Before I turned off the machine last, I checked out the MythWiki page on ACPI Wakeup and followed the configuration suggested there. Sure enough, the machine woke itself up to record the next scheduled show (although it missed a minute or two; I might have to figure out how to pull the time back a couple minutes to give it time to boot). Pretty cool, except I happened to notice that the "next scheduled mythfilldatabase time" was long since elapsed. Does MythTV not know enough to correct this when it sleeps through its appointed time? Hmm, what would happen if the next instance of a show was outside of the downloaded schedule; would MythTV ever wake up to do a mythfilldatabase? Might have to investigate this.
Anywho, I decided my next project would be to get the MythWeb interface working. I tried connecting to the PVR, but I got an authentication dialog. Annoyingly, it wouldn't accept any usernames or passwords -- not mythtv, root, or the user account I created on install. This would not be acceptable.
A little searching revealed that you can override the authentication of an Apache subdirectory by including Satisfy Any in the <Directory> element. Better, but I wanted it even simpler. I wanted to be able to just type the machine name into the browser and get it, without having to append /mythweb. After unsuccessful trials with Alias and Redirect, I noticed a commented-out line that was there to redirect / to /apache2-default/, "to have apache2's default start page in /apache2-default/, but still have / go to the right place". I un-commented that line, but changed /apache2-default/ to /mythweb/. I also removed authentication on / as well, to make things even simpler. (I hope that decision doesn't bite me in the butt someday.)
I am noticing that the files saved on the hard drive so far are rather large (1.1GB per half hour). For how little TV we watch, 25 hours should be plenty of recording time. But I don't think that's good enough. The next step is to follow this HOWTO from the Ubuntu forums: HOWTO: Auto transcode MYTHTV recorded shows to DVD, XVID, or DIVX cutting out the commercials. I'm first running a test of the XviD export, which I'll follow up with a DIVX run. However, I don't know how useful it will be. It's currently showing an ETA on a 1-hour Star Trek Voyager episode of 11h 33m. (I would use a Simpsons episode as my test instead, but I want to check the quality of the results, and I don't think a cartoon will be a fair enough test of quality.) I have it recording all Star Trek and Simpsons episodes, and in the next 24 hours, it is scheduled to record 5½ hours of TV. At the estimated rate, that equates to 2¾ days of transcoding time, by which point another 8½ hours of TV will have been recorded. Sounds like a losing battle.
Update: The good news is it finished before 11 hours — it actually finished in about 8. The bad news is, that was the first pass. Pass 2 has started, and it's estimating another 11½ hours.
Update 2: My kids closed the lid of my laptop, disconnecting my terminal. The time stamp on the completed file is 11:28, which, if correctly indicating the time it finished, would put the 2nd pass at a mere 4-5 hours. So we're back to 2 hours per day.
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