Software speculation

Since I'm still hunting for the Mini I decided to go through a bit of the software selections.

For Linux distribution I will most probably go with Fedora 8 or 9, depending on the schedule. This because my own VDR system is using also Fedora (5) and I'm familiar with its tricks and so on. Fedora should also have quite good driver support for Mini but I'm expecting that some tweaking is needed to get sleep and wake up to work nicely, also with remote.

Of course the very first thing is to clean the hard drive and install as small OS X installation as possible. Then install Boot Camp and Fedora also as minimum setup as possible, to make space for recordings and make the startup fast. I want to preserve OS X as an emergency system and I've also read that boot may be slower if there's no OS X installation available.

VDR will be 1.6.x version with following plugins:

• burn, for dvd burning
  
• dvd, dvd playback (if not using xineliboutput)
• epgsearch, advanced epg
  
• femon, signal monitor
  
• mp3, mp3/media player (if not using xineliboutput)
  
• osdteletext, teletext
  
• softdevice or xineliboutput, video out for X
  
• ttxtsubs, teletext subtitles
  
• tvonscreen, epg viewer
  

Selection between softdevice and xineliboutput is harder, because I don't have so much experience of them. The most crucial feature is the relialibility and stability. Also the performance including deinterlace is important. I haven't studied yet what are the options with Mini's hw and display driver what comes to hw acceleration.

In addition I likely need a bunch of bash scripts to make systems to work as I want.

Parts and the budget

The system will include following parts:

• Apple Mac Mini (Intel)
• Apple DVI to Video adapter
• Artec T14 USB DVB-T adapter (2 pcs.)
• Remote Control unit
  

Actually all the items excluding Mini are already bought. Remote will be one from the bundle of Satelco EasyWatch DVB-C PCI card I bought for my VDR server about a year ago. It has enough buttons to operate VDR.

Artec's DVB-T adapters I bought from local computer store Serv-it with price of 19 euro per piece. Linux kernels have had the support for it already for sometime, so it should be quite safe choice.
Video adapter I found from Finnish Apple forums. It was new and price 11 euro including shipping. I tested it to be working with my MacBook Pro.

So far I've used 49 euro, and my target budget is 500 euro. That leaves 450 euro for Mini with DVD burner and large enough hard drive. So I need to find a secondhand Mini from somewhere with SuperDrive or a basic model and update the drives with new components.

Start of the project

The purpose of the project is to build a easy to use DVB-T/DVR set-top-box to my parents using Apple Mac Mini. I think that most of the Mac Mini HTPCs are based on OS X and EyeTV, but my baseline will be Linux and VDR. I have already built two VDR configurations for my self earlier and have ported VDR for OS X, so I already quite familiar with Linux and VDR.

I got the idea for this project already in last summer, but now I've bought the first pieces and hoping to get really started with the implementation.

This blog is mainly intented to be my notebook and diary of the project, but maybe this will help also someone maybe dealing with similar subjects.