After the hard drive died in May, the MythBox has been in a constant state of disarray. First, I couldn’t get a reasonably current Linux distribution to install (for a variety of reasons, different for each distro I tried). Then, I finally got MythDora 3.2 installed correctly and I had no sound. Turns out the audio chip in my TV tuner card has been depreciated. No luck trying to get it back.
I decided that the no audio problem meant it was time to break down and buy a new TV tuner. My old STB TV tuner has been with me since early 1999 and was ready for retirement. I purchased a Hauppauge PVR-150 hardware MPEG2 encoding TV tuner from NewEgg.com for under $60 shipped. The PVR-150 is identical to the very popular PVR-250, except that many components that were separate chips on the 250 have been integrated together on the 150. Functionally, they’re identical.
Now Myth is back up and happily recording. Now if we only got more TV channels . . .
I would like to add a DVD+RW to the machine still, but that can wait for a super sale. I want to try out MythArchive.