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I recently bought an HDTV (Samsung LN40A630), I thought I might be able to survive for a while with the SD lardvo, but watching 480×480 MPEGs captured from analog cable and displayed over S-Video was unbearable, so time for an upgrade.

Hardware:

• EVGA 113-YW-E115-TR Motherboard
• Hauppauge HVR-1250 Tuner
• Intel E5200 CPU
• 2x1GB Generic RAM

The motherboard has integrated GeForce 9300 graphics, so I can use VDPAU for hardware-accelerated HD decoding, but so far that hasn’t been necessary for MPEG-2. (might be necessary for H.264 and almost certainly would be necessary for Blu-Ray).
Since Debian 5.0 was just released, I can actually get most of what I need with the stable release. I did update a few things:

• Upgrade to alsa 1.0.18a from experimental, to get HDMI audio support
• Configure alsa to output to HDMI by default. In asound.conf:

  pcm.!default {
  type hw
  card 0
  device 3
  }

• Upgrade to NVIDIA driver 180.22 from experimental (This was for VDPAU, probably not otherwise necessary.)

I’m still using MythTV 0.21 that I installed a while ago; I was going to update to an svn version for VDPAU support, but haven’t done that yet.

The WinTV card can get the networks in HD and the rest of the basic cable channels we subscribe to in SD off of the cable. Unfortunately there isn’t really any point in subscribing to any additional cable channels (HD or SD), since they’re encrypted and wouldn’t work with the lardvo. The HD networks all show up with their regular virtual channel number, but the cable channels don’t have any identifying info, they show up with their frequency and program number. (See the HDHomeRun channel database if that doesn’t make sense.) It took a bit of futzing to get the digital channels scanned properly and then to enter real channel numbers and XMLTV IDs for them. Reportedly Comcast will reassign them randomly, but I haven’t observed that yet.

Interestingly, even the old analog recordings look much better displayed over HDMI rather than S-Video. The HD looks great.

My TV doesn’t support DPMS, so I’ll have to settle for…

… xscreensaver in HD.

Sierra Nevada is no longer a twist-off.

In Linux I can do /etc/init.d/networking restart, and it successfully reinitializes my crummy WL-167g USB wireless adapter, without interfering with any of my open connections. (The adapter locks up frequently, although not as often as our Scientific Atlanta cable modem.)

Windows, in contrast, seems to go out of its way to reset all my network connections when the link goes down.

This weekend I installed an ipod hookup cable in my car, which for the sake of google I’ll mention is a 2003 Civic EX.

I used a mish-mash of the Honda instructions here and here, and the blog posts here and here.

Although my car is a 2003, and I went out of my way to look for Honda’s 2003 instructions after originally stumbling on 2004, it turns out my console actually matches the 2004 instructions.

The 2003 instructions only call for removing a small panel below the radio to get at some bolts, while the 2004 version requires disassembling the shift knob and removing a larger piece of trim. I originally thought I was removing only the black plastic piece that contains the power outlet, but that’s actually screwed to the beige trim surrounding it and the whole piece needs to come out.

One of the Honda instructions I looked at called for removing the center console entirely, but I didn’t find that necessary and I’m not sure my access to the underside of the radio would have been any better if I did.

Most of the panels are held in with plastic tabs or combination plastic/metal clips. In some cases I had to pry very hard to get them out, hard enough I was afraid I’d break the plastic, but in the end it’s mostly unscathed except for a few tool impressions in the softer pieces of the dash.

Here is a picture of the piece of the console that I removed. Click for a bigger version that highlights the section that comes out. This picture also shows where the cable can come out, without needing to drill any holes.

Here’s a picture of where the cable plugs in to the back of the radio (click to enlarge):

Here’s a gratuitous picture of the radio unit sitting on the kitchen table:

De Morgan’s laws are much more fun when you make a popping sound in your head as you apply them. Witness:

I’m mostly moved to new hosting at Future Hosting. It’s the same price as my old VPS at JVDS, but the specs are much better. Most notably, 10 GB of storage vs. 1 GB. The comments at webhostingtalk seemed generally positive about the service, but time and experience will have to tell.

