New mythtv frontend setup

I’ve just setup a new Mythtv box. Although the previous system was relatively quiet, it was in a big box, and I want minimalism now rather then obvious geekery in the living room.

So I’ve got myself an Acer Revo r6310, found at a cracking price on the superb UK Hot Deals. This is a Nvidia ION dual core Intel Atom powered beasty. The old Mythtv box is now up in the loft.

I was going to try out one of the Mythbuntu releases. But it took ages to download, so I ended up putting a Gentoo minimal installer on a bootable USB stick and went from there. After setting up distcc on my main Linux box (also 64bit) the compilation took about 36 hours.

Using VDPAU with the binary Nvidia drivers. playback is awesome. So far the largest 1080p sample I have (The trailer for Alexander) plays perfectly. Although I seem to be unable to get WMV audio to play.

Video output is via the HDMI > DVI and audio is purely via SPDIF to the amplifier.

Very pleased so far.