[mythtv-users] Getting ready to setup a new system

[Dave Anderson]

At 10:54 PM 11/5/2003, you wrote:
>Dave Anderson wrote:
>
>>Hello all,
>>I'm getting ready to setup a new MythTV system for the first time and 
>>wanted opinions on my hardware.
>>I have an old Dell XPS PIII/650 MHz with 128 Meg Ram. I will up the ram 
>>to 265 Meg.
>>I'll be using the original 20 Gig HDD and an additional 180 Gig HDD.
>>I have a Hauppauge PVR-350 coming.
>>I have a PNY nVidia GeForce4 5600 Ultra coming.
>>Sound card is Yamaha based.
>>I also have a Pinnacle PCTV Pro I was thinking of adding in as a second 
>>tuner.
>>I'm hoping the high end tuner and video will compensate for the lack of 
>>CPU. What do you all think? Will it work? I don't really care if I can't 
>>pause live tv, but it would be nice if I can. Maybe down the road I can 
>>get a faster cpu and use it as a backend for a few frontends located in 
>>the family room and bedrooms.
>>Oh yeah, I plan to use RedHat 9.
>
>Mostly everything looks good here, just a couple of points:
>
>- I don't think a PIII-650 will handle an analog tuner like your Pinnacle 
>card (...you *might* get away with 320x240 low-quality RTjpeg, I suppose, 
>but LiveTV won't be possible through that card).  Save the analog card for 
>a faster machine.
>
>Now, if you take the Pinnacle card out of the loop, you're left with the 
>PVR-350 (a GREAT card!).  With this, you can ditch the sound card and the 
>GeForce card; you can get both sound & video out of the PVR-350. Actually 
>the PVR-350 TV-out is superior to any video card, it's reported.  As for 
>the sound, I think you might have sync issues if you use the PVR-350's 
>TV-out but not the sound, so why bother with the sound card?  Save the 
>GeForce, Yamaha & Pinnacle cards and use them to build a second backend or 
>frontend/backend when you get a faster machine.
>
>That's my USD$0.02.
>
>-JAC

Thank you very much. I will do just that, save the extra stuff for another 
box. Maybe when my wife sees how nice this is, she will let me get a new 
computer.