Hi All, I have installed Gentoo linux on a dedicated pc to be the foundation of my PVR. I have an Hauppage pvr-350 My goal and thought process goes like this. I would like to make a small PVR appliance. I have digital cable and it is my understanding that I could get a DVB card that captures an MPEG stream but most of the content is encrypted and to my knowledge no one has figured out how to decrypt it. Since I want the premium content I need the cable companies settop box to decrypt it. I have also noticed that frequently the listings from zap2it do not match what is actually on. This and the fact that I wan't to keep the PVR lean lead me to choose a solution that does not download the programming schedule from the internet. Since I will be using the set top boxe's on screen display through the PVR means the PVR should keep latency to a minimum. The setup I currently have is like this DVD player and settop box connected to Hauppage pvr-350 via its SPDIF connectors. stereo amplifier and TV connected to pvr-350 via its TVout connector. ivtv is installed and working. I can watch TV two different ways 1. "ivtvctl -d /dev/video1 -K1" 2. "cat /dev/video1 > /dev/video16" Recording and playback are similar to command 2. When watching TV via method 1 the audio gradually seems to loose sync with the video. I don't really notice but my spouse does. When watching TV via method 2 there is enough lag to make using the set top boxe's on screen display hard to use. Of all the solutions I am aware of VDR looks to be the best match for my requirements. MythTV seems too big, requires a database and X Mplayer seems too big and requires X VLC seems to big and requires X VDR can run as a deamon, has onscreen display and can use the Hauppage remote control I believe I can use the VDR OSD in conjuntion with the cable companies settop box OSD to control things nicely. I have installed the following ivtv 0.8.0 vdr 1.4.4 vdr-pvr350 0.0.4_pre1 vdr-analogtv 1.0.00-r1 I can't figure out how to get VDR running localhost media-video # /etc/init.d/vdr start * Preparing start of vdr: * config files ... [ ok * Some plugins could not be loaded! * Waiting for prerequisits (devices nodes etc.) ... * could not start vdr: dvb device not found [ !! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------- localhost media-video # cat /var/vdr/vdr-start-log Startlog for VDR I: vdr-pvr350: plugin not found ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------- localhost plugins # ls -al /etc/vdr/plugins/ total 8 drwxr-xr-x 2 vdr vdr 4096 Jan 21 11:46 . drwxr-xr-x 6 vdr vdr 4096 Jan 21 15:59 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 vdr vdr 0 Jan 20 17:53 .keep_media-video_vdr-0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 45 Jan 21 11:39 libvdr-analogtv -> /usr/lib/vdr/plugins/libvdr-analogtv.so.1.4.4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 43 Jan 21 11:46 libvdr-pvr350 -> /usr/lib/vdr/plugins/libvdr-pvr350.so.1.4.4 localhost plugins # Can someone give me a clue or point me at some documentation that will help me? Another thing I would like to be able to do is play avi files, wmf and other video file formats through the tv-out. Is VDR the correct tool? Is my throught process sound? Please Advise, russ@xxxxxxxx
