwatchable.

I figured that something had to be wrong with my particular setup, since so many other people had stated that this model worked well with streaming video. I therefore tried tweaking my setup in the following ways:

• Powerline Adapter Tweaks

  1. Of course, I made sure that none of my powerline networking adapters were plugged into a powerstrip or surge protector.
  2. I made sure that nothing else was plugged into the same outlet as my powerline adaptors.
  3. I tried to plug the adapters into sockets that were in close proximity, even though they had to be on different floors.

  • Some people recommend plugging the adapters into outlets on the same circuit, but I don’t believe that I have any circuits that span floors.

• Router Tweaks

  1. Changed my LAN network type option from “auto-negotiate” to “100 Mb/s”.
  2. Updated my router’s firmware to the most current version

Unfortunately, none of these changes seemed to make a difference. As of today, my MediaMVP works wonderfully with MVPMC, but I can barely use it due to my inadequate network.

Conclusion

When I started this project, I viewed it as a frugal way (again, both in time and money) to enable myself to watch recorded movies and television shows that are stored on my media server. In the end, I ended up doubling my financial budget and tripling my time budget for this project.

Based on all of my experiences so far, I can make the following recommendations:

• This Project Requires A Decent Amount Of Computer Knowledge
  • I’m a systems administrator for a living, and I have a good number of friends who have done stuff like this before. These resources really save me a lot of time on these types of projects. If you don’t have these same resources, then this type of project will probably take you much more time and cause you much more aggravation.
• This Project Could Take You A Lot Of Time
  • There are plenty of examples of people on the internet who have had no problem setting up an MediaMVP system with powerline networking. I’m living proof that the home network part of the puzzle doesn’t always work as well as advertised. Be prepared to spend a decent amount of time troubleshooting and configuring this type of system.

I still see the MediaMVP as being a great device, and look forward to the day where it “just works”. For example, I’m already growing accustomed to watching my favorite daytime TV shows while I work in the kitchen at night, and the rest of my family really loves it too. Therefore, I’m going to continue trying to make things work with a powerline network, but I’m going to try a different brand. I’ve heard good things about the Netgear XE103G and Linksys PLK200 kits. I’ll probably end up trying the Linksys kit for the following reasons:

• It has a higher theoretical maximum bandwidth (200 Mb/s compared to 85 Mb/s)
• It’s basically the same price as the Netgear XE103G
• It received great customer reviews on both Amazon and Newegg
• It received a good review from CNET

I hope to get this part of my system working soon, and will share the results when I’m done.

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.