[mythtv] Hardware Platform

Andrew B mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Tue, 31 Dec 2002 10:49:16 -0500


Greetings.

First of all, I've just recently discovered your project and I'm psyched 
about it. I'm a long time TiVo user but I'm sick of waiting for TiVo and 
Replay to figure out what their business plans are and what's legal for them 
to do, etc. If you want something done right why not do it yourself?

Anyway, one thing that I think would be a great idea would be to specify a 
hardware platform for MythTV. Has anyone tried it on the VIA EPIA 
motherboards? They are highly integrated and fit in mini iTX cases (17cm 
square motherboard). They have audio, video (with TV-out including S-Video), 
lan, usb, firewire (and even MPEG2 decoding in the M series) all in 
hardware. Take a look at this site: 
http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/mini_itx.jsp. Add a small internal TV 
tuner (or an external USB one), a quiet hard drive, and a slim DVD-ROM 
player and put it all in a little black iTX case (see www.shentech.com) and 
you have a pretty slick PVR machine. And you could put the whole thing 
together for less than $500.

Does anyone else think a worthy goal of the MythTV project should be to 
create not only an excellent software package, but also a complete TiVo-like 
device? Maybe there could be a MythTV linux distro as a single CD image with 
everything you need and a recommended hardware spec. Perhaps we could even 
convince somebody to sell the who setup - like a 9thtee.com or some small 
vendor.

-Andrew





_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 3 months FREE*. 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail&xAPID=42&PS=47575&PI=7324&DI=7474&SU= 
http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/getmsg&HL=1216hotmailtaglines_smartspamprotection_3mf