Mission accomplished
The antenna was installed, and now I can reliably receive HDTV signals for all the major channels in the area. Just as I suspected however; I still can't view a show... Maybe the 2.6 kernel will be my savior.
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HDTV Here I come?
In my continued quest to create a completely usable HDTV tuner, I am getting closer. Tonight, I have a 'cable guy' coming over to install my UHF attic antenna. At first, I (naively) thought that I could do it, but going up two stories, drilling, wiring, cabling, and digging through mountains of attic insulation is not my cup of tea.
Once the attic antenna is installed, I should be able to get a reliable DTV signal, then I can focus on getting my system tweaked to decode and display TV.
Enter MythTV
In order to view TV through a Linux based HDTV you need a solid client. I wanted something similar to my Dish Network PVR (the 721) where I could do things like pause live TV, record shows from a guide, etc... There are a couple projects out there that seemed interesting; Freevo, and MythTV. MythTV is a much more active current project, and since HDTV is a newer technology, I decided (good decision) to go with that.
How I use MythTV
As you might have read (if you checked out the MythTV.org web site) MythTV has a boatload of features. I really only use a few of them, but what I do use, I love.
Enter the HTPC
After researching the ins and outs of HDTV, I decided that building my own Home Theater PC was the way to go. No, really... Stop laughing. I could put the whole thing together really cheaply, and it would have more features than you can imagine! I found this amazing front-end called MythTV. MythTV is like a free version of TiVo with even more functionality. It all runs on Linux, and is quite stable.
Where to start?
This is the first post, so I figure I should probably start out with a bit of history. Ann and I bought a big TV... You know, one of those honkers that owns a corner of your family room. I don't think we ever thought we would do that, but here we are. During the research process for the new TV I ran across this thing called HDTV. In a nutshell, HDTV is High Definition Television, and it is going to be part of our broadcast standard in the not so distant future. I quickly realized that in order for us to take full advantage of the large TV that we would need to get this thing called HDTV.