[mythtv-users] Hardware setup questions

[Torsten Schenkel]

On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 20:09, SredniV wrote:
>  
>     Howdy,
>  
>     I'm in the process of planning a MythTV setup.  I've never set it
> up before, and I wanted to pass my idea by some smarties before I drop
> some cash into a new system.  I'm still working my way through various
> documentation, so I apologize if I'm about to ask some really bonehead
> questions that make you see red.
>  
>     I'm planning the following basic system:
>  
>     Asus Pundit
>     Celeron 2.0 GHz
>     512/1024 MB RAM
>     WinTV PVR 350
>     
>     At this point, I've seen enough reports that that hardware is
> probably OK.  But, here's where I go astray from the usual crowd:  I
> don't want a hard drive in this sytem.  That's right!  I'm cheap!
>  
>     Right now, I'm considering putting a small compact flash card
> (16MB that I have laying on my desk) in as a boot device.  This will
> simply contain a kernel that will instruct the system to do a
> "diskless" boot from the network (100 mbit) and load everything from
> my server.  (This hopefully explains my desire for 1Gb RAM, as I may
> not have swap.)  My server has nearly a half terabyte of storage, so
> I'm not interested in adding a new drive to another system on the
> network.
>  
>     The basic question is:  Will this work?  That is, will the network
> be able to handle recording/playback to/from a NFS server when there
> is absolutely no local storage?  It seems like there's allowance for
> this given that one of the FAQs on the site regards NFS-based
> storage.  (I'd be interested in knowing how much bandwidth
> simultaneous record and playback will suck up from my 100mbit.  If
> it's a lot of bandwidth, I can add a separate subnet and connection
> for it's private use, or just jump to gigabit.)

It's simple math:

Two video streams of 6000kbps each amount to about 1.5 MB/s wich is no
problem with 100Mbit network connections. It will even work on 10Mbit if
you lower the bitrate a bit. It won't work over 11Mbit Wlan though, but
22 Gbit will give you enough for 1 stream, 54Mbit will work for 2
streams, good connection provided.

6000kbps is more than enough, btw.

Torsten
-- 
Config files for PVR350 TV-Out:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/ivtv-pvr-350-conf.tgz
Walkthrough: MythTV on Epia with PVR350 using Debian:
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hi93/myth/mythtv_debian_epia_pvr350_walkthrough