[gentoo-user] any mythtv/set top box experts?

[Matt Harrison]

Hi all,

I've recently started to set up a mythtv box for my parents. I've found 
a USB DVB-T receiver which works perfectly and I've got the system up 
and running on some old hardware.

Now I've been tasked with finding something small that can sit by their 
TV and do it all. I've been looking at MiniITX machines with the nVidia 
ION chipset that support 720/1080 HD playback and HDMI outputs.

My questions are concerning the digital output and remote controls. I've 
only ever used HDMI/digital output on windows and it confuses me then. 
Is there some added complexity to getting the HDMI output working 
(including audio) with a TV? Is there anything to look out for as far as 
compatibiliy goes?

And remote controls, the USB DVB-T unit comes with its own remote and 
pretty much works out of the box even on linux. At least it works for 
the basic up/down/left/right/enter, I really don't know enough to get 
any more out of it.

The MiniITX bundle I'm looking at comes with a remote designed for media 
centres and looks to be a million times nicer than the one from the 
receiver, but is there going to be a lot of trouble getting it working 
with Lirc? I only know a teeny tiny bit about Lirc, I don't know what 
driver this remote will use so I don't know if there's likely to be any 
compatibility issue.

As you can tell I'm not very hot on this stuff, so any 
tips/help/suggestions would be much appreciated. I'd especially 
appreciate if anyone could point to some known-good hardware for this 
purpose.

Thanks

Matt