I recently built a PC-based DVR running Linux and MythTV:

I’ve never actually used a TiVo, so I can’t compare directly. Here are some selling points:

• It has a good system for specifying what to record and the relative priorities of different programs. The scheduler is intelligent; if an episode airs multiple times it will record either showing, and it remembers what episodes have already been recorded.
• It can automatically scan a recording for commercials. It takes some time to run the commercial scan job, but once the job has finished, you can watch the recording and it will skip the commercials automatically.
• With the MythWeb plugin, you can view the TV listings and select what to record from anywhere.
• No subscription. The TV listings are from a free service called DataDirect.

Hardware:

• Hauppauge PVR-350 (hardware MPEG-2 encode and decode)
• P3 650 MHz
• 384 MB RAM
• Antec “Solo” Case
• Seasonic S12 330W power supply
• 80 GB + 120 GB IDE hard drives
• Windows MCE remote

Software:

• Debian unstable
• Linux 2.6.18
• ivtv 0.8 from http://www.hellion.org.uk/
• lirc 0.8.0
• mythtv 0.20 packages from http://www.debian-multimedia.org/

A note about the CPU: for those who know, it is the computer formerly known as dildolicious. A long time ago I noticed the CPU fan wasn’t working, so I bought another, and when it still didn’t work I used some hookup wire to power it from the floppy connector. It probably ran with no fan for at least a year before I noticed. Since it worked fine, I’m running it fanless again to reduce noise. To ease my conscience about running fanless, I plugged it into the dead fan connector on the motherboard and I tell myself that if it gets really hot the fan will start, but I’m not holding my breath.

The noise sources are the power supply (12 cm fan), case fan (12 cm Antec Tri-Cool), and hard drives. It’s barely audible. Overall, however, I’m not very impressed with the Tri-Cool fans. I have one in my desktop as well. On the lowest setting, they are pretty quiet but don’t move much air. On medium or high they make a significant amount of noise.

I bought the MCE remote at Central Computers because it was the only cheap remote they had; it’s also available at Newegg. Despite the warning to the contrary in the newegg description, it works fine in linux. I copied several lirc configuration files from the interweb. The only problem is that sometimes the buttons seem to double-trigger.

Here’s an incomplete list of configuration changes and gotchas:

• I’m using the ivtv-fb driver for X11. The driver didn’t play nice with the default VGA console driver; I had to add “vga=768″ to the kernel command line to use the vesa framebuffer driver for the system console.
• I created a file in /etc/modprobe.d containing the following line to autoload the ivtv-fb module when the ivtv module is loaded: “install ivtv /sbin/modprobe –ignore-install ivtv && { /sbin/modprobe –quiet ivtv-fb ; : ; }”
• I set up gdm to automatically log in the mythtv user, and the xsession file runs mythfrontend.
• I’m sure I did much more than this, but I didn’t take notes.

There are more photos here.

My alarm clock died because I smashed the snooze button one too many times.

I bought a new alarm clock at Fry’s for $15. The new one is great. It projects the wrong time on the ceiling, and the alarm goes off based on the same incorrect time.

Remember, we put a man on the moon.

I ordered 14,400 calories of “Mayday Emergency Food Rations”, and they arrived today. The box was surprisingly heavy, about 7 pounds. I ordered the 3600 calorie bars, which are divided into 9 pieces. Each piece has a full day’s worth of most nutrients. On the packaging it recommends eating 1200 calories per day. Presumably this suggestion is meant for an actual emergency where 1200 is a lot more than nothing, but it does make me question whether eating 2000+ calories worth for an extended time is a good idea.

I ate two pieces (800 calories) for dinner tonight. In hindsight I wish I had only eaten one, or had spaced them out a little more, because I feel vaguely nauseous now. The taste is a palatable apple cinnamon flavor. The texture leaves something to be desired. The packaging claims it is “non thirst provoking”, but I’m still glad I had some water to go with it.