MythTV Epia Frontend Installation Guide
Introduction
A separate frontend can make a lot of sense if you want to keep a large, noisy backend system out of your living room. I've recently been acting as a consultant for Sheffield University who are working on a project called SemTV. For this, they required a number of small frontend systems to form part of a large MythTV network. I specified components based around a Via Epia SP (mini-itx) motherboard. This page documents how to get these boxes up and running in two configurations: a diskless client and a fully functional Ubuntu Desktop.
Hardware
The complete specification of the SemTV frontends are as follows:
- VIA Epia SP8000E Eden (£148)
Fanless motherboard with hardware-based MPEG-2 decoding - Morex Cubid 3688 (£56)
Small, black case - Crucial 512MB 184Pin DIMM PC3200 DDR RAM (£28)
Standard DDR memory - Samsung 40Gb 2.5" (£46)
2.5" HDD - Panasonic CW-8124-B with Black Bezel (£54)
Slot Loading DVD/CDRW - Edimax EW-7317UG 802.11g wireless USB adapter (£14)
USB WiFi dongle with open source ZyDAS driver - Sapphire Technology Remote BOB (£17)
Remote control which is very well supported in Linux
Software Options
Here are two very different ways of getting MythTV running on the Epia box:
- Fully-featured Ubuntu Desktop system, booting from internal disk: HOWTO
- MiniMyth thin client system, booting over the network: HOWTO