Over the last couple of weeks I've got myself a small stack of components and started to build myself a media pc. I picked up a nice small case-about the size of the average set top box, a micro atx motherboard and processor, and all the trappings. I've put into it to get tv, a Hauppauge winTV nova-T pci card (it has space for only one card-pci or pci-express) a laptop sized slot loading dvd-rw drive and also attached a usb soundcard, to ensure I get a digital output for my speakers.
I've now got kubuntu 7.04 installed and have myth able to pick up tv, although the digital itv signal here seems no-existant. I'm now working with getting the remote control to work as I want. Alsa is outputting sound, and the usb sound is now set as the default soundcard, however with myth running, I dont have control over its volume via alsa.
The kernel that I'm running at the moment (Kernel 2.6.20-16 ) has ir_common running, which interfers with lirc which is what many use to configure their remote control. Rather than reconfiguring the kernel to exclude ir_common I am working on setting up the appropriate keymaps so that the remote control keys do the appropriate functions in the program. So far I have only mapped the power button to the escape key for exiting the myth frontend, but will work on more, now I know how to do it. I used xev to display the keycodes of the pressed buttons and created a .Xmodmap file in ~/ to map it to a function.
More will be posted, if I ever remember to post stuff up here!