Looks like I’m getting closer to getting my MythTV box working with ATSC/QAM digital television.

MythTV is a two-part system: the backend (the server) and the frontend (the client). Both are needed to carry the TV pictures from the ether to your eyeballs. When I fired up my Ubuntu MythTV frontend (as opposed to the OS X clients I’d previously been using), I was happy to see video! Upgrading the OS X Myth frontends also provided me the desired digital video. Progress!

However, the Myth backend is still not recording the programs. Instead it creates infuriating zero-length files and displays the show as recorded in the UI. Only when you click on the show do you get told the file doesn’t exist. Its handled very, very sloppily.

The other issue coming up is apparently the slow hardware I’m using for my backend server. A 1 GHz Athlon on a 7 year old motherboard just isn’t cutting it. The video is still throwing junk on occasion and freezing up other times. I know it isn’t the networking as I get the same results whether on a 100Mbps wired connection or a 54 Mbps wireless one.

Its obvious I need to put some more horsepower on the server end, including perhaps upgrading the drives, so that I can get this thing working the way I want it working.