Thanks to all attendees for making the day so great. Special thanks go to our generous sponsors: Schedules Direct, Inc. and pcHDTV, Inc. and to Jarod Wilson for autographing a copy of his "Hacking MythTV," Keith Watson and Aaron Ruscetta for providing their throughly enjoyable presentations, Scott McBrien (Fedora Ambassador) for stopping-in and supporting the event, David Knowles, Robert McCurdy, and everyone else from Freeside who donated their time, monitors and computer equipment. Clearly, the event could not have happened without you.
Raw event specs and stats: The day started at 8:30 AM and eventually lost steam at 4:30 PM. Thirty five folks filtered in throughout the day. Keith Watson and Aaron Rusecetta delivered two highly appreciated and well attended presentations. We completed five fresh installs, but two other installs failed due to hardware issues. We raised about $100.00 for Freeside Atlanta. We raffled off one copy of "Hacking MythtTV," and five subscriptions to Schedules Direct's listing service and seven Schedules Direct T-shirts. We also consumed five large Papa John's Pizzas.
As a collateral benefit of the event, we saw the creation of two new tech related groups. Most everyone at the show wanted more MythTV, so we formed a MythTV Users Group (
MUCH). For a crew of IT Geeks in Chattanooga, TN receiving the e-mails promoting the event proved to be just the catalyst needed for them to start their own Hacker/Maker space. Last I heard, they were searching for warehouse space and corporate sponsorship.
CONFERENCEKeith Watson's presentation entitled "Hacking The Tivax T-8" detailed Keith's integration of his Tivax T-8 digital converter box into his MythTV system. He began by discussing how he reviewed the schematics for the digital converter box and learned how to use the box's serial port to change channels. He then described the scripting language and commands used to control the converter box, and concluded his presentation by discussing his plans to connect the Tivax T-8 to his MythTV system. (More on this later.) His presentation, in addition to being an interesting hacking tale, was packed with many useful and informative weblinks about capturing broadcast digital programing. It is available here:
Hacking The Tivax T-8Aaron Ruscetta's presentation was entitled "Digital Video's Perpetual Proprietary Flaws." We all deal with the aggravation of not being able to play certain music/video files due to format incompatibility. Aaron's presentation focused on navigating the complex maze of proprietary media encoding and encryption schemes. His presentation also delved into your right to fairly use audio and visual media. Aaron has generously offered to come back to Freeside and give another talk on the topic. He mentioned that having a "Blender" available would enhance the his presentation, and fortunately a "Blender Render Farm" is on Freeside's list of proposed projects, so stay tuned.
INSTALLFESTBest tale from the "InstallFest" -- AKA "Been there before." After Keith finished delivering his presentation, he set about the task incorporating his Tivax T-8 into his MythTV System. He battled with this project for about 3.5 hours. Steam was coming out of his ears. The non sequiturs started... "this is clearly not worth..., What the..., Why would...," most everyone tentatively visited him at his computer to offer encouragement and advice, but soon left him to suffer in isolation. Then out of the gloom came, "It's working!" and Keith was instantly OK with computers, himself, and the Universe. As I said, we've all been there before. Perhaps not at this level of abstraction, but we've been there.
Best proof of concept: Thanks to Warren we gained verifiable proof that nVidia's "Video Display and Presentation API for Unix" (VDPAU) works -- and works very well. We all witnessed his system (built on a Zotac IONITX dual Atom board) nearly flawlessly push High Definition video, yet only used about 10% of the CPUs' capacity.
At last, MythTV enthusiasts have what they sought for so long -- a small, quiet, high definition capable MythTV Frontend. Suddenly, the a truly affordable multimedia networked home seems viable.
