Crap I Didn’t Throw Away Today
I think I have already posted that I sold my Powerbook. I was using it as a front end for MythTV in my living room, and it had been a source of some level of frustration. Intermittent lock ups, pauses, and the ability to crash the back end (which was upstairs) all had me spending far too much time fiddling and troubleshooting my setup.
Well, now, it’s gone.
I have been giving some thought to possibly using some of the money that I got from the Powerbook to buy a Mini, which would fit the bill of DVR front end MUCH better than the Powerbook did.
Then it occurred to me that I had a really old G4 Mac upstairs that had been unhooked for maybe two years. I wonder if it could run MythTV. Heck, at first, I wondered if it even had DVI. Yes, it had DVI, and amazingly, it runs MythTV like a champ. I am truly amazed. It’s digitized video from analog cable… no one is going to mistake it for HDTV… but it looks as good as my TiVo.
I also (since the G4 has no wireless capability) moved my AirPort Express downstairs so I could plug the G4 directly into it. This was, I was sure, going to degrade my wireless network considerably, as I used the AirPort as a repeater in the middle of my house.
I could not have been more wrong. Moving the AirPort Express downstairs was the perfect move. Not a single crash so far while streaming Myth video. There are occassional pauses, but these are usually when the Mac is trying to do something in the background (This is one slow computer, 400MHz, and Myth is all it can do at one time) and right at the very beginning of a video, while it is still caching.
All in all, I’m thrilled. I have the same capabilites downstairs I had before (with the exception of the power to run games… which I have never done, not even once) and I have a bit more green in my pocket. Not to mention that I have one less computer upstairs gathering dust (which is almost like throwing something away).
Right?
And I posted this entry from my living room couch with the wireless keyboard I already owned, using my LCD TV as a display. You may not be impressed, but I think it’s very, very cool.
Not to mention, it has rained ALL day.
It has been a very good day.