[mythtv-users] New MythTV user

[Shawn Asmussen]

Unfortunately, my first appearance here is in the middle of a heated debate
that hopefully won't turn into an all out flamewar. I'm not usually so
argumentative, but if you happen to push one of my hot buttons.

 

But, on to actual technical stuff. 

 

I used to be a Tivo guy, and I had mine pretty customized, but the
motherboard went bad on it, and after looking at the alternatives, I've
decided that the free alternatives to Tivo's proprietary solution are mature
enough to go that way instead of repairing my Tivo or buying a new one.

 

I noticed the 'review my stats' email somebody put up, so I thought I'd put
up a description of how I'm planning on configuring my box and see if
anybody saw any particular issues with it.

 

I ordered a Dell 400SC, since Dell had it on sale pretty cheap. I could have
got it for $300 shipped, but I upgraded to the hyperthreading configuration
for an extra $100. I figured $400 was a pretty good deal for a machine that
has HT. There's not much of a video card, but since I'm putting in a PVR-350
for the output, I figured "Who cares, anyway?"

 

Specs:

 

Pentium 4 2.4 GHz - 800Mhz FSB (I upgraded to the 800Mhz FSB to get a CPU
with hyperthreading)

128MB memory (I can add more later, but it's too expensive to get it
directly from Dell)

40GB hard drive

Onboard NIC

 

For the TV tuner, I've orderd a WinTV PVR-350. The machine and the PVR card
are both scheduled to arrive this week.

 

My plan is to start with the basic configuration above, to get the system
working. I'll probably be using either Fedora, or Mandrake but I haven't
decided which way to go now that RedHat is dropping support for their basic
product. I've been a RedHat user for many years now, and I still haven't
quite figured out what distro to migrate to on all of my boxes yet. The OS
will go on the 40GB internal drive, and while I'm getting the system up and
running, so will the stored programs. Once I'm up and running however, my
plan is to add a SATA drive (The 400SC has onboard SATA), and keep the
programs on a separate drive/bus from the OS. Also, that will leave the
secondary IDE channel freed up for a DVD burner upgrade later. 

 

While I'm getting the whole thing setup, I'm planning on just connecting to
my network via the onboard adapter, but once I'm happy with the way it's
setup, I want to move it into the living room, and at that point I would
like to put in a PCI or USB wireless adapter and connect that way. Has
anybody run MythTV over a wireless network, and if so how well did it work?
I figure that 802.11b might be a little bandwidth restrictive if I were to
add a second front end sometime in the future, but I'll be going with
802.11g, which should hopefully be fast enough. That's just conjecture on my
part though, so if anybody has any actual experiences with this, I'd
appreciate hearing about it.

 

Other than that, my plans are pretty vague, since I don't actually have the
hardware yet, but I'm hoping that it'll make for a pretty good MythTV
platform.

 

 

Shawn Asmussen

 

 

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