My main MythTV system (AKA “backend”) is in my entertainment system rack in the old family room. My office is merging into that room and I needed to move the system rack a bit to make room for additional furniture. And the rack had a few things that were no longer in use (like ReplayTV [still mourning that]) and a bunch of wires that had been used for things and hadn’t been pulled out. Also, my APC UPS had proven defective (what good is a UPS if you can’t rely on it) so I removed it but needed to rework some stuff to get in the new one. For all of these reasons, it made sense to disassemble the whole entertainment system and rebuild it clean – figuratively and literally. Lots of dust to vanquish.
I put it all back together meticulously tying cables together and running cables in layers so everything was neat. Once I got to the point when it was time to power everything up, I hadn’t gotten the TV put back on top yet. (That old Panasonic plasma weighs 250 pounds and I needed to make sure I only moved that when I was sure I was done.) I wanted to give MythTV a chance to catch up on database activity since it had been off for the better part of a day and I didn’t need to see that happen. I made sure I had the MythTV parts set up and connected before I powered it on and the attached the Comcast cable box and HD-PVR. And When I was certain everything else was working, I hoisted the TV back in place and hooked up all the HDMI. Then I could test out the whole setup. Everything worked with the exception of two problems with MythTV: the network didn’t come up and I didn’t hear any sound. The network problem turned out to be because my Panamax power protector doesn’t work with Gigabit so I’ve ordered a separate network protector and in the meantime, I have the network cable skipping surge protection which is how I had it before – easy resolution. But the sound problem turned out to be a bear to resolve.